Ramblings I went back and forth between releasing the This Devil dEMO EP as it is versus re-recording it. Life happens and even before I settled into my new space I am uprooted and on the move, again. I think the demo is a great snapshot of where I am now and in which direction I am headed. I wrote or arranged everything on the demo and it's me playing guitar and my voice except for Monk who is on the tambourine and doing some backing vocals. Thank you! Monk, for not letting me be naked for the world to see all alone. I am making music as a form of therapy and self care, just as writing has become for me. I’m so thankful to be able to play the guitar at all after a serious hand injury. I feel like I’m growing as a player, finding new plateaus to explore and hills to climb, and finding understanding as I push the limits of what I can do with my fretting hand. I also feel like some context about the hand injury and my guitar journey is in order. I was given my first guitar when I was 5. It was a nylon string guitar and it came with some lessons. I took 3 lessons. I had a guitar stored in the closet most of my life. I never became super proficient. I also never noticed how important having the ability to just noodle around was to my well being until I couldn’t. A wrench on the chuck of a miter saw which I believed I had unplugged going from zero to 5000 rpms while my hand was still holding it caused some major damage. The surgeon had to be convinced, thank you Monk again, to not amputate my ring and little finger at the palm. I gave away my closet guitars. Years later I bought an inexpensive left handed guitar and started a mind bending exercise of flipping around everything I knew about guitar. Then I learned about DJango Reinhardt. His injury didn’t stop him at all. He learned to adjust. I bought a right handed guitar and set out on getting better. I could only play a few seconds at a time.There are many chords I’ll never be able to fret; nobody teaches two and a half finger guitar technique. The wound strings texture would set my nerves on fire doing any slide or adding vibrato. I switched to flat wound strings. It helped tremendously early in my journey when I was slowly building my stamina to play 30 seconds, then 35 seconds at a time. Here it is about four years later and I can get through a 5 minute plus song. Whoot! Hindsight I mixed the entire EP with headphones. I rushed the performance a lot during the tracking. I’m still proud of it. Lessons Learned I may or may not be my own worst critic. I’m hooked Plan for growth but don’t forget to enjoy and celebrate the journey
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by: Ramona Dean
Theosophist The G0ings-0n Page
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