Faith, Fettle, and Fingerstyle Guitar
20 March 2026 • by Bob • Music, Health, Guitar
Someone shared the following video in a Progressive Rock forum, which was a great throwback for me. Here is Steve Howe playing "Beginnings:"
In the early 1980s, I used to play that piece (without the harpsichord accompaniment) as part my classical guitar repertoire.That piece, along with the following piece (Steve Howe's "Surface Tension"), were to have been audition pieces when I wanted to apply to college to study as a classical guitar major:
Those who know me realize that I eventually changed my plans, got married, became a dad, joined the military, and then became a professional geek in the computer industry. But I never gave up my love for the guitar.
However, Steve Howe's "Beginnings" in particular was a sad reminder for me of what once was. Not because I am foolishly pining for days gone by, nor am I regretting the decisions that framed my life and set me on the path that has led to where I am today. On the contrary, that video was a reminder of the fact that due to the slow progression of incurable hand tremors, there are many things that I cannot play now - nor will I ever play again - on the guitar.
Another piece that entered my repertoire prior to tremors taking over and occasionally rendering my hands useless was David Qualey's beautiful arrangement and variations on J.S. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring:"
Another piece that I recently tried to play - and failed miserably at - was Leo Kottke's "Rings." I will ashamedly confess that I used to sing this song when I played it, because it made the piece that much harder to play - and I wanted the challenge:
Shortly after tremors had noticeably affected my dexterity and before my official medical diagnosis of Essential Tremor, I attended a music festival in Evart, Michigan, with my good friends Mark Alan Wade and Randy Clepper, which - unbeknownst to them at the time - was my final hurrah as a "performing" guitarist. I had a blast joining them onstage for the last time, but I will admit, it was a bittersweet moment for me, because even without the diagnosis, I knew what was in my future.
It's been a decade since my symptoms first became unmistakably prominent, and I've adjusted to the fact that some days the simple things I used to take for granted - like eating in public - can be a challenge.
Occasionally I'll sift through the scores of classical and fingerstyle arrangements that I personally wrote, and I am often taken aback when I remember that not only did I write those arrangements - I could play them, too. When that happens, I am reminded, much like the piece by Steve Howe that began this dissertation, that part of my life has passed, and I am left with the decision of how best to adjust to my new reality.
A few days ago, I reposted someone else's thoughts on progressive christian theology, and in the ensuing conversations that happened on that thread, I spoke a lot about faith - and what happens when someone loses their faith. To be frank, when a neurologist looked me in the eye and said that I have a degenerative condition that may one day make it impossible to hold a pencil or a fork - that was a moment when I was forced to examine my faith.
I have often said that there are three ways that I can react to my condition: I can scream about it, I can cry about it, or I can laugh about it.
Screaming is where many people lose their faith. They scream at God. They scream at others. They scream at life. As is often the case with my condition, people scream at their hands for failing to do what the brain has instructed them to do. And while I will admit to occasionally screaming at my hands in a moment of frustration, this is not the path I commonly choose.
Crying can be therapeutic, but only for so long. Eventually you have to pick up the pieces of your life and move on, lest you fall into self-pity and depression. And here again I must admit that I initially mourned my condition by going through all five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. And this is where faith really comes to fruition: yes, my situation sucks, but I choose to believe that God has a plan that is reinforced through His Word (e.g. scripture).
This is why I choose the last of the three reactions that I mentioned: I choose to laugh, even when it seems illogical. My wife of 40+ years, Kathleen, has seen me laugh when I've failed to do the most basic of tasks that I have been able to do without error since I was one or two years old. And in all of this, I do not waste my time whining about whether this is "fair," because any notions of "fairness" are wholly subjective and utterly useless. It might seem unfair that I'm slowly watching my once-skilled hands as they continue to degenerate, but I am blessed in so many other ways. In short, as I said earlier, I trust that God has a plan, even though I cannot see it.
Bringing this conversation full circle, while it was sad to see and hear a guitar piece that I once enjoyed playing (but can no longer play due to unforeseen circumstances), I know my situation isn't the end of the world. I choose to believe that God has other plans.
