THE CONQUEROR EAR WORM

  I hope the folks who like my "serious" writing won't roll their eyes at this "less thinky" item.
  I'm attempting to keep a scientific record of all the pop songs that get stuck in my head. I have both love and hate for pop music, which has dominated my life and career, but endless exposure to it has driven me into the arms of jazz, classical, avant-garde music, international music where I can't understand the words, etc. This is partly because I can't stand it when songs get stuck in my head. Even after many hours of listening, Derek Bailey never gets stuck in my head, for which I thank the man.

  KARL STRAUB'S LIST OF SONGS THAT GOT STUCK IN HIS HEAD RECENTLY (A LIST HE WILL KEEP ADDING TO)


"Roundabout" by Yes
"Rocket to Stardom" theme from Fernwood Tonight
"Levon" by Elton John
"I'm Alright" by Kenny Loggins

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BUDDY EMMONS INTRO, "NIGHT LIFE," RAY PRICE 1963 version

Classic Buddy Emmons pedal steel intro arranged for guitar by Karl Straub.


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HONKY TONK 5511 INTRO FOR ONE GUITAR

TIPS on playing a classic honky-tonk country intro with mostly double stops. With a little work, you can imitate the sound of two instruments, i.e. steel and guitar, fiddle and steel, etc.
You say your country band doesn't have a fiddle or a steel player? No problem-- learn to play this way and you can keep the money you would have paid those guys.
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Steve Cropper-esque Tele Solo

My song "Barbie Doll Apocalypse" has a Tele solo with a raunchy Steve Cropper tone. 

http://youtu.be/_kJ2bjyNmTU

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CHICKEN PICKIN' MELODY

Tips on turning a melody into a chicken pickin' line. 

http://youtu.be/vOpEvTaUCZs

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"Night Life" intro, by Buddy Emmons (from Ray Price version)

Here's my guitar transcription of the classic Buddy Emmons intro, where country and jazz rub shoulders. The lesson has great chord melody tips, and some hip chord voicings.  

http://youtu.be/0Ye_B8spduQ

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HONKY TONK double stop INTRO in C

Kick off a tune with guitar double stops that sound like an old Honky Tonk jukebox. 

http://youtu.be/x-FQ8brhO2I

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KARL STRAUB GUITAR WORKSHOP, MARCH 22, 7 TO 9 PM, WITH OBSCENELY LONG TITLE--"HOW I LEARNED TO PLAY ROCK AND ROLL, PUNK, ROCKABILLY, COUNTRY, JAZZ, BLUES, CLASSICAL, WESTERN SWING, BLUEGRASS, AND FOLK GUITAR, AND LIVED TO TALK ABOUT IT"

March 22, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
NOVA Music Center
12704 CHAPEL RD., CLIFTON, VA 20124
(not as far away as you think)

novamusiccenter.com/workshop-genre-mixing-guitar-workshop-march-22-7-00-9-00-pm/

(NOTE- this short video clip is a sample of what you can expect at the workshop. The first piece is in a Danny Gatton rockabilly style, and the second is a Bach-like sketch. They both use the same basic chord progression in the key of G. At the workshop, Karl will talk about how to find connections between styles, and how to mix them together in any way you want.)


Guitarist and Music Educator Karl Straub has led a checkered career. He has played many different styles professionally and spent more than thirty years studying the connections between different musical genres. Karl has shoehorned Monkees guitar licks into Thelonious Monk pieces, watched his audience slam dance to pop songs written when Jimi Hendrix's parents were young, and played Yardbirds fuzztone guitar while being pelted with enough fake blood, glitter, and chicken bones to stop his wah-wah pedal from working.

This workshop is partly a history of American guitar styles, and partly a master class on how to mix these styles together. Straub will talk about how slight adjustments to your playing can take you from psychedelic rock to blues to country to jazz faster than a Lady Gaga costume change.

Karl Straub has a Music Education degree, and almost 30 years professionally performing, recording, and writing. His songs have been recorded by numerous local artists, and he has played guitar with Last Train Home, Eric Brace, the Grandsons, the Graverobbers, the Kennedys, Little Pink, and Exit 10.



NOVA Music Center
12704 Chapel Rd
Clifton, VA 20124
703-830-7141
novamusiccenter.com/workshop-genre-mixing-guitar-workshop-march-22-7-00-9-00-pm/
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JIMMY WYBLE WITH RED NORVO

Jimmy Wyble is one of my favorite guitarists, even though I'm sure I haven't heard
more than five minutes of his playing, and maybe not that much.

This is because of Wyble's bizarrely eclectic career-- he authored many fascinating solo guitar etudes that mixed jazz and classical idioms, and sometimes included
interesting 20th century classical dissonances, but he also played with Bob Wills.
I've got a book of Jimmy's etudes, and they are deadly.

