I called the representative at Peavey to order my $8 tension screw.
I was grinding my teeth in that I felt cheated.
My birthday present was unusable in the condition Guitar Center shipped it to me. A simple screw, ONE SCREW was missing. But when the strings are taken off, the tuner key simply falls out of the tuner assembly completely.
April, the woman who answered the phone at Peavey in the parts department took my information, checked with her technical guy and came back to me on the phone to tell me that they would send one complete tuner for the $8.
Not only did Guitar Center get the information wrong, they threw me under the bus.
Thank you April.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
There Is A Reason Guitar Center Is Failing.
On my birthday my brother gifted me with a Peavey Bass from Guitar Center.
A great little precision bass lookalike.
However one of the tuners was missing the tension screw. When I took the strings off to clean the bass the tuning key fell out.
I emailed Guitar Center asking for a replacement screw. They came back with talk of "sold as is," et cetera.
Then they proffered to help me in my quest to make the bass playable. A series of emails wen back and forth. Several with exploded photos to show the missing part.
Two months later I get this email.
Your patience has been most appreciated!
I can buy a complete tuner for the same price.
A great little precision bass lookalike.
However one of the tuners was missing the tension screw. When I took the strings off to clean the bass the tuning key fell out.
I emailed Guitar Center asking for a replacement screw. They came back with talk of "sold as is," et cetera.
Then they proffered to help me in my quest to make the bass playable. A series of emails wen back and forth. Several with exploded photos to show the missing part.
Two months later I get this email.
Your patience has been most appreciated!
Peavey just got back to me and
this is what they had to say.
Hi
Josh,
Our
guitar tech, Steve, says he can get you one for $8.00. If you would like to
place an order, please call 877-732-8391. We accept all major credit cards.
Thanks,
April
Guitar Center - while it can be said they were making an attempt to help a customer have done little more than insult me by the length of time taken to tell me I have to pay to fix a broken instrument they sold me.
There is a reason why I never choose to go to Guitar Center.
Never mind they want to search you when you leave (which is not legal) a store, but now they can't help a customer without a cost passed on.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
This Is Not What I Planned
If your Nexus 7 starts to shut off seemingly randomly, check the sleep settings. Chances are they are not set, so it goes into sleep almost immediately. This setting was set to default after a reboot.
Note to self.
If you own any device powered by Li-Ion batteries you should NOT keep it plugged into a charger.
The memory foibles of Li-Ion are different than Ni-Cad.
What will happen is your device will start to behave as though it is broken until you reboot. The keyboard will not function or the phone will seemingly not dial a number until you hit the back key, et cetera.
Allow the device to tell you when it needs a charge and leave it unplugged until then.
Note to self.
---------------------------------------
10 Tips for Better Lyric Writing
Written by Robin Yukiko - August 14th 2012
There are as many lyric-writing styles as there are genres. From conversational and literal to poetic, abstract, and even nonsensical. Whatever style you embody, you can always improve your craft. Here are some tips on how to do that.
Have a theme. Themes don’t make your lyrics boring, they make them cohesive. Think of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and its whimsical sky references (clouds, birds, stars, chimney tops). It’s about world-building that sweeps the listener away.
Try to stay away from perfect rhymes. Day and way. Run, fun, sun. They sometimes ring as childish, especially if the context is not interesting enough. Be more adventurous and less strict (fade and wait, mine and kind, crazy and maybe, etc.).
Make the context interesting. If you are singing the same old love song, say it in a different way. Build from real memories, real conversation, or unusual metaphors.
Put the rhymes in unusual places (internal rhymes, in the middle of phrases). It adds meat to the bones of your song.
Change up the rhyme scheme. An example from Pat Pattison, “Mary had a little lamb, fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, she sold the fleece to pay the rent.”
Put the emphasis on the right syllable. As much as I love Alanis Morissette, she has an annoying habit of misplacing accents, making it incredibly awkward and difficult to understand (“an un-for-TU-nate slight,” instead of “un-FOR-tu-nate” in Uninvited). If you are dead-set on a lyric that stresses the wrong syllable, don’t be afraid to change the rhythm to set it right. You can also add or take away unimportant words like “that” or separating contractions. Personally, I know a lyric is right when it sounds as if I could speak it naturally.
Make your choruses more general than your verses. This is not a hard rule, but it helps to “change scenes” after your verse.
Be ruthless about clichés. Speak your lyrics aloud to spot them. When you find them (and you probably will), try changing only one word to something unexpected.
Keep writing different versions of the same section. You can always go back to the original, but you never know what you’ll come up with on try #5.
Don’t be afraid of the tools in your arsenal. Get a thesaurus. And a rhyming dictionary. Even if you don’t use the words you find, they can sometimes inspire other ideas. So can novels, newspapers, facebook updates, and people-watching.
You may have sensed a theme by now. Always ask yourself if you can do better. You usually can. But eventually, like a new car, you have to take it for a drive and see if it gets you there. Play it live, get honest opinions from your peers and mentors, and revise. You can play it for friends and family, but don’t expect much more than general praise. Ultimately it’s up to you, as writer Neil Gaiman would say, to make good art. And know when it’s done.
Note to self.
If you own any device powered by Li-Ion batteries you should NOT keep it plugged into a charger.
The memory foibles of Li-Ion are different than Ni-Cad.