Chocolate Break on a Warm Spanish Evening
28 August 2025 • by Bob • Guitar, Humor, Travel
I was perusing my collection of photos from my misadventure along the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain from two years ago, and I stumbled across this gem from my stop in Burgos.
Can anyone hazard a guess as to why I chose this specific cafe to sample the local chocolate-dipped churros?
Remembering the First Time with Van Halen
10 February 2024 • by Bob • Music, Guitar
Today marks the 46-year anniversary from Van Halen's multi-platinum debut album. To celebrate this occasion, I thought I'd share the following story from my youth.
In the fall of 1978, I was starting out in Middle School, and I made friends with another student, Gene, who was just beginning to play guitar like I was. We met because Gene was carrying a notebook emblazoned with the KISS logo, and at the time I was a big KISS fan. (Hey, no judgment.) Gene and I eventually played together in several bands throughout our Middle School and High School years, and we've remained in touch over the years. I visited Gene and his wife recently, and Gene recounted the story of when I came up to him during our 7th grade year to say, "Dude - you've got to hear this new album I just bought!!!" The album in question was Van Halen's debut offering, which had been released earlier that year.
When Gene came by my house after school, the track I immediately dropped the record needle on was - of course - "Eruption." Gene's mind was completely blown, as mine had been when I first listened to the album end to end. I had a reel-to-reel deck at the time, and we recorded "Eruption" on tape so we could slow it down, and yet it was still so
By my Freshman year of High School I would play "Eruption" at the backyard parties and other gigs that typical High School bands would get, though never as cleanly as EVH. (And these days I probably couldn't pull off playing the bulk of "Eruption" without some serious practice.)
Nevertheless, EVH turned my world upside down - but in a good way. To this day I phrase a bunch of chords on the guitar in ways I learned from playing Van Halen's assorted catalog of songs, and my efforts to learn what EVH was doing on each of Van Halen's albums made me a much better guitar player. There are few albums that I can literally say altered the course of my life, and if you read my blog from a few years ago titled My List of 20 Most Influential Albums, you'll see that I listed Van Halen's debut album at #3.
Transcribing Love, Salvation, the Fear of Death by Sixpence None The Richer
01 July 2023 • by Bob • Music, Guitar
Today's transcription is a song that I began transcribing a couple years ago, but I never took the time to sit down and finish until today: "Love, Salvation, the Fear of Death" by Sixpence None The Richer. This song does a great job of showcasing J.J. Plasencio on the bass (and I'll say more about him in a moment), and Matt Slocum's amazing skills with myriad, layered guitar parts. I briefly mentioned Matt Slocum a few years ago in my Transcribing Girlfriend in a Coma by The Smiths blog when I was discussing Johnny Marr, and the two of them fall into something of the same category for me. As always, I'll have some notes to share after the following video.
Here are my notes about this transcription:
- J.J. Plasencio's intro on the bass does a great job of setting the tone for the piece with a fast tempo and high energy, and it took some experimentation in Guitar Pro to get the effects to sound like the dotted eighth note delays that guitarists have been using for years.
- If you're sitting down to work on this piece and you're trying dial in Plasencio's sound, all I can say is that a lot of experimentation with a delay pedal will go a long way. For what it's worth, my early skills with delays date back to David Gilmour's and Alex Lifeson's guitar work in the late 1970s and Eddie Van Halen and The Edge in the 1980s, and the skills in question were how to use the delay to create complex melodies that sound like more than one instrument.
- I saw a live video of Sixpence None the Richer playing this song with Plasencio on bass several years ago (see https://youtu.be/ihwk5ndxhmA), in which Plasencio played his parts on a 6-string bass. However, the song is quite playable on a 4-string bass in Drop-D tuning, which is an instrument that the majority of bassists will have handy, so that's the direction that I chose to go with for this transcription. That being said, if you have a 6-six string bass, some of the parts can take advantage of the high C string and you might not need to jump around the fretboard as much. (Note that in the live video from 1:20 to 1:35, the physical pain that Plasencio is clearly suffering is not imagined; it's a challenging bass part if you're playing with fingers on your right hand, which is why I use a pick.)
