In the Key of K

The new album, Out of Time Out of Tune, will be streaming everywhere on April 17th, 2026. However, you can buy an advance copy right now here. Also, you can buy or stream it on Bandcamp.

This was the only instrumental on my second cassette tape from 1998, Out of time Out of Tune (re-released in 2026). It was also my first bit of recorded fingerpicking and the only acoustic song on the first two records. As you will see on Volume 3, now titled, Open the Door, I later had four other acoustic songs that didn’t make in onto this release. Instrumentals titled Desert Sunshine and Dashes; and, with vocals, P1P8P16 and one with words called Lonely Fool (you can hear the original tracks for Dashes and Desert Sunshine here). I think I toyed with the idea that my third solo album would be all acoustic but that didn’t pan out.

I originally tried to make a joke out of this piece by calling it “Nose Picking” on the original cassette insert but I changed it here because the joke wasn’t really funny then and is even less funny today. It shall now forever be known as “Fingerpicking.”

This is the only piece from the first two albums that I relearned and re-recorded from scratch. The original was performed okay but I was unhappy with the form (how all the parts fit together). Once I corrected the form, I made two different copies–one on the original Ovation acoustic steel string guitar and one on my favorite Ibanez nylon string guitar. The nylon version sounds way better so that is what I kept for this release. This piece makes more sense now and is less of a hodgepodge of ideas jumbled together and is more of a cohesive composition. It is all still 100% the exact same music.

I would also like to extend a warning to other musicians. This might be a bit nerdy so feel free to skip this paragraph. When I exported this track to a wave file from my DAW it sounded fine but when I uploaded it to the cloud it introduced some weird clicking and clipping. It probably did this on all the tracks but you can’t hear it very clearly except on this quiet one-guitar acoustic piece. It took lots of swearing and endless hours of troubleshooting to learn what the problem was. I was seconds away from re-recording it again to see if that would help but finally found a source that said onedrive downloads it their own way and then uploads and this is known to create some anomalies and extra artifacts. The fix is to compress your tracks into a zip file and then upload them to the cloud. Other people probably view this as common knowledge but it was news to me. Anyway, doing this means the cloud service doesn’t change the files (I envision it like transporting on Star Trek but things go awry). 🙂I hope this helps someone else. The album release was delayed, literally, for an extra month while I agonized over the 39 offensive clicks, pops, cracks, and clips on this track. I compressed/zipped all the tracks for Out of Time Out of Tune and will for all future tracks moving forward. Don’t fuck with me onedrive!

//

How do you play it?

It’s mostly about arpeggiating chords so I will give you the chord shapes and you can get the rest.

There are five sections and the form goes like this: A B C D C A B E C. This is a little different from the original version but makes more sense to me now.

The A section is counted as three measures of 5/8 and then one measure of 6/8: |12345|12345|12345|123456|. It is all in this D minor chord:
-1–
-3–
-2–
-0–
-0–
-X–

Then the B section is an arpeggio of this diminished shape in 4/4:
-0–
-2–
-3–
-2–
-1–
-X–

The C section is more complex. It’s in 6/8 and begins with this Amj7th shape. Play it with a four fret stretch, play the arpeggio, and now go to a bar of the 3rd fret, it’s a Gmin7th chord, if you want to spell it that way. Then do a hammer pull with the second finger followed by a descending line cliche arpeggio on 4th, 5th, and 6th strings with the fourth string having the chromatic moving notes. A line cliche is just making a chromatic walk down or up while maintaining the rest of the chord. That will get you 90% of the way there. When I’m not feeling too lazy I may tab it out to give you the last 10%.

-4– -3–
-5– -3–
-6– -3–
-7– -3–
-X– -x–
-X– -x–
Amj7th Gm7th

Section D uses a bunch of double stops (two notes at once). The first two strings should be played with your third and fourth fingers (left hand).
-7—–7—–9—–9—-7————-
-7—–7—–9—–9—-7——-5–7–
————————————5–7–
————————————–
————————————-
—-0—–0——0—-0—-0——–

Repeat that and then there are these two chord figures:
-8—5–
-8—5–
-0—0–
——–
——–
-8—5–

Then play the first part again.

The E section is the only part with any real melody. I will tab it out in parts.

D1:
————————5——-
-3-3-3–5-5–7–7—–7–5-
—————————-
-0————————-
—————————
—————————
D2:
———————-
-3-3-3–5-5-5-5-3-0–
———————-
-0——————-
———————
———————
Then play D1 again
Lastly, play D3:
————————————
-3-3-3-5-5–6-6–6-5-3-6-5-3—–
——————————-———5-
-0———————————
———————————–
————————————
The 6, 5, 3 figure should be quick triplets pull-offs.

I was basically untrained as a musician at this time. I studied drums and percussion in middle and high school but we didn’t learn anything about chords, harmony, or melody, And I didn’t play guitar AT ALL during that time. I was playing guitar for about two years when I originally wrote and recorded this. A year before recording this, I bought the Frederick Noad Classical Guitar Anthology book and a book of big band hits from the 50s and started teaching my self how to read guitar sheet music, piano chords, fake sheets, and jazz noodling. There is definitely some influence of those beginner guitar pieces by Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841) here. Later in life I studied classical guitar at university for a BA in performance and then earned an MA in music composition. This is definitely one of my favs from this era. I love it!