MORNING
Here’s a totally irrelevant photo, well, except for the Togla-types who actually like this sort of thing. Sorry for any delays, the Internet is down again. I like the way the office makes out like the “free” service is such a big offering. Somehow, they have never developed the brain cells to keep the thing in operation. They’ve been through six or so different models of wireless. Unlike myself, the guy up the lane brags he is a power user and thus gets blamed as a hacker every time something messes up. Even the times I’m pretty sure it was me. But hey!
Find me a coffeehouse so we can test case this live, would you? There are a very few other duos around, always two guitars, and people are expecting that kind of duo. We’ll get them listening. I want to gauge the reaction to our material because calling us a two-piece would be an understatement. We can’t possibly be unique in the whole country, but we are in this town. Admittedly, I am banking on some non-musical points not field tested as of yet.
For example, all of our music is chosen to be foxtrots. Most people do not know how often they have danced to this beat—it is a beat, not a song. It is used in rock, blues, jazz, reggae, you name it. All I’ve done is focus and standardize. This music is also fun to play, something difficult to capture but the audience sure can tell. Trent and I have [actually] already played our first gig. It was a non-starter, but shows we have the cajones to get out there. The last band I was in balked at playing that same club and that cost us the steady Moose gig. I never told them that, but it did.
I’m thinking of where we could get some stage time. Let me call Jerry, the trumpet player. The old folk’s homes pay well and would instantly know our song list. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We rehearse only once per week, which takes time. From the word go, we’ve incorporated plenty of audience appeal elements. The single most effective technique is to play as a team—a lot of groups fail at this. We have the automatic advantage that the way we arrange things, our music necessary must have total teamwork to sound right. We don’t have the option of “soloing in unison”, Hippie dude.
There are two other details covered in the past week, medleys and fills. I’m finding the way we arrange our music for duo work isn’t that adaptable to playing medleys. It’s simple, each song takes almost as much effort to learn for medley work as to just play the song, and we need material. Medleys will have to wait. The fills Trent plays on bass are also unique to each song, so we can’t drift from one tune to another like two guitarists get away with.
Further, those bass lines are not usually in the original, since he’s playing my style of “rhythm bass”. So where others can get away with playing compatible riffs, we are forced to make the parts complementary. It’s a different technique entirely, but it definitely imparts that added “charm” to the music. In summation, for now no medleys and we stick with the plan of a unique sound for each song. I think we’ve done okay on that last count so far.
NOON
Who remembers the “mod” sixties? I barely do, so here's another Brit girl in Mini photo. Yes, the hippie types really did paint their cars and vans these outlandish patterns. What gets me is the lady wearing an orange outfit in a pink car. That’s the kind of thing that could happen in the days before quality control. These cars were strictly British and could only be pushed over 60 mph in supercharged racing versions, which doubled the price. They were quite a marvel, mechanically. No crankshaft, but a repair nightmare. The transmission was part of the motor.
Half my crowd is down with the flu, so I’m keeping out of the loop in case I haven’t had this strain yet. I have no intention of being a statistic quite yet. Influenza kills the old and young they say, so stay away from being either as long as you can. And listen to your parents when they say wait until you are out on your own and then you can do anything you want. Listen, so you will know what bald-faced lying sounds like.
Did I do anything blogworthy this afternoon? Nope. I tried to read an article on quantum physics and quickly got lost. Like derivatives, it is a topic I can pass the exams, but no way can I find an article on how to solve the equations. Unlike 2 + 2, calculus formulas just kind of sit there. That’s correct, in my life I have never found a textbook that explains how to use the formulas, they just go on endlessly about how they work. Similar to taking music lessons from a guitarist, if you must know.
And that’s not just bloviating. Everything I know about playing in a band was not taught to me. Nor did I have any examples [to follow]. There were no bands in my home town, not that if there were any they would have helped any. And even when I finally lived in the city and got exposed to musicians, most of them would lead you astray about playing in a band. Hence, to this day, a lot of what I do in that department is dictated by experience, not by listening to how other people did it. In fact, it seems to me they didn’t do it, they just existed by the millions and a few got lucky.