- There are a lot of sonic textures going on within Matt Slocum's guitar parts, and I spent a good deal of time listening and re-listening to this song while trying to dig out every little nuance that I could. That being said, I know that the three guitar parts that I ultimately arranged for this transcription may not be perfect, but they're more than good enough for a cover band to sound like 99% of the original.
As I have always said in the past, this is a free transcription. So if you're upset that I left something out, or you don't think something is correct, then it sucks to be you.
NOTE: See https://youtu.be/iOiR8IFcKi4 for the official video for this song.
King's X Has Not Aged Well
29 June 2022 • by Bob • Music, Reviews
It should come as no surprise to people who know me or follow my blog, but I was a huge fan of King's X throughout the 1990s. The sublime mixture of Ty Tabor's searing guitar work, Doug Pinnick's thunderous bass tone and booming vocals, Jerry Gaskill's solid foundation on percussion, and their combined Beatlesque harmonies yielded a
It should, therefore, also be of little surprise to anyone who knows me that my interest was piqued when I heard that King's X recently released a new single, which was their first studio offering after a fourteen-year absence. You can listen to their new single at the following URL.
I have to admit - I was far from impressed by this new single. This track sounded like something that King's X could have released years ago; it was as if the band hadn't bothered to improve their songwriting skills during their lengthy hiatus. In hindsight, I don't think that it's enough to say that "I was far from impressed." I think it is a far better statement to say that I was disappointed.
From my perspective, King's X was at their musical peak when Sam Taylor was producing them, and the Billboard chart history for King's X reinforces my sentiments. Taylor, as many King's X fans might recall, also produced Galactic Cowboys, Atomic Opera, and the "Conspiracy No. 5" album for Third Day (which was their second-best album in my opinion). Once Taylor was out of the picture, King's X produced themselves for several albums, where they sounded like they forgot how to function as a band; their playing was worse, their vocals were worse, their lyrics were worse, and each album contained tracks that were literally nothing but noise. In my estimation, King's X is the poster child for why bands should not produce themselves.
If you've ever watched the excellent documentary series from PBS called "Soundbreaking," it does a great job of explaining how it is the role of a producer to push artists out of their comfort zones and challenge them to try new things. That is why after 40 years bands like Rush continued to change producers on each album; Rush wanted new challenges and a fresh perspective. Cycling back to King's X, after several self-produced albums they had the good sense to team up with Michael Wagener as a producer for a couple albums, but King's X didn't change for the better, and this new single sounds like it has nothing original to offer. Unfortunately, this track sounds like the same old drivel that King's X has been churning out for decades.
It's a shame that a fourteen-year absence doesn't appear to have added anything to King's X's talent pool.
POSTSCRIPT:
As a point of trivia, I should mention that I bumped into Sam Taylor at a show back in 1997. Third Day was doing an acoustic set at a store in the Dallas area to support their "Conspiracy No. 5" album, and I was standing off to the side next to a guy who was a few years older than me. We got to talking, and when he offered his name I immediately said, "You mean the Sam Taylor who produced King's X and Galactic Cowboys?" Taylor looked at me and said, "You must be a guitarist." When I asked, "How could you tell?," he responded, "Because no one listens to King's X except guitarists."
Marcin Patrzalek and Bach's Toccata
23 June 2022 • by Bob • Guitar, Reviews
As a guitarist, I like Marcin Patrzalek. A lot. In fact, I prefer Marcin far more than Tim Henson of Polyphia; Marcin keeps me endlessly entertained, while Henson starts to sound the same after a while. (I have the same complaint about Yngwie, but I digress.) Nevertheless, a friend recently sent me a video of Marcin performing his version of Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata in D minor, which is a favorite piece of mine (and most people around Halloween), and you can watch the video below.
First things first - I'm not sure why Marcin decided to adopt his new "emo look," but it's not working for him.
