Afternoon in the City

This song is another guitar exploration, this time trying out nylon strings and different strumming patterns.

One thing I've found is that guitar almost always sounds more life-like when notes aren't perfectly quantized. I think this has something to do with the fact that the guitar is simply hard to play. It's hard to play a note exactly on time when your hand is scrambling to move between awkward positions and moving a tiny pick to strike a string.

That's not to say that people can't be extremely good guitarists, but this has the baffling effect of producing live performances that sound robotic. A mere mortal guitarist makes mistakes and moves on.

When I produce a guitar performance, I tend to leave more mistakes and errors in than I would with other kinds of instruments. And there were a lot of mistakes; this song is more upbeat, has a lot of faster runs, and I'm not a great piano player to begin with.

This song makes me feel like I'm out and about, and doing stuff. It's a place that's sometimes familiar, and sometimes not. The sun is shining and I can smell coffee on the wind. The streets are confusing but the people are happy and tomorrow seems far away.

It's a gentle reminder to go outside and enjoy the life that I've been given. I only get the one.