One year ago today: April 27, 2024, thought they were god.
Five years ago today: April 27, 2020, still testing Forex.
Nine years ago today: April 27, 2016, or plastic tent pegs.
Random years ago today: April 27, 2006, it was too educational.
Other than moving some lumber and chores, nothing has happened this weekend so far. Thus, my plan is to drive the KIA to get that refrigerator before the Prez leaves next week. No insurance and expired plates puts me around average for Florida. Check in later to see if I get a ticket or two. I can afford them, it’s a calculated risk. I’m watching the original 1972 movie “Evil Roy Slade”. He’s currently in a shootout at Betsy’s house. And Disney is about to yank “Snow White” making it one of their greatest flops with the most unlikable of actresses.
Later, this is the fridge sitting in my front yard. Explanation to follow. It has an icemaker that’s never been hooked up. I always wanted one of those. Today’s GP landed us on a rather large chicken farm in the Philippines. No info on if Ibas is a location or an abbreviation. The two nearest settlements are Dapdap and Camaysa. Evil Roy Slade has just robbed the Boston Bank and headed west to rejoin his old gang, who are reduced to gambling with peanuts.
Back to this morning. The guitar tune is one that will make most guitarists wish they had paid more attention. Why? Because it is actually two guitars and sometimes three, which plays right into my hands. I’ll explain because I love this explanation. I take total advantage of the fact the guitar guy’s wrists cannot be in two places at once, that is, behind the neck or under the neck. Years ago I pegged the passing notes as piano music. That means the bass runs often change key before the rest of the tune, a technique most guitarists are not even aware of.
My background in bass always was the piano runs, you’ve heard me refer to them as thirds. That the “mi” in “do-mi-so” for you vocalists. Guitar strings are a fourth apart. What happens is this key change means different notes are played depending on whether the run is descending or ascending. My experience is guitar players hate that. My theory is that to play the correct notes, the guitarist has to change wrist position to where he cannot easily play lead riffs. Yet, if he plays the wrong notes, the music sounds a little stilted—except to other guitar players.
Back to today, the subject song is Croce’s “Operator”. It has a lot of descending runs and a few spots where those are followed by a short ascending run. Aha, my specialty. Rather than figure out the notes, I went on-line until I found a site that properly tabbed them. I would add this is not easy, you have to find each web page and read the tab or sheet music to find one that has studied the theory. It was these short ascending runs, by the way, that became my topmost method of stealing thunder from a prima donna lead player.
Did I ever tell you about the time I stole the show by playing the bass line to Joplin’s “Bobbie McGee” when a lead player try to upstage the band by cutting into Clapton’s “Crossroads”, which the rest of the band had not rehearsed? He was not happy.
This won’t affect the new guy, as he can only strum. Many a regular guitarists are not so affectionate of the bass player playing all their parts. Having time, I went back through all the music tabs/sheets and amalgamated the best to where I am now playing a lead break through the whole tune. Mind you, subtle, discrete, but I think I could solo to this now very busy bass line.
Castaway finger post.
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Throwing caution and insurance coverage to the wind, I drove the KIA through downtown out to the Prez’s place. As always, nobody around to lend a hand. The two of us shoehorned the fridge into the van, but were caught by a surprise. Yes, the seats to fold up. Just not all the way, shown here. The fridge would fit if they did fold, which had been the plan. This meant the liftgate had to be tied with rope. I meant to take it easy as part of the fridge was against the glass rear window.
The fridge now sits in the front yard until I gather the strength to move it, or the floor gets repaired. I was along so it took a lot of leveraging to get it off the van deck and standing back upright. Hence, I deserve the evening off, and thank myself for making up two large glasses of iced coffee before I left. It soared up to 92°F by the time I got home, so hot that ordinary iced water just takes too long. Plus, I used that fancy $10 coffee with all the caffeine. Did you know if I do not mention food regularly, my blog readership drops 18%?
Another audio-book takes over during this trip, made comfortable by cranking on both front and rear A/C blowers in the KIA. I already forget the title, but it is a about sunken treasure. A failing dive expedition gets a visit from the British Antiquities Office who is funding the show. Already the female lead is entering sex into the equation, how she instantly falls in love with his sparkling eyes and surmises she must be turbo-charging his “natural male predatory instincts”. But, if you are going to listen to audio-books, you must get accustomed to this theme that tall, rugged, successful men spend their time lusting after thirty-something women with obvious emotional hang-ups who are “about to come out of a twenty-year sexual hibernation”.
Plainly, I want to know about the sunken treasure. We have a new juvenile female woodpecker. However, the facilities are saturated so she will have to move along. She is tiny maybe hours out of the nese. It was so muggy by 6:30PM that I saw the female cardinal sharing the birdbath.
The Bashi Channel. You never heard of it. This is the passage between Taiwan and the Philippines that connects the South China Sea to the Philippine Sea. It is an international waterway and China would very much like to be the dominant power, you know, “just in case”. They have been sailing their copycat aircraft carriers about the place. This week, the US launched a random bunch of drones, then promptly shot them all down almost at the same instant. Kind of to let the Chinese know who’s boss.
This was a phenomenal display, as the US used precision anti-ship missiles that followed varying trajectories all timed to hit the drones at once. Claimed as a routine training exercise, it is hard to disguise that around 15,000 soldiers were involved. The Chinese rapidly decided not to stick around.
It must have been a slow news day, nothing appears on my filters. I tried Gab, usually good for hilarious memes. Just lots of handcuffed judges and an immigrant who plowed his car into a festival in Vancouver, BC. Killed 16, just you watch, Ottawa will say it was not a hate crime. Gene Hackman’s death as hear failure. Due to Alzheimers, he was probably unaware his wife had died a week earlier from a rare hantavirus.
Even later, I spend another hour on that Jim Croce song, “Operator”, and I hit some real snags. I can “hear” the notes by reading the dots but two of the riffs don’t fit even with my piano style. This leads me to thinking the guitar that plays those in the recording is tuned funny. Since that is not wise on the bass, I can only duplicate the notes way up the neck where the frets are close enough together. I’ve done this before with older “English” music and it’s going to take more work than intended. It means playing the same notes in two different positions and patterns. I usually just memorize such passages. Serious lots of work, I may even fake it by dropping the thirds until then.
ADDENDUM
There was no rehearsal today since the new guy had overtime. The good news is he is far more computer literate than any guitarist I’ve ever met. He sents clips of guitar strums and questions, along with up to date progress notes. He is practically inhaling the concept of matching the strum to each song, he has no tendency to resist this kind of change to the original. It works for me because it contributes to the voicings and allows me to play more and longer runs, one of my specialties. There’s nothing quite like a four octave bass walkdown over three or four chord changes to spark a little audience attention.
Since he is a vocalist first and a strummer second, expect more of his song list to become standards. He also inadvertently has a lot of adaptable tunes, such as the Jim Croce numbers. Another advantage is he’s been on stage enough to pick up queues from the music and to sense where the stops happen. I would estimate in the three short practice sessions, this has put us about half-way to stage work.
He is still insecure about his guitar work, but that is being dealt with in several ways. Foremost, he can call the date an location of when he’s ready, and he’s a Legion member. He knows too many people to keep this a secret. So I know he will be asked and he has learned quickly that he does not have to strum everything exactly right when I’m on the bass. I have hopes for this duo.
