Song 2 in G minor

http://www.fingerprintsweb.net/stornes24/stornes24-02Gm.mp3

For two steel string guitars.

My project was almost literally cut short yesterday. While I was preparing dinner, I was not cautious enough with the knife, and I cut myself in the left thumb, slicing into the fingernail. It was a clean cut, fortunately, "just a flesh wound" as they say in that Monty Python movie, but still I decided to have it looked at. After waiting for two hours, the ER nurse had a look at the wound and dismissed me quickly. The missus had bandaged me up so nicely that she got kudos from the nurse though, saying it was a shame to remove such a nice piece of work!

I haven't tried playing yet, but I think I should be OK, if I take it a little easy. (The left thumb is used to support the fingers on the fretboard.) Will have to wait and see how it works out. Anyway, I had this song in the can, fortunately.

G minor sounds pretty good on the guitar, the important bass notes are in a nice range. Not as many open strings to exploit for guitar tricks, but the 3rd and 4th string can be put to good use, as I (hopefully) do in the intro and outro. Those parts actually came from a separate recording while I was toying with ideas, and I edited them in with a bit of "musical word processing". I didn't have time to record a full take without "cheating". Anyway, the middle part consists of overdubbed guitar, so it's not 100% "real" anyway.

Creating things in minor keys can be a little tricky, it's easy to get into a typical "minor key" sound. This one has a little bit of a folk music vibe for the main theme, just switching between Gm and D7 chords, a very natural thing to do that I couldn't resist. Sort of a "Russian" sound to me. The bridge is slightly more complex, going Bb6-Cm-Am7b5-D7-Ebmaj7-Cm7-Edim7-D7. Made for a nice variation, and some voice-leading that I'm not ashamed of.

I realize I might need to make a conscious effort to do some more uptempo stuff later on, but for now, I'm happy to do some ballads.