Having said that, I should clarify that this is NOT Bach's "Toccata" on "one guitar" as the title suggests, for two primary reasons:
- Marcin's piece highlights a few themes from Bach's "Toccata," but it barely follows Bach's original, therefore this video should have been titled "Variations on Bach's Toccata."
- There are very clearly several layers that were overdubed, so this isn't on "one guitar" as advertised.
Don't get me wrong - I've seen enough of Marcin's live videos to know that he could play this piece on one guitar - and probably with one hand - but he chose not to, so the piece is mislabeled.
Setting those minor nitpicks aside - this is a great rendition. Marcin's approach to the piece is imaginative and original, and I loved his use of various percussion slaps throughout his variations on the theme.
Once again Marcin hit a home run in my estimation, and I stand by my original statement that I really like Marcin Patrzalek; he is inarguably one of the best percussive guitarists on the planet.
Why I Prefer Tina Setkic over Yngwie Malmsteen
28 March 2022 • by Bob • Guitar, Music, Opinion
On the one hand, you have Yngwie Malmsteen, who is inarguably the most arrogant SOB in modern rock guitar, playing his "Arpeggios from Hell" in the following video while acting like he's some sort of badass:
While on the other hand, you have the teenage Tina S playing the same solo in the following video, and she's playing it arguably better while looking like she's bored to tears:
It's easy to see why I think Tina is far more talented than Yngwie...
Unsolicited Thoughts about Tim Henson's New Guitar
21 January 2022 • by Bob • Music, Opinion, Guitar
I like the band Polyphia, and their piece "G.O.A.T" is nothing short of brilliant. I was completely blown away by that song when I first heard it a couple years ago. (And I loved Rick Beato's break down on that piece, but then I'm a huge fan of Rick Beato anyway.)
One of Polyphia's guitarists, Tim Henson, does some amazing things technically and musically that I've never heard before and never personally considered when playing the guitar. I have mentioned in other musings that I rate musicians on the TOAD scale, where TOAD is Talent, Originality, Affect, and Durability. Watching Henson play guitar, it's abundantly clear that he has Talent and Originality oozing out of every pore. While his Affect on other players remains to be seen, I think that Durability within the industry is quite likely.
With that in mind, I was interested when some of the musicians that I know posted a video from Henson that was titled "Playing my new guitar." Several people made comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, which I assumed was due to Henson's arsenal of innovative techniques. Without forcing you to suffer through more of my descriptive rhetoric, here is the video in question.
Regardless of my feelings for Polyphia, my final opinion for Henson's "playing my new guitar" video was... yawn. Don't get me wrong - for the first 30 seconds or so I was amazed, as I was the first time that I heard Polyphia. But let's be honest - after the first minute of Henson's "new guitar" video, you've heard pretty much everything you're going to hear. The rest of it is just the same thing, over and over, ad nauseum.
Yes - Henson's technique is amazing. Yes - his chops are off the map. And yes - I'm a guitar player who can't play what he plays, but to be clear - my comments are not coming from a position of "I can't do that so I'm just lashing out." On the contrary, Henson's "new guitar" video is almost nine minutes of unstructured, semi-repetitive guitar ramblings that wears itself out long before the conclusion of video.
In a way, Henson's video reminded me of why I dislike a lot of Yngwie Malmsteen's playing. Oh sure, Yngwie is one of the fastest guitar players alive, but that's precisely his problem - eventually an overabundance of self-aggrandizing displays of technical wizardry begin to devolve into a murky sludgefest of technically proficient ear slime. In that sense, I don't like some people's comparisons of Henson to Hendrix, because Hendrix wasn't just an innovator - he was a songwriter. (Though Hendrix often descended into his own pools of ear slime, too.) Henson's video, on the other hand, falls far short of "songwriting"; after the first few minutes, it starts to sound like... noise.
