- Six Strings - Happy Accidents v1 and v2

(Happy Accidents - Mirrored Insight)

 People have asked about my creative process in the past and I've always somewhat glibly responded that I don't really have one.  In hindsight, I think it's probably more accurate to suggest that my 'creative process' is mostly guided experimentation based off of a simple catalyst. Said catalyst is usually three or four notes that I hear in my head or find on the neck of my guitar that, upon consideration, make me go, "Oooooh!"

I know.  It's not awe-inspiring, my brain.

Seriously though, I can think back on most of the pieces I've recorded and posted here and I -know- what tipped off the process of creation for each one.  A few examples:

- 'The Sincerest Form Of Thievery' came about because I was playing around with harmonics at the 12th fret while running some bonkers layer of effects through my amp.

- 'After I Stopped Paying Attention' happened because I happened to be fretting the third string on the second fret and noodling with a finger-picking pattern.

- 'Lost From Hodgeson' happened when I moved a D chord shape way the hell up the neck of the guitar looking for a cool noise.

- 'Departures' happened right after I'd gotten my Neunaber Audio Seraphim Shimmer pedal.  I literally picked a D chord in sequence, heard the noise, and pretty much the entire song was born.

And then we get to 'Happy Accidents'.  I was sitting in my office just fiddling with double stops on the E and B strings and I stumbled onto the duo tone of A and D together.  As soon as I hit that, it was like a giant bell going off in my head and THIS happened:

I was clearly still not sure what the hell I was trying to do but I was so excited about the noise that I hit the record button without really practicing.  The results of said lack of practice are pretty evident within the first 10 seconds. I'm going to blame some of this on the fact that up until now, I'd been spending far less time than usual playing guitar due to my newly discovered love for disc golf.

Anyway, much like 'A Little Off-Kilter', I filed this one away.  I can't say I forgot about it though.  This opening series of chords and patterns was stuck in my head in a BAD way.  I played this over and over for the next several weeks before some of the rust on my brain finally shook loose and I started being able to string some coherent phrases together.  The eventual product was this:

It's not perfect, but it's good enough to stop driving my brain crazy.  If that ain't good enough, I don't know what is.  I don't really have chord notes for this either.  It just sort of...exists.