One year ago today: February 1, 2017, now that’s an ad.
Five years ago today: February 1, 2013, Dnerp or Ural?
Nine years ago today: February 1, 2009, the economy in Bangladesh.
Random years ago today: February 1, 2005, Florence O. Thompson.
Chalk the day up to chasing around, so today’s post shows the blog’s heritage as a journal. By now you know I do my general downtown activities in Winter Haven. That is, I don’t buy gas, bank, get my haircuts, or go for coffee in the same town where I live. It’s up to you to speculate why that is, bearing in mind there must be a darn good reason for that. This is breakfast at the BK on Highway 17. Double side salad and a coffee. That’s prime fare for day 63 of my diet. Another too-chilly day for walking around but I got some shopping done.
I also bought a USB hub for the tablet, with four outlets. The tiny 32GB SD card is the maximum memory and that is almost full already. Remind me to get in there and purge it. Chances are I’ll opt for one of those 128Gig flash cards if they are compatible. True, the tablet is just for light duty. I still haven’t found an after market word processor, since the built in version only works on docx files. That hub was $11, which didn’t tickle.
And stay away from Virgin Mobile for your cellular provider. It works for me because there is no contract and it’s pay as you go. No sense letting a phone company know the name on your bank account, as yes, I do know what I’m talking about there. I worked at the place for 15 years, in a department of myself and 393 women. It was okay, except for the nosebleeds. Like clockwork, every 28 days.
Half price: $1,142.00.
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Before I get to music matters, here is the cassette player in the Taurus (Unit 31). As I told, the instrument panel has all the controls for a CD, but the player was never factory installed behind the spare tire well. This cassette deck though, it is a beauty. Crystal clear and unless I get it right every time, it seems to know if the tape is in upside down. The neatest feature is when you turn it off, and that includes turning off the ignition while it is playing, is a short rewind, around five seconds. So the next time you start up, it replays a short clip that reminds you where you were. Here, I’m inserting an audio book, “Snow Crash”, a futuristic tale of a teenager who uses a plank (skateboard) to steal a drug being distributed by a preacher.
I was driving around for nearly two hours, work I could have got done in half the time with the motorcycle. This gave me time to think and the topic was music. Something isn’t going right. It has to be figured out and soon, since we should be much further along by now. I mulled over the last few rehearsals in some detail and I see a pattern, but it’s fuzzy. Take the song “Jambalaya”. This music takes zero learning, you just play it. Two chords, boom-chicka. Yet a month later, she is still struggling with it. Every time we rehearse it, she asks what key it is in and starts scrambling through her notes.
She appears to learn the music, but the next practice, she seems to have totally forgotten it all over again. Where have we seen this before? And it can’t stay because it is detrimental to the cause. It reduces the practice time to guitar lessons. I’ve taken the rehearsals back to a week apart. This is not a solution because by extrapolation, it will take 32 months for her to learn the set. She was comping again, a sign of lack of homework. It is not possible to play in a band with me without being aware of what the other guy is doing and I also caught her trying to follow my left hand. That is a no-no, mainly because I am not playing dumb-dumb bass and most guitar players can only follow root notes.
There is a problem and it is likely something fairly simple. Is she trying to practice in the living room, with the dogs, bird, and TV going full blast? I think I’ll ask her to demonstrate how she is doing the work. Remember, I’ve already had the conversation with her that she must practice to a full loud stereo system where she can distinctly hear every bass note. The paradox here is that she has learned one song to perfection, but it is a two-chord special that she used to play in her other band.
Something has to be done, because it is not worth my while to be making that trip the way things are. We have played the same 15 songs over and over for the last four sessions, in other words, boneheading the songs. That will not do. I’ll call the meeting and go over the process, since by now a complete beginner would have more of this down pat. The funny part is she knows all the endings of the songs.
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