Time
A few months ago, I bought a guitar, cheap, at an auction. I haven't had a guitar sicne I donated my last one when leaving Burbank ten years ago, and even then I'd only say that I possessed a guitar, not that I was actually playing it, a fundamental action that differentiates an instrument from a decoration. So maybe playing it much goes back another ten years to college, and getting it for the first time goes back another ten years to high school.
And so on and so on.
Most bits of living longer and getting older are invisible. Some are irritating. (My right knee pops and cracks when I walk up steps. Every step now.) Some are interesting though. Seeing an old world (a personal old world, at least) from a newer and differently experienced (i.e., older) point of view is one of the things I like.
There is a subtle guitar part in the background of "Time" by Tom Waits. For the longest time I didn't notice it, and I would have told you that the background was piano if you asked me. I sat down this evening to learn how to play it, or at least grab the chords and play something like it.
It's fairly simple. D-D-G-A7 verse. D-A7-D, G-Em9-A7, D-Dmaj7-G-Em, D-A7-D chorus. I'm just playing it simple, arpeggios on the verse, none of the jazz-like extras from the album, over and over, getting the feel. Starting the arpeggio from the A on the D chord was too high. Starting from the F# on the E string was too... I don't know, it didn't feel right. Oh well. I just continued to play using A as the low note.
Then I did something I've never done: tuned down the low E to a D. I'm aware of drop D tuning, but there's just something about not using the standard EADGBE tuning that's... I don't know, it doesn't feel right. Follow the rules. Standard tuning is Standard for a reason.
It sounded so much better starting from a low D. It felt right. Moreover, it felt like whatever internal block that made switching to a nonstandard tuning seem like a crime or faux pas had crumbled. Of course you can tune a guitar however you like.
I played piano years before playing the guitar. You don't have to (or it is ill advised to or you simply cannot) tune your piano down a step. The options are all laid out in front of you. It's simple, linear, prepared and provided. Guitars are set up like a matrix. I never really thought about it. The strings and frets are provided, but the values in the matrix can be transformed. I understand it's not true, but it feels like I discovered something.
It was a similar feeling when I found guitar sheet music. I had no idea such a thing existed, because I never thought about it. To me, a non-thinker, guitar music was encoded as a list of chords or as tablature that tells you what frets on what string. Of course it can be encoded as sheet music like a piano. Obvious in retrospect. But not at all obvious until I could see something old as something new.