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 Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick 
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Post Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
lol OK, I'm done practicing for the day; I thought I'd share one more "readthrough" that I recorded. Yep, rhythmic issues here and there, and a bit of a crash and burn in a spot or two, but meh... it's a starting point. This one was done in one shot; the fast arpeggios are basically a doubletime version of a the arpeggio sequence I do throughout. This one really IS funny!

Sorry, Kansas fans... hahaha Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/jayesskerr/stick-carry-on-wayward-son


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Sun Jul 16, 2017 4:22 pm
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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
I liked this version. Keep em coming. Hey I missed you at Stick Camp but I guess Ill have to save my airplan points and make it out to Vancouver In May and maybe hook up then.

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Sun Jul 16, 2017 5:39 pm
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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
Heck, I might almost be good enough to attend one of these Stick things by then! Thanks for checking it out, this was very quick; I put together a few of these quickly within a short timeframe. (Layla on Friday, Giant Steps Saturday, then Imperial March, Carry on Wayward Son and Satin Doll on Sunday)

So yeah, if I spent some time on them they'd be a lot better. But I'm going for exposure to as much music as possible; I work on nuance as I go...

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Mon Jul 17, 2017 7:42 pm
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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
Very nice Jay! Maybe add some distortion...?

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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
So cool in so many ways..... here's my critique... the melody.... a natural singing melody ....has repeated notes as a necessity for incorporating lyric. You avoided some of these. Get them back, use Greg and a Emmett's hand movement get the right hand moving like Steve Walsh or like a tongue. Flow .... anyway that's my two pence. Hand movement...hand movements... we strive we grow (man you are growing) we learn. Don't forget the basic the simple and often the elusive....repeated notes

Great stuff keep it up

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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
Thanks, fellas! Very good points, I will take any help I can get! Tons of work to do, and a lot of practice to get to where I want to be that's for sure! lol gotta keep doing my chores! Haha

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Sun Jul 30, 2017 8:21 pm
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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
Sorry to be late to the party. I think from this and previous exchanges, that you (Scott) and I hear music differently. Where this performance is rhythmically precise, it misses some of the things I love about this song (true Kansas fan, sorry). By example, the piano hits in the intro riff could be done as AGA unison as you do it and then C in the bass followed by the C keyboard. Same with AGA to the D. And similarly descending DG hit, DF# hit. With the vocal line, the legato, staccato is much more important to me than being perfectly in time in the middle. If this sounds like a criticism, it is not. It is pointing out how we hear differently. For you, it seems the perfect timing is what is important to your ears whereas my ears care more for the flow of the song and dynamic/touch emphasis. Correct me if I'm wrong. To me, it was just enlightening.

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Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:06 am
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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
sagehalo wrote:
Sorry to be late to the party. I think from this and previous exchanges, that you (Scott) and I hear music differently. Where this performance is rhythmically precise, it misses some of the things I love about this song (true Kansas fan, sorry). By example, the piano hits in the intro riff could be done as AGA unison as you do it and then C in the bass followed by the C keyboard. Same with AGA to the D. And similarly descending DG hit, DF# hit. With the vocal line, the legato, staccato is much more important to me than being perfectly in time in the middle. If this sounds like a criticism, it is not. It is pointing out how we hear differently. For you, it seems the perfect timing is what is important to your ears whereas my ears care more for the flow of the song and dynamic/touch emphasis. Correct me if I'm wrong. To me, it was just enlightening.


No worries, it's all good. Nothing to correct. Not everybody is going to like everything that everyone does, and that's okay! Not a problem, I wouldn't share this stuff if I wasn't ready to get some feedback on it. We DO hear and interpret things differently, and as such maybe, just maybe there's more than one way to approach things. If we disagree on some things, it's okay. I share this stuff to get some discussion going on the instrument, playing in particular. Maybe someone will listen to what I did and then do it a bit better, again, all good.

The important thing to me is these points (And yes good time is a VERY big deal to me, if the timing sucks it's really hard for me to take anything else seriously. So yeah, all good no hard feelings (I appreciate your input actually); Here are those main points...

1) I was able to put this and the other tunes together very quickly from a leadsheat with simply chords and melody. The lead sheet was from a homogenized fakebook, so yeah, lots of stuff is missing, no doubt.

2) The intent was not to create a carbon copy of a tune, and "blow everyone away with my amazing Stick work" ('cause I suck) but rather show that I too can create Muzak, and very quickly if need be. I can read that fucker down and have a reasonable facsimile of the tune that sounds like the tune. Yes, true Kansas fans will be appalled hahaha I don't care, whatever it takes to learn stuff.

3) It's an exercise at this point. I am very new to this instrument and as such I am feeling out what works, what doesn't, etc etc. It's very important to go over as many tunes as possible in order to get exposure to a lot of music so that I can learn this instrument and ultimately play it the way I want to.

4) As I said, Nuance will come later; I am focused on the very, very beginnings of learning how to play. I am just happy that I can play anything, and this volume of tunes (9 or so from scratch in one week) is pretty decent; I was spending months on one song before, and it sounded nowhere near as tight...

