Monday, March 12, 2018

Songs In The Key Of D

Monday evening, kind of chilly, I would say, maybe 50 degrees.
4 or 5 minutes in front of
the bathroom mirror each afternoon...

This is not bad for busking, as there are always people walking around in the 50 degree air saying things like: "We're from Winnepeg; this is warm for us.."

The new Suzuki harmonica in the key of D sounds great; and makes me think that my old harmonica is perhaps 4% out of tune.

It's always hard to upgrade equipment when the improvement will be lost upon 85% of the audience.

Putting on a fresh set of $2.49 strings every night falls into this category.

Johnny B. used to put on fresh strings every night and, I would be willing to bet this is because they look shiny and new.

(right: until I restore my little cache of pictures of other buskers, I guess I'll revert to this photo, so: Here's Johnny!)

After listening to me busk, his only advice to me concerning my whole act was focused upon a little ding in my guitar where the previous owner (who gave me the thing) must have dropped it.

"You could put some liquid wood on that, file it down and paint it the color of the wood and it would look like new," said Johnny B., who spent 45 minutes each afternoon in front of the bathroom mirror, before going out to play, when he stayed with me.

"Yeah, but, what about my music?"

When that person comes along and say's: "I've got 10 bucks for you if you'll play 'Heart of Gold,' by Neil Young," the $2.49 for a fresh set of strings will instantly seem trite, which might have even increased that amount, due to sounding "so good."

Going out with old strings is like making a move in a game of chess, knowing that it isn't the best move that you could have come up with, but hoping your opponent isn't going to see the inferiority of it (and then "surprise" you with a check "out of nowhere" and wind up beating you).

You never want to go out thinking that the audience isn't going to know that your strings have been on the guitar for a whole week.

I could stay in tonight and...

Download "I Want A New Drug," by Huey Lewis And The News, start to work on "I Want A New God," my idea of a spoof on it...
"I want a new God, one that won't make me pray...One that won't make me yell that' He's great; before I blow innocents away..." type of lyrics.

Record any song at all just to demonstrate how much of an improvement my latest recording techniques are.

The Alex In California Effect

I have gotten to the point in reading "The Power of Now," by Eckhart Tolle, that I am confronting feelings that have been conditioned into me at the subconscious level.
And I have discovered that I have kind of an imaginary Alex in California (a blog reader who is critical of my writing and the music I've recorded so far) looking over my shoulder as I write this blog and especially when recording music.
 
There is a zen principle at work, and it goes something like: As soon as you become unconcerned about whether or not Alex in California will like it; then he will like it.

It is true that the hundreds of tourists a year who might tell me I sound good don't make much of an impression on me; what do they know about music?
But it is the few people who are critical of me that I have to guard against the tendency of trying "to show them," when working on stuff.

It works the opposite way with drawing where I almost want to post up some of my disasters as a way of saying: "See, I'm not really that good at it..."

I have what Tony Robbins called an "internal frame of reference."

This means that, if I'm not happy with the way a song came out, then no number of people saying: "You sound good" will change my feelings.

He used the example of going to the theater to see a certain movie that you are interested in and not caring that there is a huge line waiting to see something else and that you and one other guy (also with an internal frame of reference) are going to be the only one's in that particular theater. ...nobody to have to climb over to get at the Milk Duds...

A salesman will learn how to read this in people and might pitch his product as: "Everybody's buying these," to one guy and: "You can custom order the paint color so that you'll be the only person in the world with this exact car," to another.



Fresh Start

My first idea was to start the rebuilding of my music collection from "the beginning," by downloading Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits.

Then I could focus my studies and practicing upon those "roots of rock and roll" guitar parts, and then follow them as they branch out into the music of other artists.

Between him and Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Fats Domino, Howlin' Wolf, and Lightning Hopkins and their ilk, I would have a good head start on half of the Rolling Stones repertoire.

I could go back to Gregorian Chant as my starting point; and then follow that as it branched out into the music of other artists, like Georg Philipp Telemann, and then on up to Chuck Berry...


2 comments:

  1. I saw your comment about 6,000 words and so on.

    I assume nobody reads my crappy blog, and figure that the typing out of so many words almost daily will either (a) enable me to get some kind of cool writing job like Jack London had, where he only had to regurgitate the things he went through on the Klondike, or (b) keep my typing skills solid in this age of SMS.

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  2. Aren't there sprays, like Finger-Ease or Fast Fret, that not only make it easier on your fingers and keep the fretboard in good shape, but help keep the strings shiny? You could probably use just about anything, even coconut oil, and especially wiping everything down well right after playing.

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