wheresrhys

This blog is meant to do two things:

1. Let the world know that I’m a decent front-end web developer
2. Be the focus for a new doomsday cult

Number two is progressing nicely as no-one has gotten wise to my subliminal messages yet, but what of number one?

Let’s evaluate:

• Design – it’s not finished yet (and never will be as I will hopefully do a redesign next month when I have a bit more time), which doesn’t look so good
• Javascript, CSS, HTML – apart from mentioning the odd bug/annoyance there’s very little to show what I can do with these… aside from my jQuery plugins which hardly have pride of place either

Over the last few months I’ve come across a few blogs which, unlike mine, really cut the mustard when it comes to being an extended portfolio, putting mine to shame.

jasonsantamaria.com and dustincurtis.com are a little bit twitter generation for my liking, but one can’t deny that their blogs, where every article has a different design, are great examples of showing off on your blog.

But my favourite, which I came across today, has got to be www.romancortes.com. Most of his most recent posts feature him achieving visual effects which simply have to involve Flash… only they don’t, and in many cases achieve quite striking results without even using javascript; just pure CSS/HTML. As he himself admits, most of the demos aren’t much use in a practical website, but they’re still pretty impressive in showing what surprising visual effects can be achieved, and figuring out how he did them is quite a good test of your understanding of CSS. My favourites are the coke can and the old master.

Obviously, when you see that someone has managed to animate a rolling coke can using just one static image of a coke can label and some CSS, and after the initial wow has subsided, a Peep Show quote springs to mind:

Super Hans: I think this is probably the best example of the sort of stuff we’d do we’ve ever had.
Jez: Oh yeah. ’cause sometimes it’s really hard actually to do your own ideas

Do I have it in me to produce a more stunning showcase of what I can do? Who knows, but having just learned The Mason’s Apron on guitar I feel invincible!!!

I mentioned the other day I hadn’t experimented with alternate tunings for playing Irish guitar, Well, all that has now changed, and I am sold on DADGAD tuning. Yes, you can pretty much only play things in the key of D, but then again, who cares when it sounds so lucious. And as you barely need to use any fingers to play a chord you can free your hands up to do some nice intricate twanging jangly stuff.

Below is the result of me playing around for a bit, trying to emulate to some degree the wonderful picking of Steve Baughman. That’s the other great thing about the tuning – it really is easy to play something passable.

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For the last 6 months or so I’ve been one half (rhythm guitar) of an Irish acoustic duo, now proud to go by the moniker The Hacketts (named after the malevolent Father Ted character, Father Jack Hackett. In fact, we could try and play Tedfest this year). 6 months ago I had barely listened to any Irish music, and that which I had heard I hadn’t listened to critically in order to understand what makes the music tick. My impression of Irish music was that it was a load of twiddle-de-dee tweeness.

How wrong I was.

It has a great range of moods and styles, from sombre reflective refrains to fired-up dances. When I first started playing the music I think my guitar playing was somewhat inadequate to the task; I mostly played ordinary open chords in standard tuning, and have since found out that open D tuning and Irish tuning (DADEAE) are far more common.

I’ve not yet made the jump to new tunings, but have discovered (for want of a better word) new chords which add a new dimension to playing irish rhythm guitar in standard tuning. Every time I discover a new chord I go to town on it, using it wherever I can, but after a while it calms down, and only remains seated in the places where it really works well.

For the benefit of others, here are those chords:

• Very open D : 5-0-0-7-7-x (sometimes with open top e, or fretted on the 5th)
  Great for really opening up the sound when playing a rousing dance (can also be adapted for Dm)
• High open A: 0-0-11-9-10-9
  Works really well with the chord above
• Em/G: 3-x-5-4-5-3
  Mostly I use it to have a more interesting bass line running through when moving through a  chord progression
• Open 3 string E5: 0-7-9-9-0-0
  Moodiest chord in the west
• Various open G’s: 3-5-0-0-0-x, 3-2-0-0-0-0, 7-5-0-0-0-x, 3-5-5-4-0-x
  So many Irish songs are in G or D that it pays to have a bit of variety to throw in
• Open bass A : 5-0-7-6-5-x
  Again, a great chord to go with the Very open D
• Open bass Am: 5-0-7-5-5-x
  Again, a very moody sounding chord
• Sus2 bar chords: eg 5-5-7-7-5-5
  I hate playing A -shape major bar chords, so this helps me avoid them, as well as adding a nice jangly sound which almost always sounds good
• C9: x-3-2-0-3-0
  I can’t claim credit for this one as Mike uses it all the time, but once you start using it a normal open C chord (unless playing in the key of C) will sound flat and uninteresting in comparison