While I realize that art is always in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, in my opinion there's more to music than nine chaotic minutes of slapping the crap out of a guitar. To be clear, I listen to a lot of music that's all over the place from a structure point of view, but there should be SOME sense of where a piece going. And if there's no direction, then a piece has to evolve. I've seen Eddie Van Halen perform a 12-minute solo, and it was entertaining for every minute of it - because Eddie moved on from idea to idea.
Think of Jazz for a moment. I've heard some phenomenal Jazz soloists take off on tangents of technical brilliance that filled long passages of time, but those soloists are usually backed by something underneath that gives it meaning - and quite often one soloist passes off to another, but the underlying essence is there, however veiled it may be. As an example, consider Al Di Meola's "Mediterranean Sundance"; there are technical chops to spare, plenty of guitars getting slapped around, and no shortage of chaos when necessary. However, there's far more to see and hear than what you'll see in Henson's video.
Taking this discussion closer to Henson's "new guitar" video, I've gone to see some brilliant fingerstyle guitar players, and Leo Kottke initially comes to mind. I often think there's something wrong with the way Kottke thinks, because his pieces are underscored by a tumultuous maelstrom of mismatched time and key signatures with brilliant displays of technical prowess soaring over top. For that matter, I would find Antoine Dufour's "Déjà Vu" from several years ago or Andy McKee's "Drifting" from 15 years ago far more entertaining than Henson's video; both of those guitarists were using a lot of the same skills and ideas that Henson was manifesting, without managing to get on my nerves or bore me to tears.
So my apologies to my friends who posted the link to Henson's "playing my new guitar video" - I certainly didn't mean to rain on their parade. But Henson's video reminds me of what a music critic once said was wrong with Emerson, Lake and Palmer when they entered the studio: they desperately needed someone else to tell them when enough was enough. If Henson trimmed his "my new guitar" down to 60 seconds and dropped an intro & outro on it, I'd have been far more impressed.
PS - My sincere apologies to Tim Henson. If you ever read this, I still think you're great - even though I didn't like your "new guitar" video.
Transcribing Girlfriend in a Coma by The Smiths
27 August 2021 • by Bob • Guitar, Music
It's been a while since I posted a transcription, so I though that I'd share something that I transcribed a while ago but never got around to posting on my website. With that in mind, today's offering is one of my favorites from back in the 1980s: "Girlfriend in a Coma" by The Smiths. I'll admit, the topic sounds a little creepy, but it's a catchy song that I've loved ever since I first heard it. To be honest, The Smiths released a lot of music in a genre that a friend of mine collectively labeled as "Depression Pop." If you listened to enough of The Smiths' albums, you'd swear that nothing ever goes right for their singer, Morrissey. (Seriously. It's like listening to Eeyore sing.)
One of my favorite guitarists is Johnny Marr, who was the driving force behind The Smiths' unique sound. Marr has a great way of creating layered textures with his guitar sound that is very reminiscent of another favorite guitarist, Matt Slocum. (I might say more about Matt in a post at some other time, but today is all about Marr.)
Without further ado, here's my transcription of "Girlfriend in a Coma."
Here are my notes about this transcription:
- Probably the biggest omission from my transcription are some really cool volume swells that Marr added as layers to the piece. Those would have been easy to add to the transcription, but I just didn't feel like it.
- I didn't spend a lot of time trying to dial in the synth sound on the choruses; I'm pretty sure the notes are fairly accurate, but as always - I spent far more time trying to get the guitar parts to sound correct.
As always, this is a free transcription. So if you're upset that I left something out, then it sucks to be you.
NOTE: See https://youtu.be/3GhoWZ5qTwI for the official video for this song.
Hipshot Bass Xtender on a 6-String Bass
30 July 2021 • by Bob • Guitar, Music
I just finished modding my Ibanez 6-string bass with a Bass Xtender from Hipshot Products; having Drop-A tuning at the flip of a switch is great.
I've been using Bass Xtenders on two of my 4-string basses for a while now, and since I play in Drop-D for 99% of the time, modding my basses with these tuning keys have been some of the best investments that I've made for my playing style.
That being said, it took me a while to get around to modding my 6-string, but now that I have, I wonder why it took me so long.
