How long have you been playing?

I'm pretty much a late comer to the guitar. I first picked it up in my mid teens. I managed to learn the basic chords and then stopped playing until my early twenties when I began to play in earnest. I came back to the guitar because I loved to write music. From the very first when even an 'F' chord seemed like an impossibility, I was making up music. I fell in love with fingerpicking because playing a beautiful chord seemed like ear candy to me and fingerpicking allowed me to hear different notes in the chord sounding together or against each other depending on the rhythms. Since then I have studied composition at both Carleton and Ottawa Universties. I studied classical guitar wiht Douglas Reach, (who was head of guitar studies at Ottawa University then) for almost a year and took instruction with Paul Bourdeau, a phenomonal musician and teacher/mentor for several years. I try to keep in mind their lessons and advice, and when the business of music becomes annoying I try to to keep in mind that the very reason I took up the guitar in the first place. I love music and I love playing.

Tunings
I get asked a lot about the tunings I use. The question is usually phrased like "where do you come up with alll those crazy tunings?"

Currently, I use about ten tunings. Some are variatons on D major and E major. I have written in open 'C' a fair amount. A couple of pieces I wrote are in an Am11 tuning and lately I have been working with varations of a dm7 tuning that I first heard the Canadian fingerstyle player extaordinaire, Don Ross use. When coming up with a tuning, I try to keep in mind the functonality of it. By that I mean is there a good representation of range and how sonorous are the open strings beside each other and of course how is the tension of the various strings. The Am11 tuning which has a low 'A' in the bass is as you can imagine, quite difficult to keep in tune. If you hit the 6th string with any kind of force, it kind of growls which is great because the first tune I wrote is called "The Bear" but again, hard to keep in tune. Joni Mitchell who is famous for playing in lots of altered/open tunings says that she likes to take her guitar outside and tune to the rocks and the wind and the birds. So maybe the answer is , "whatever works..."

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