What will happen is your device will start to behave as though it is broken until you reboot. The keyboard will not function or the phone will seemingly not dial a number until you hit the back key, et cetera.
Allow the device to tell you when it needs a charge and leave it unplugged until then.
Note to self.
---------------------------------------
10 Tips for Better Lyric Writing
Written by Robin Yukiko - August 14th 2012
There are as many lyric-writing styles as there are genres. From conversational and literal to poetic, abstract, and even nonsensical. Whatever style you embody, you can always improve your craft. Here are some tips on how to do that.
Have a theme. Themes don’t make your lyrics boring, they make them cohesive. Think of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and its whimsical sky references (clouds, birds, stars, chimney tops). It’s about world-building that sweeps the listener away.
Try to stay away from perfect rhymes. Day and way. Run, fun, sun. They sometimes ring as childish, especially if the context is not interesting enough. Be more adventurous and less strict (fade and wait, mine and kind, crazy and maybe, etc.).
Make the context interesting. If you are singing the same old love song, say it in a different way. Build from real memories, real conversation, or unusual metaphors.
Put the rhymes in unusual places (internal rhymes, in the middle of phrases). It adds meat to the bones of your song.
Change up the rhyme scheme. An example from Pat Pattison, “Mary had a little lamb, fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, she sold the fleece to pay the rent.”
Put the emphasis on the right syllable. As much as I love Alanis Morissette, she has an annoying habit of misplacing accents, making it incredibly awkward and difficult to understand (“an un-for-TU-nate slight,” instead of “un-FOR-tu-nate” in Uninvited). If you are dead-set on a lyric that stresses the wrong syllable, don’t be afraid to change the rhythm to set it right. You can also add or take away unimportant words like “that” or separating contractions. Personally, I know a lyric is right when it sounds as if I could speak it naturally.
Make your choruses more general than your verses. This is not a hard rule, but it helps to “change scenes” after your verse.
Be ruthless about clichés. Speak your lyrics aloud to spot them. When you find them (and you probably will), try changing only one word to something unexpected.
Keep writing different versions of the same section. You can always go back to the original, but you never know what you’ll come up with on try #5.
Don’t be afraid of the tools in your arsenal. Get a thesaurus. And a rhyming dictionary. Even if you don’t use the words you find, they can sometimes inspire other ideas. So can novels, newspapers, facebook updates, and people-watching.
You may have sensed a theme by now. Always ask yourself if you can do better. You usually can. But eventually, like a new car, you have to take it for a drive and see if it gets you there. Play it live, get honest opinions from your peers and mentors, and revise. You can play it for friends and family, but don’t expect much more than general praise. Ultimately it’s up to you, as writer Neil Gaiman would say, to make good art. And know when it’s done.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Making a flavored butter is simple.
Lemon Butter:
Butter
Lemon Zest
Salt
Mash until buttery.
Garlic Butter:
Butter
1 Dorot frozen garlic cubes
Mash until buttery.
I think I am channeling Julia Childs today.
Note to self.
Note to self.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Comic Books and Other Zero Calorie Food
Someone recommended an independently made series, Burn Notice.
It is a show about a former spy, his girlfriend, his mother and a few other ancillary people - Bruce Campbell, anyone?
It's the A-Team redux.
A woman who is there for titillation only, her character is two dimensional at best. A best buddy who drinks, a mother who wants to connect emotionally with her ex-spy son.
Where is Mr. T?
The writing is so predictable that not only did Nostradamus speak about the show in his writings, but the formula is used in every single show. It never deviates.
At least M*A*S*H* played with all sorts of layouts from telling the story from a soldiers points of view to doing a show in Black and White as a TV documentary. And then it was well written.
Writing on a television show is akin to depth of lyrics in music, the difference between a pop tune and a Beatle tune.
When well written a song or show transforms the landscape around you for the time it is playing.
I would guess that some of the construction techniques transfer between the written word and the notated score.
A writer of stories uses vocabulary and a sense of the world that they can put into words. Musicians use musical vocabularies and the same sense of what makes the world go 'round to communicate their feeling to you, the listener.
Sometimes it is very specific and sometimes purposefully vague...in both worlds.
In all worlds.
Comic books and pop tunes can be great, too.
It is a show about a former spy, his girlfriend, his mother and a few other ancillary people - Bruce Campbell, anyone?
It's the A-Team redux.
A woman who is there for titillation only, her character is two dimensional at best. A best buddy who drinks, a mother who wants to connect emotionally with her ex-spy son.
Where is Mr. T?
The writing is so predictable that not only did Nostradamus speak about the show in his writings, but the formula is used in every single show. It never deviates.
At least M*A*S*H* played with all sorts of layouts from telling the story from a soldiers points of view to doing a show in Black and White as a TV documentary. And then it was well written.
Writing on a television show is akin to depth of lyrics in music, the difference between a pop tune and a Beatle tune.
When well written a song or show transforms the landscape around you for the time it is playing.
I would guess that some of the construction techniques transfer between the written word and the notated score.
A writer of stories uses vocabulary and a sense of the world that they can put into words. Musicians use musical vocabularies and the same sense of what makes the world go 'round to communicate their feeling to you, the listener.
Sometimes it is very specific and sometimes purposefully vague...in both worlds.
In all worlds.
Comic books and pop tunes can be great, too.
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