One summer many years ago (I was just getting into folk music and learning to play the guitar at the time), I worked for a picture framer. Many well-known artists took their paintings to this guy to frame for gallery showings and that sort of thing because his frames were always tasteful, appropriate, and unobtrusive.

He told me that the way to do a good frame for a particular painting was to study the painting, then pick a shape for the molding that repeated a shape within the painting, then assess the colors and paint the frame a neutral color that was blend of the colors in the painting. "Pick up themes from the painting itself," was the way he put it.

He went on to say, "A good frame should set the painting off in space, but it must never draw attention to itself. If people look at a painting and say, 'What a great frame!' then it's not a great frame at all. It has failed in it's purpose."

I thought about that a lot, and decided that it's also a good philosophy for working out guitar accompaniments for songs.

Don Firth