This clip, featuring nowhere nearly enough Wyble, is with Red Norvo, another terrific but often neglected musician who combined accessible swing music with a very advanced
dissonant language. And if that ain't hip, I don't know what hip is.
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GLEN CAMPBELL, "MY WINDOW FACES THE SOUTH"

Sometimes it seems I spend half my life listening to this song. (I've done some woodshedding recently with versions of "Window" by Willie Nelson with the Texas Troubadours and Leon Rhodes, Bob Wills with Junior Barnard, Red Foley with Grady Martin, and Grady Martin's Slewfoot Five.)

This version is a humdinger, with a young Glen Campbell doing an intro and a solo, plus some intriguing dance moves. It's more evidence of my theory that Glen did some of his hottest picking before he was famous.

THANKS TO CHARLIE MCCARDELL FOR SENDING ME THIS CLIP. Charlie seems to spend hours a day searching for hip stuff online, and we're all the better for it.
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HANK GARLAND AND CHET ATKINS, "THE HOT GUITAR" WITH EDDIE HILL

I think this is the hot cut I heard a dj play once almost thirty years ago, and have been searching for ever since. It's one of those songs where the singer acts as an announcer, and guitarists ape a bunch of other great pickers. But this one features the stellar lineup of Hank Garland, Chet Atkins, and steel guitarist Jerry Byrd trading breaks-- killer.

You have to guess who plays which break, but I'm assuming Chet plays the Chet and Merle stuff, plus some Chet-like hot licks. (We hear so much melodic Chet-style playing that it's easy to forget that Chet played hot licks too!)

Then I think Hank Garland probably handled the other imitations. He has a slippery way of picking that you don't hear in Chet's playing. Although it often seems that Chet can do anything, even virtuoso and versatile players usually run to form, and where Chet's playing usually has a prim consistency, Hank's looser phrasing and articulation can help you tell the two apart. (Unless I'm wrong!) At any rate, Chet was the guy who told the young Hank Garland about Django Reinhardt, probably the source of that bubbly and hell-bent quality in his sound.
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GUITAR WORKSHOP WITH KARL STRAUB--TEN IDEAS TO MAKE YOU A BETTER GUITAR PLAYER

TEN IDEAS TO MAKE YOU A BETTER GUITAR PLAYER
OPEN TO PLAYERS OF ALL LEVELS
Karl Straub's Guitar Workshop is Thursday, Jan. 19, 7 pm at NOVA Music, 12704 CHAPEL ROAD, CLIFTON, VA 20124

http://www.novamusiccenter.com/categories/Workshops/

"BROKE DOWN GUITAR," A SHORT ROCKABILLY PIECE.


KARL STRAUB'S HIGHLIGHT REEL, A FEW DIFFERENT STYLES OF GUITAR PLAYING


The purpose of the workshop is to show you how to be a better guitar player. Most guitar instructional books and DVD's show you how to play specific licks and songs, but without knowledge of certain fundamentals, many guitarists stay at the same level regardless of how many licks and songs they learn.

This workshop will give you a pile of practicing and playing techniques that will improve your playing right away, and keep you improving from now on. Straub will pass along tips about technique and practicing he has learned in 27 years of professional experience playing rock and roll, country, jazz, classical, blues, and folk guitar.

among the topics discussed--

HOW TO PRACTICE FOR MAXIMUM BENEFIT

BUILDING SPEED WITHOUT BUILDING SLOPPINESS

PLAYING IN DIFFERENT KEYS

PLAYING ALL OVER THE GUITAR, NOT JUST THE FIRST THREE FRETS

EAR TRAINING-- IF YOU CAN'T HEAR IT, YOU CAN'T PLAY IT
CLEANING UP YOUR LEFT AND RIGHT HANDS

HOW TO TURN SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS INTO ACTUAL MUSIC

HOW EVEN A LITTLE MUSIC THEORY CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER PLAYER

Karl Straub has a Music Education degree, and almost 30 years professionally performing, recording, and writing. His songs have been recorded by numerous local artists, and he has played guitar with Last Train Home, Eric Brace, the Grandsons, the Graverobbers, the Kennedys, Little Pink, and Exit 10.
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GRADY MARTIN WITH ARLIE DUFF, "ALLIGATOR, COME ACROSS"

Once again I find myself apologizing about not posting for a good long spell-- but ladies and gentlemen, I've been recording, writing, and practicing! These things take time.

Every time I feel like taking a break from practicing, I listen to Grady Martin, and it's back to the woodshed again. I saw something about this cut in a post from Deke Dickerson on the Grady Martin tribute site-- Deke was right, as usual. It's a killer, and interesting because it has a couple short breaks in Grady's fiddle-influenced "oblique counterpoint" style (heard sometimes on cuts with Red Foley) and then a more boppin' and manic solo later on the record, after it kicks into high gear.
If there's a recording that more handily illustrates how country guitar mutated from hillbilly to rockabilly, I haven't come across it. And I suppose this is as good a place as any to say it-- as great as Carl Perkins, James Burton, Cliff Gallup, and Scotty Moore are, Grady may be the hottest rockabilly lead guitarist of all.
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GLEN CAMPBELL, "GALVESTON" SOLO

Glen tears it up on "Galveston."

