Guitar Cover I Love: Smoke on the Water

Juliana Vieira is a sexy lady, dishing out the smoking hot rock classic that I have loved for decades.  Smoke on the Water tells the story of the horrendous go for Deep Purple, as they traveled to Montreux, Switzerland to record an album in 1971. 

Guitar Cover I Love: My Favorite Things

I was born in Sweden Jan 12, 1997. My dad - a guitarist with Argentinian roots - plays  guitar all day long and I love to listen to his music. When I turned 12 I picked up my dad's Yamaha and tried to play by myself. Indeed, playing guitar by myself is so much more fun and I continued to teach myself ...

One day in Aug 2009 I found a video showing Sungha playing the guitar and I felt in love with this kind of guitar music: fingerstyle guitar! This guitarstyle indeed guided my life into another direction! My parents supported my talent and bought me my own instrument. Another Yamaha in shiny black color - like my fathers one – and with a cutaway too ...

Well, what do you know, a synchronicity!  I discovered Gabriella Quevedo a few weeks ago, and added her cover of a classic from The Sound of Music to my playlist Pop Instrumentals, New Stuff.  Then, as I planned my articles for the week, I discovered Sungha Jung literally moments ago, whose cover of Kiss the Rain I wrote about in the preceding article.  Interesting that Gabriella was influenced by his style.  I also wrote about this classic in Beginning with my Favorite Things.

Guitar Cover I Love: Kiss the Rain

Hi, I'm Sungha Jung from South Korea.
My dream is to become a professional acoustic fingerstyle guitarist.

I had been watching my dad play the guitar for awhile before I finally jumped on it myself three years ago.

Currently, I am taking drum lessons and teaching myself fingerstyle guitar.
I used to not have tabs for the music that I played in my videos.
I just listen and pick them up directly from the sound source in videos available on the internet.
However, recently, I have started playing with original tabs whenever they are available to me by courtesy of the authors.
My old guitar is custom made by Selma to fit my body size, and on it, Thomas Leeb wrote "Keep on grooving to my friend."

19-year old Sungha Jung deftly and tenderly covers a song I deeply love, by his fellow South Korean Yiruma, who performed Kiss the Rain live, amid a stunning rock backdrop.  It is the one piece so far, for which I have written two poems, one of which is my collection The Song Poems.

The Borneo Challenge-Malaysia: The Family

The funds we raised were earmarked for Borneo Child Aid Society 

One evening at Sabah Tea Plantation, the children performed for us 

The children played music with makeshift instruments

Some children waited their turn to perform 

The Filipino family whom I befriended were teachers and staff at Borneo Child Aid Society 

One lovely girl from that teaching family, with her grandmother 

Torben Venning, director at Borneo Child Aid Society

It was the Francisco family whom I befriended during the evening's performance by Borneo Child Aid Society.  They had to traveled a few hundred kilometers to Sabah Tea Plantation.  I let them know I was Filipino, and curiously they said that because I had lived so long in the US, I now looked American.  Does living in a city mold and shape the way you look?  Apparently so.  Maybe they said that because my complexion is fairly light for a Filipino.

The Borneo Challenge-Malaysia: The Girls

As with the boys, there was one among the girls who didn't look happy.  See the middle girl in the trio at the top.  But I managed to coax a smile from her.  

Still as I think about it now, these children didn't arrive at Don Bosco in the best of circumstances.  Some were orphans, and others had parents who simply couldn't take care of them.  So I wonder what dread or horror they had already faced, which, just maybe, I captured on my little Samsung mobile camera.       

The Borneo Challenge-Malaysia: The Boys

We finished painting the interior rooms and hallways of the Don Bosco Children's Home, and were just hanging around when the children came back from school.  I walked over to a scattering of boys, just outside their home, and simply and earnestly worked at making them comfortable.  Mostly non-verbally I asked if I could photograph them.  I was thankful they agreed.

Such sweet expressions on their faces.  I mostly knelt or squatted down, so I could photograph their faces at eye level.

This last boy, though, didn't look happy in the least.  I saw him at the corner of my eye - I could feel his scowl, somehow, on my cheeks - and decided to leave him alone for the time being.  I spent a few minutes with the other boys first, then approached him.  I never knew what he was apparently upset about, but he, too, agreed for me to photograph him.