A Scary Moment

This is my most popular post of all time; having been read 6,140 times; ahead of the second place post (below) at 810. Why? I don't know


I had a scary moment this morning; due to some kind of computer glitch.

Blogger kept telling me that the password that I had entered and that I have been entering daily for the past eon, was "incorrect."

I thought all was lost. I started to contemplate a life without my blog readers in it. There would be no way for me to contact them to redirect them to a new blog...

Technical Gibberish

One unusual thing had preceded this: One of the other homeless people unplugged me; while she was trying to charge her phone. This actually logged me out of Ubuntu (because my battery was critically low) but did not completely shut the system down.

The problem may have been that, since I have more than one "user" on my system (even though they are all "me") Google may have been sent to the wrong cookie and read the password that I had a long time ago when I was a different user, before I changed the password as this here user.  

The long and short of it was I was FREAKING OUT for a while.

Back To Normal

Since things seem to be back to normal, below is this mornings rendition of Sea Breeze, along with some warm-up stuff.

I am trying to get to the point to where I can take the guitar out of its case, first thing in the morning and play Sea Breeze flawlessly.

Back when I was a kid, studying the same types of songs from method books, I was in such a hurry to get to the next song and the next book and complete the series, thinking that it would make me an advanced player.

I tended to get a song to where I could "play" it, but not perfectly. In my impatience I would tell myself "That's good enough; next song!" even though, in my heart of hearts there was this little voice telling me "there's that little part that you usually screw up, you're not playing along with a metronome and if you were, you would realize that you are dropping behind here and there and every note is not sounding exactly even in volume and some are slightly cut off and some of the changes from one chord to the next aren't 'seamless'...would you really go into a studio and record it that way and release it on an album???"

Then I would tell myself "But if I stay on the first song in the method book, 'Sea Breeze' until it's perfect; I might spend the next year just playing 'Sea Breeze' over and over and not advancing through the coarse -a perpetual beginner."

To which even the instructors would say, "Yes, you need to take on new material and then go back to the old stuff; for it is in reviewing it and applying new techniques learned in subsequent lessons that you will master it.

So, I am going back in virtual time and becoming that 14 year old again, and I will play Sea Breeze each morning as a warm up. I will not cheat and do it 10 times in a row and then post the most error free rendition; it will always be me just strapping the instrument on; tuning up and then hitting it ...one, two, three, four -PLAY!

This will make me a better musician. I WILL practice the song at other times, paying attention to the troublesome measures and, of course, picking up speed until the little "children" song almost sounds concert-worthy.
This, I know will come about because I have taken my best Sea Breezes and used the "change tempo" feature in Audacity to double its speed; and it sounds like something played by Segovia.

So, without further ado...Here Is This Mornings Warmup which starts with Sea Breeze and then has a little bit of improving about the cop that ran me away from the electrical outlet the evening before, and then a bit of The Bum Song, which is one of my originals and I would have finished it; but some bums were within earshot and have been known to take offense to some of the lyrics.

A Time To Busk

For everything there is a time and a season, and I am down to under 1 dollar in my pocket, and so I will be busking somewhere soon on this Thursday; a day which can be productive if there is something going on such as a concert at the Saenger Theater, or a movie at the Crescent Theater.

One of my readers, Lauren has hinted that she will be in town on Saturday and wants to hear The Carcass Song, and she drives a Lexus, if you catch my drift...