AFTERNOON
December 17th, by the way, is the date I have taught generations of students to list as their birthday on all non-official forms. Like the “required fields” some free sites insist you fill out. “*Required field” was one of the most successful scams in computer history. I never fell for it, I wonder if my critics could say the same. I’d like to see a graph of birthdays just to see the spike on this date. Did I ever tell you how shocked I was to find certain “standardized data” that I used to teach in the early 90s now appearing in the private listings of BrandSmart and AT&T by 1998? Privacy policy, my eye.
Read my lips: all information will be used against you. It is only a matter of time. You cannot prevent all records, but you can take an active roll in minimizing the number and what is on them. For example, all records about me contain exactly and precisely the same errors. I was on to the system early.
Where is my clutch cable? Tomorrow I go find my mechanic. I’d like to take the batbike to the Xmas dinner next Wednesday. Speaking of cables, you know who need to be neutered? That inventor of those plastic guitar cable end pieces, the ones that are supposed to slide over your photo plug connections and protect them. He needs to be de-nutted as soon as possible. For his own good.
And remind me to check on Billy-Bill. He’s the guy that taught me you can’t make a country guitarist out of a rocker. He’ll just never quite identify with the music deeply enough to identify with it. Moments later, I can report he sounds 1000% better, not a typo, on the phone. He got a new liver on December 7th. It was like talking to a different man, the guy has a new lease on life. He gets the sutures and staples out in early January, so make a note to go cheer him on his first gig back in the real world. Music, guys, that’s the real world. He plays the Moose, so I’ll know his audience.
I’m serious. He really sounded like a different person. No comparison.
We found out why the office router keeps shutting down. Similar to an internal DoS attack, all the Frenchies connect their Magic Jacks and it overloads the system. I was tempted to tell them to set the router on auto reset, but decided it was not a good idea to have them aware I knew that. Oh, and the neighbor guy with the hover drones got tired of paying fines and switched to remote cars. He had a model boat that went directly into a pylon on the Dania pier, cost of that fun was $2,200.
EVENING
Here’s a treat for those who have followed my robot hobby. Like fixing cars, this is a rich man’s pursuit so I don’t build a lot of robots, I just follow the technology. I’m saying I could build a useful robot for $20k, but I need that kind of money for other priorities. So here is the million-dollar idea if anyone wants to pick up on it. Again, I’m not claiming originality, only that I am not consciously copying any other source. A quiet day here doesn’t mean we stop thinking.
Thus, the feeler keeps the on-board cameras 8 feet from the sea floor while a series of accelerometers compensate for the sloshing of the waves overhead. I reject the idea of keeping the motors and batteries on the surface because the bobbing motion could not be counteracted as rapidly as needed. The cameras record the sea bottom in stereo and either record or send back real time images via the umbilical cord, possibly a wireless device.
The “sled” itself can’t match a remotely piloted vehicle, but I would equip it with a propeller steering mechanism and a forward looking camera. It would troll a preset grid of ocean floor, maybe guided by GPS. I estimate this vehicle could be built for $5,000. I have no idea how practical it is, but it would easily work on the smooth waters of an inland lake. I have not checked to see if such a vehicle already exists but if it does, just you watch, they won’t quote you a price until they find out what you intend to go looking for.
Such sales-dorks never get an answer, but that never stops them from trying.
ADDENDUM
Later, my look at the underwater sled got me reading late about contact switches. The feeler would test the depth, but mechanic switches are notorious for bad behavior in such situations. I know a lot more about them than before, which is the purpose of my studies. I’m not about to embark on a new career, my motive is to learn about these things. I wonder if I could design a contact that measures depth without needing an electrical connection, or at least not a direct connection.
I knew one guy who drank 16 cups a day, he turned into one of those psychos that was into tinfoil. But thanks to modern medical cures, he is now a guidance instructor at an undisclosed Iowa public school.
And his ex-wife, approaching retirement age over in traffic services, runs a somewhat successful dried flower gift service from her condo on the west end. Oh, and that two-year stretch where her son by her first marriage "disappeared"? He joined the navy and was stationed in Antarctica, where we all bloody well know the mail service is atrocious.
Hey, Ken. You wanna know why playing bass is better than soccer, baseball, or golf? Because to play those, you only need one ball. Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha!
Today’s Togla Treat
As long as this is all he uses it for . . .
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