— Begin quote from "fiddlewood"
I just always repeat any mistake and they believe I meant it; my own interpretation ya know!
— End quote
I have done that some as well. I remember once I was playing bass and the guitarist started matching a mistake I was repeating to make fun of me… that was pretty funny. We giggled like schoolgirls at a Bieber concert.
There’s a good quote, I forgot how it went exactly, but it was something like,“If you do it once it’s a mistake. If you do it twice, it’s improvisation.”
Also in regards to the F#, A, C, D# for the spelling of the F#dim7, I should of said, “Eb” not “D#” to be technically correct.
I think. If I’m technically incorrect, let me know.
I have a hard time hearing the difference between an Eb and D#.
Come on Mike, we know the most difficult one to tell the difference in is between the E# and F.
Of course it always takes a minute for folks to catch on when you say “This one is out of E#”
Since everyone’s starting to post fun listening contests and polls, maybe I should do one where I play 5 notes and you have to guess if it’s a D# or Eb.
I had some anesthesia yesterday, and the odd thing was, I couldn’t sleep last night. I was groggy, but just couldn’t sleep. So it’s 2:30 AM, and I am tired of laying there. I found it was a nice quiet time to record, so I recorded the attached.
I had been playing around with the dim7 chords and arpeggios. I really liked the sound. When I first started playing with it, I kept thinking it sounded like something from an old movie track (maybe like Casablanca). After playing with it’s use out of G, a few phrases emerged. I added a few little progressions and came up with the attached. It’s not bluegrass (my apologies) and it’s not my normal style, but it’s kind of what I think the dim7 lends itself to doing. Feel free to grab it and play with it, add some scat, rapping or whatever. If you want to record over it, I did not use a metronome. I started to do so, but it was kind of rigid and I was having a hard time getting it to “feel” right. I liked retarding the start and finish. Hopefully the main body of it is close enough to a predictable tempo that you can play along. At some point, I think I’ll probably throw a bass line on it. I think the dim7 arpeggios would be a powerful bass tool.
That’s some nice playing, Mike! Even if you did cheat and use your fingers. 
(We hillbillies might eat with our fingers, but we always use a utensil for pickin’)
That’s a nice quality recording, too. You sure you don’t want to join in on our current recording? You can have the mando.
I doubly cheated. On the “lead” track there is a little rake lick on the Em to Am transition. I was using my pick and couldn’t go up and down and get the various notes articulated well and phrased the way I wanted (I could get one or the other). After punching in about 5 or 6 or 30 times to fix it, I set my pick down and used my fingers. I’d have a hard time puling that off live 
Thanks for the kind words. It’s only 30 seconds of recording two guitars, but somehow I spent about 4 hours on it. I was “composing” it as I went along, and I was groggy, but still… I am just slow.
You haven’t heard me play mando The last I checked, I could play marry had a little lamb AND merrily we roll along. I do look forward to changing gears at some point and going through Ben’s mando vids. Due to Ben’s teaching prowess, I suspect I will progress much faster than my first times with the mando.
Sounds sweet, mreizs. I spend a lot of time working on licks and theory and technique, but sometimes I forget that all this stuff is used to make MUSIC!. Nice piece of music. And nice reminder of why we learn all this stuff.
Thanks for the kind words, KG. Ever since I first heard Tenacious D I have secretly wanted to know someone named “KG.” Sorry if it doesn’t work right without the “M”
The cool thing about it was I didn’t sit down to write. I just sat down to play around with the dim7 shapes and arpeggios, and the key phrases of the song kind of wrote themselves. Last night I added the Em Am C D progression so the melody could go somewhere, but most of the “cool” melody lines sprang from just playing around. I think there’s enough there to form the start of a decent length piece, but the main thing I wanted to do last night was get some ideas down so I could remember it later. It doesn’t take me long to forget. My favorite thing is when I pull out something that I recorded an idea on, and I have no idea how I played it Maybe I ought to tab it out too.
oooooo…tablature, now that’s a novel idea! 
I have to do this whenever I write a lead to anything. My brain seems to be full…every time I learn something new it pushes something else out…
Well technically it’s KM. G is my middle name. So Mreizs’s search for a KG must sadly continue. Close but no cigar.
It’s close enough that I can cross it off my bucket list. Thanks! Next up, paragliding off of Everest.
Mike that sounds like a really cool way to lead into “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.
That’s amazing Jesse. You are psychic. I have a version of Somewhere over the Rainbow that I play in G (Mark Hanson did the original arrangement). As I was experimenting with the dim7s last week, I was playing with the arpeggios in the middle of the SOTR, but you are right… I could take that as an intro and place it right in front of the song and it would fit like a glove. At the current ending, I had worked up a kind of interlude that simply goes between the G2 and the F#dim7 a bit and I think it might even transition better. The only problem with it is I have always done SOTR as a solo piece, and the thing I did the other night was two tracks. I might need to grow another arm.
Good stuff, thanks!
haha, goes to show a lot of musicians “think alike”.
I’d cut off the ending and do a bunch of quick descending arpeggios to create chaos over a few measures (this should really build up tension and angst)…kind of like falling into a bottomless pit and grasping for something to cling to to stop the free fall, then I’d go right into the song!
Pretty cool sound you have there using the Dim 7, very pretty chords…happy and sad at the same time…they could go either way and the listener is clueless until you get into an established melody.
I have never really been a theory person - tend to do nearly everything by ear, - but now I’ve been steered to this theory section from the collaboration I guess I’d better put my hangups on hold and try to understand what it is about.
That’s a great clip Mike - so that’s how jazz guitarists get those amazing results! I’m not a guitarist but now I’m going to sit down and try to work this one out. Thanks for the push and the inspiration Mike.
There you go, dozens of posts discussing these things and I ignore them, I hear one good example of what you are talking about and you’ve got me! 
Thanks Ozzie! As a bass guy, what might be of particular interest to you are the arpeggios that result from the dim7. You can play the arpeggios lots of different ways. I don’t know that there is a preferred method, but I would guess it depends on what you are trying to do with it. Here’s one website that had a couple shapes published:
justinguitar.com/en/AR-005-Dim7arp.php
In the above link, I do have a minor quibble about the “position 2.” They show the G note (edit: note on the G string) being played with the index, and if you are walking the arpeggio, that doesn’t work… a middle finger works much better.
Of course the neat thing is, it’s not rocket science. Just get a reference a half step down from the root and keep moving up 3 frets at a time and you are playing the arpeggio. FWIW, I did include the root note in many of the phrases.