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Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:22 am
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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
As a native Kansas boy, who went to Topeka West High School where most of the band went, and a prog rock lover, I've always been a fan of the band Kansas. Also, my best friend and roommate had had an older brother that died of an overdose in the early 80s, and this brother used to play flute with the band Kansas. "Kansas doesn't have a flute player!" you might say, and you'd be right--he OD'd on heroin in Lawrence, Kansas, with a large amount of money in the room and a needle still stuck in his arm. My friend was about 10 when his older brother died. He's always been a big fan of the band of course and got me into them.

Carry On Wayward Son is a nice choice for Stick, but it does have its challenges. I've heard several versions of Dust in the Wind on the Stick and that's quite a bear of a song. Now, that song as written and performed has a shitload of fingerpicking going on there. It might even be the go-to song of that type. If I remember correctly, when we did a Skype lesson with Bob Culbertson at Oz Music last year, he showed us how he does fingerpicking on the Stick, and it was a lot of uncrossed arpeggios that bounced back and forth from one hand on the bass side to the other hand on the treble, and often duplicating or doubling notes on both hands to be able to sort of fingerpick faster. I think he played Blackbirds but referenced Dust in the WIND as another fingerSticking song--that he did not show us.

So your version of Carry On Wayward Son is doing a lot different stuff, mainly by imagining a bass player backing up the melodies, and using lots of notes and arpeggios runs. I have to admit, I think your left-handed Sticking has kicked up another notch. I was very impressed with what you were able to independently do with that bass hand while the melody played. And the simultaneous stuff at the chorus/refrain/main riff with both sides was awesome!

Carry On is a lot of piano and organ, and tasty guitar riffs, and LeftOverture rocks a whole lot. I think you've done a great job with this version, with the caveat that the whole song is something like 5 and a half minutes long. And a lot of keyboard. So, kudos just for taking this one on. My only complaint would be that there's so much more of this song to do, and I also wanted you to kick it in the ass with some distortion, as dcben said. And Brett is also right on about some of the repeated notes that could be repeated. I'm sure this song will be cooking when the flourishes come out. And some of the keyboard in the original is some of my very favorite rock keyboard, actually. I don't know how you'd be able to do some of it but I'm sure you could pull it off.

A very nice effort here, Scott, and if you want to keep coming back to this one with more versions, I'll keep taking a listen. Well done!

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Quote:
2) The intent was not to create a carbon copy of a tune, and "blow everyone away with my amazing Stick work" ('cause I suck) but rather show that I too can create Muzak, and very quickly if need be. I can read that fucker down and have a reasonable facsimile of the tune that sounds like the tune. Yes, true Kansas fans will be appalled hahaha I don't care, whatever it takes to learn stuff.


I didn't see this part before I started writing what I wrote above. All of that still stands, but as a Muzak tune (which was your goal), I'd say "Mission Accomplished!" You got the flavor of the song and then Stickified it up some to boot. But still, I think this is a kick-ass song that you could cover, if you want to keep coming back to this one.

I'd say you're pretty much there on covering songs with some chord charts and the melody. That's actually a very commendable goal and worthy objective apart from just learning Stick cover songs. You're developing a method.

A method....to your madness, of course!

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Fri Aug 04, 2017 4:43 pm
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Post Re: Carry On My Wayward Son - Chapman Stick
Again, a major frustration I initially had with the instrument was that I couldn't seem to learn tunes in a reasonable period of time. Even once the tune was learnt, it would be subject to all manner of error. Errors in random areas, and no amount of woodshedding seemed to help. Resolving this issue has been one of my major goals, as I did not buy these amazing instruments to "not" play them. Others might be happy spending a year on one tune, but I myself find that unacceptable. On one hand, I love practicing, but there has just got to be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. Honestly, I have made more progress in the last 6 months than I have in the entire time I owned the Stick. All about the approach, and yes I do have a method that is more conducive (for me) to learning this instrument in an efficient manner.

Two main things...(for me)

1) The Free Hands Book by Emmett Chapman
2) Sight Reading both hands simultaneously.

Hehe believe me, I would be the first to point out the discrepancies in my own playing, and the many, many ways that I could improve a work. It's something that I should do, and refinement and nuance are things I will be working on, but for now I am just super happy I can play. I'm ready to "begin" on the instrument if you catch my drift...

So yes, I could definitely probably spend days working and reworking this (and other) tunes, but that wasn't my interest or my goal with this release. Rather, it was me trying to do a new tune a day for a week as a kind of "self-test". At the end of each day's practice, I grabbed a chart and read it down. While I did this, I hit "record". I read through a lot of tunes every day, it's come a long ways. Sometimes the results are less than stellar, but it's always something to reflect on.
And an audio recording is a great (and quick) way to document it...

Now when I share stuff, I fully expect some varying feedback. Haha There will be folks who like it, some who hate it, and others who will offer some suggestions and advice, and still others who might go out and do their own version, and many who won't listen at all. All good, I am just happy that I can finally play this instrument to some degree, and happier still that folks might want to discuss music. If we disagree about some things, that's fine. Agree to disagree. But hey, talking about music, so that's cool!

Thanks for checking it out, have a good one!

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