Here is a photo of a perfect-shaped tree. It has no connection to anything that happened today, but since it provides free shade I’m surprised Florida hasn’t cut it down. Usually hesitant to teach for free, I was over to Dave-O’s place today to show him the correct way to operate his CD player. Aha, just as we figured, he’s got tons of brand new gear that he hasn’t learned out how to use yet. Guitar Center did an incredible job of dressing his Strat. It doesn’t match the quality of the old models, but it is a Fender through and through.
Usually hesitant to teach for free, I was over to Dave-O’s place today to show him the correct way to operate his CD player. Aha, just as we figured, he’s got tons of brand new gear that he hasn’t learned out how to use yet. Guitar Center did an incredible job of dressing his Strat. It doesn’t match the quality of the old models, but it is a Fender through and through.I also set up his system so he could practice at the computer, in other words teaching him how to learn rather than how to play. The emerging pattern is that it takes him a day longer than expected to get anything done. On the plus side, he has done everything he said and gives every impression of working hard at this project. Four years ago, Dave-O got his upper right arm crushed on the job by a crackhead crane operator. This is important to me only in that people on some kind of pogie make good band members—because they don’t have to worry about rent and food. Harsh reality.
He is now embracing my concept of duo arrangements, see, told ya. As he gets further into it, he realizes he’s on to something other guitarists probably would tell you cannot work. He’s played more new tunes in the past week than in his life, and is far better at spotting those that are most adaptable. Not all music can be properly arranged so we have quite a mixture. I'm fully aware Dave-O has not yet tackled anything difficult. And there are already warning signs. I’m taking another look at “Interstate Love Song” all because of that single bass riff, you know the one I mean. (I learned to play it, but then sat it aside.)
In other good news, cycling has finally brought my blood pressure down to normal ranges (80/120). If you are not exercising regularly, you had better start. It took me six years to reach this goal. Cycling normally also uses over 300 calories per hour and twice that if you really push it. Oddly, this has not translated into any weight loss as I approach the 7,500 mile mark on my Jamus 7-speed.
What I’d like now is some simple way to measure cholesterol. If anybody knows of such a device, contact me here. Like most omnivores, my cholesterol has been climbing steadily since my twenties, when my count was down at 160. These days 200 is considered normal but, pun intended, I’ll take that with a grain of salt. Anything over 240 is symptomatic of heart disease although logic tells me the correlation is really the opposite direction.
Today’s research was the i-Tab. Note the spelling with the hyphen. This is the mini tablet computer that attaches to your instrument neck and scrolls the lyrics. No more forgotten second verses. Turns out to be an English company, and the unit at $200 costs double the original projection. I could not find out the data I wanted and the few demo youTubes showed the guitarist, not the i-Tab. Figures.
It will display chords, lyrics, both, and guitar fingering tabs for the totally inept. The unit comes with a suite of built-in tunes, mostly useless guitar trash, and further data is downloaded for a fee. No information on whether it is hackable or the file format. There is an on-line instruction manual I’ll download if possible, as the library computers (wisely) have deactivated Adobe Flash Player. Meanwhile, the price and many unknowns of the i-Tab make it uneconomical for now.
There is often up to an hour’s wait for a library computer, which means trivia time. In a complicated passage I could not fathom, it turns out that the extra day in a leap year is inserted between February 23rd and February 24th. The astronomical day starts at noon, not midnight (so that events which occur at night are not split over two dates) and other technical reasons are the cause. The leap day is tacked on month’s-end as a convenience to calendar makers.
In case I didn’t say, my beautiful and expensive PA cables that should have lasted ten years are both broken. The plug ends came apart after just three easy years on the job. Quality is an outdated and ancient term in the music business.
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