Nice changes on this tune, one of Campbell's most lyrical numbers, and an interesting solo. We only have Glen around for a little while longer, sadly, but let's not forget how great his picking is. Even if you ignore his many hits, I say he's for the ages just on the basis of his playing. (I'd even be willing to put him in the pantheon for his twelve-string playing alone.)
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DANNY GATTON, "HEARTACHES BY THE NUMBER"

There's tons of bootleg Gatton floating around, but this clip got my attention because I particularly love hearing Danny on classic country shuffles-- in this kind of vein, he's less likely to drift into the face-melting "warp factor ten" mode that everyone seemed to want from him all the time.

Good lord, has it really been almost a year since I've posted here? Sorry about that, but unfortunately life got in the way of my continued blogging. Just wanted to remind everyone I'm still here.

(At least some of my excuse is many months of woodshedding and various recording projects-- one of these days I'll have news about the recordings I've been doing.)
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TOMMY TEDESCO, "TEA FOR TWO"

I've been listening all week to Tommy Tedesco's gut-string playing on the old "50 Guitars" albums, then I found this gem (in a totally different vein) from Tommy's "Twangin' 12 Great Hits" album. Back when I was trying to figure out how the guitar should be played, I'd be listening to Charlie Christian, Barney Kessel, Wes Montgomery, and other jazz cats, but I also never got tired of the twang--

Twang could mean surf, or country, or rockabilly, or Les Paul, or any number of interrelated guitar styles. After a while, I realized that a lot of the playing on TV shows, movies, and albums from that era was these anonymous session guys, and a lot of the twangy playing that had a little more jazz sophistication was by Tommy.
There were others, too, of course, and probably many excelent pickers I haven't heard of, but Tommy shows up a lot once you start looking for him. I would guess this album was another one Tedesco didn't think too much of, but I'm happy to hear Tommy in a twangy vein any day. I'm sure that Tedesco was a major influence on my attempts at mixing twang with sophistication. Maybe it can't be done, and if it can be done, maybe I'm not the best guy to do it, but it still feels like a noble experiment to me. I'll keep working at it!
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WALTER HAYNES, "PICK ME UP ON YOUR WAY DOWN," WITH CHARLIE WALKER

Please excuse my ignorance, but can anyone identify this steel player?
(thanks to Dave Van Allen for determining that the mystery man was
Walter Haynes. Now I need to find more Walter
Haynes.)

(thanks to Bob Adamcik for turning me on to both this song and Charlie Walker.)
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BILLY BYRD W/ ERNEST TUBB, "THERE'S A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING IN TEXAS"

I couldn't find a clip of Leon playing this song, but here's an older one with Billy Byrd. Unfortunately, Byrd doesn't play a lot on this tune, and you don't get tons of shots of him as in some of the best clips, but what little you get is characteristically fine.

I just did a transcription of Leon's live 1965 version, and thought I'd put this Byrd version up for comparison.

memo to Alex-- do you know of a video clip of Leon playing this song with Tubb?
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STEVE CROPPER W/ BOOKER T. AND THE MG'S, "GREEN ONIONS"

Here's Steve Cropper with the immortal "Green Onions." Not enough Cropper, of course, but can you ever really have enough Steve Cropper? Cropper remains the standard example of how to burn on guitar and still be understated.
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MICK GREEN WITH BILLY J. KRAMER, "I CALL YOUR NAME"

Here's a textbook example of how guitar players can benefit from listening to also-ran recordings. Briefly, I'm talking about the phenomenon of lesser recordings containing stellar guitar playing. Many would probably dismiss or ignore this Billy J. Kramer clip, since it's a weaker version of the Beatles song "I Call Your Name." Okay, Billy J. is no John Lennon, but I'll let others engage in that debate elsewhere. We Tele pickers are concerned with Mick Green's A+ playing. I love George Harrison, but whereas George was a little-engine-that-could type of instrumentalist, working harder than many contemporaries to develop technique that didn't come naturally to him, Mick Green is one of the technical greats of British rock. Ignored in this country, like Hank Marvin, Peter Green, etc., Mick Green kills on cut after cut. I'm slowly working my way through these youtube clips, looking for classic Mick Green playing. There are tons of clips of Green with the Pirates, a solid and in fact pretty intense hard rock band, but these Dakotas clips are a different animal. In a less rocking setting, Green does what James Burton, Nokie Edwards, Jimmy Page, George Barnes et al do so well-- he brings some raunch to a pop session. This kind of approach gives me an almost religious feeling when I hear it.

I'm in the process of putting together some videos where I demonstrate some playing inspired by Green, Burton, and others in that elite group. Look for these to show up soon, knock on wood. (I suppose that wood should ideally be alder, or swamp ash.)
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