READIN

Tuesday, October 14th, 2003

🦋 Open tunings

I've been interested for a long time in learning to play blues using alternate tunings. I may finally have found my avenue into this; namely dropped-D tuning. It is standard tuning, but with the lowest string tuned a full step down. I liked the key of D a lot already and this makes it a lot more fun. Specifically, I'm using it for "Down on the Corner" by Creedence; "Stagger Lee" by John Hurt; and "C. C. Rider" by John Hurt. A nice side effect of using this tuning is that it's encouraging me to play up the neck rather than staying in first position all the time. You can play really nice stuff on the G chord by fingering G bass on the 5th fret with your thumb and fingering the treble strings on the 3rd through 5th frets. (And don't play the A string.)

Mike told me he was having a lot of fun with open-G tuning and I'm looking forward to experimenting with that some.

posted evening of October 14th, 2003: Respond
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Thursday, August 28th, 2003

🦋 Counting Song

This is Sylvia's first composition:

One little one goes in the room and turn, turn, turn
Two little ones go in the room and turn, turn, turn
Three little ones go in the room and turn, turn, turn
Four little ones go in the room and turn, turn, turn
Five little ones go in the room and turn, turn, turn

posted evening of August 28th, 2003: Respond
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🦋 I wanna make 'em stay up all night

Last night we made a bit of progress in our quest to get Sylvia listening to real music (as opposed to the weak, silly jingles on the "children's music" CD's people give us...)

Sylvia asked to listen to one of these; but I sought to redirect her attention to the "Janis's band music" mix discs that Doug recorded for us. She was pretty interested by the fact that each disc had a different color box, and asked to listen to "the green one" (disc 4). So we listened to a couple of Animals tunes before she lost interest in that and asked for "the blue one" (disc 5) -- which is alright by me, it is my favorite of them. And wow! I popped it in the stereo, skipped past "Moondance" and "Wild Thing" and started right in with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Sylvia went wild! She started dancing right away, with a big grin.

The mood lasted for nearly half an hour, about six songs or so. She started to fade on "The Wait", song #3, but Ellen brought her back by clapping to the rhythm, and then she heard the chorus -- "Take a load off, Annie" -- and started singing along. We all danced together in a circle for a couple of tunes, and then hit "Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor" which was the high point of the evening for jumping around and laughing. "Ugly and Slouchy", which came on next, was apparently a riding song; after a few bars Sylvia got on her rocking horse and stayed there through the song -- nice because it gave Mom and Dad an opportunity to retire to the armchair and rocking chair.

By then it was about time for bed and Sylvia's energy level began to fade, so we headed upstairs for the night. I'm looking forward to playing that disc some more, and maybe find some more rockabilly to listen to together. We had some luck with Buddy Holly a few months ago until Sylvia lost interest -- I think if we have several records to listen to she will not get bored as fast though.

posted morning of August 28th, 2003: Respond
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Wednesday, August 6th, 2003

🦋 Here I Go

This is a fun song, by Syd Barrett. It is also quite easy to play on guitar, as I discovered this evening. I cannot guarantee the chords here are accurate but they sound alright. (Woops -- some of those chords were way off -- these should work a little better.)

 C                       G
This is a story bout a girl that I knew
           C                      G
She didn't like my songs and that made me feel blue
           B♭              A           G
She said a big band is far better than you.

    C              Am
She don't rock and roll
G
She don't like it
    C            Am
She don't do the stroll
         G
Well she don't do it right
    C            C7
And everything's wrong
       F           F6
And my patience is gone
       C
When I woke one morning
      G
And remembered this song.
C Am
G
   Kinda catchy,
C Am
G
 I hope 
              C          C7
That she will talk to me now
    F      F6
And even allow me
   C                                 G
To hold her hand and forget that old man.
F                        C  C7
I strolled around to her pad
F                            C  G
Her light was off and that's bad
F                       C        G
Her sister said that my girl was gone
F                       G            
But come inside boy and play play play me a song.

I said yeah
Here I go
She's kinda cute don't you know
That after a while 
Of seeing her smile
I knew we could make it
A-make it in style.
  
So now I've got, all I need
She and I are in love, we've agreed
She likes this song, and my, others too
So now you see my world is...
Because of this tune.
  
What a boon this tune,
I tell you soon we'll be
Lying in bed
Happily wed
And I won't think of that girl
What she said.

The key thing in picking this song is that nearly every time there is a G chord followed by a C chord, you need to end the measure of G by hammering on from an open G string to an A. That will establish the mood of the song -- for everything else you can pick and strum pretty loosely. Keep a nice walking pace, a little faster in the middle of the song.

posted evening of August 6th, 2003: Respond

Monday, August 4th, 2003

Motivation is in short supply over here... I eventually got myself down to the basement this evening, looked at the wood and decided I did not want to chop any mortises. It was not such a bad thing though -- I realized I could mark all the joints at one go, which ended up taking about a half hour with all the futzing around I was doing. Tomorrow night I will start chopping.

...

Also I got some guitar practice in tonight; I worked out what I think will be a pretty convincing picking pattern for "While my Guitar Gently Weeps."

posted evening of August 4th, 2003: Respond
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Friday, June 13th, 2003

🦋 How did I Get Here?

Part II of a project to assess my current situation in life. Part I is here.

And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful wife!

David Byrne, "Once in a Lifetime"

I'm going to try to figure out how the past moments of my life have led up to this one. This may take a few tries.

Let's take college as a point of origin. Which college? Well let's take Columbia — though I was only there two years and have no degree, I still tend to think of myself as a Columbia student when my mind turns to thoughts of education. I think from my first day at Columbia, a clear chain of causalities can be woven which lead inexorably to the present moment. If not causalities, at least coincidence.

At Columbia, I was studying German Language and Literature. I did not have any clear plan for what I would do after graduating with such a degree except that it involved somehow being in the academe. — "I did not have any clear plan" is understatement in the sense that I was actually vehemently, elementally opposed to the notion of developing a plan. This willful lack of preparation haunts me — I cannot understand it. But its end result is quite straightforward; when I realized that my trust fund money (the upshot of an insurance settlement after I was severely injured in a traffic accident in 1982) was not going to pay for more than two years of Columbia, and that my parents were not going to come forward with the difference (that should be phrased "were not able to" — that is not how I understood the world at 18 though), I was faced with a choice between going deeply into debt to finance a degree which I had essentially no use for, and leaving. It was no choice.

While I was at Columbia I had met Ellen. We decided we would move in together, and that I would use the few thousand dollars left of auto accident money to pay for a culinary education, to prepare for my life's career of being a chef. Wait... what? This is an item that just strikes me as really weird in retrospect, it seems so arbitrary and abrupt. Hmm. I can't glide effortlessly into a comfortable life as a linguist and intellectual. [Looks around, scratching head] ...I've got it! Culinary school! I can pay for that out of pocket, and when I'm done I will be ready to earn my living, and best of all I will be interesting! — This is a drastic oversimplification, even a caricature — at the time I had a decent rationale explaining why I was doing what I was doing, almost believable, at least to me.

So I see my conceit of a clear chain of causalities (or even of coincidence) is unraveling right at the outset; the first two links are miles apart and seem to have no intention of joining up. I think I can come to understand this decision but I will need to go back to an earlier time to do so — and this seems like a critical task to me. I want to make it clear how closely the decision to go to culinary school is related to the refusal to make a plan at college. This is something that has held me back all my life, and I think is holding me back now. I will talk about this in my next post.

posted evening of June 13th, 2003: Respond
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