Position Player

Al DiMeola was my guitar teacher for almost two years.
What Al taught me:

Rhythm is key
Emulate the people you like without knowing why
There are only two or three positions for each key signature
Knowing chords will interlock with the positions that you play within

The single biggest thing that makes me what I am as a musician is my adherence to position playing.
My middle finger serves as anchor, 99% (Modes are the other 1% - start the scale on another finger and now you are playing modes) of the time it is firmly on the root.

So for any given key signature I have three positions. The I can explore the relatives of the root.
We're playing in F?
I can play in C, G, F, Bb and each of those has the three positions.

Remember Spirograph?
After a while you are enmeshed in this web that covers the entire fretboard.
It's hard to find a wrong note. Wrong interval yes, note...not so much.

Rhythm being key was something Al didn't teach as much as led by example.
My first might at his house for my first lesson...upon entering his room my eyes lock upon a drum kit. Turns out that is where Al started.
Ah ha.
John McLaughlin uses Konokol.
Ah ha.

 So I have melodic movement (positions) covered. Now, I have to work my rhythms.

1st position
2 octaves Major Scale

This playing approach came from Larry Coryell, who taught his idea to Al and John McLaughlin.

Buy This Book - Sorry Abbie Hoffman

www.anitapagewriter.blogspot.com

I Love My Guitar

No, not the piece of wood and metal, but what it allows me to do.
My guitar is a good friend. It explores with me. It takes me places I have not been. Revisits the places I enjoy.

But each time I glance at it, I smile. It is a comfort to me. Knowing what comes from it, how it frees a part of me that normally lives inside.

People that bring out parts of your personality, revel in it with you...Best friends, right?
Well, this qualifies, even though it is an inanimate piece of stuff, a tool.

Friends sit with me, do for me, want to spend time in my company without a second thought.
I haven't heard my guitar wondering what it was going to do for the next few years. It seems content to hang out.

It also challenges me in ways most people will not. It is work to push people in the right direction. Be a motivator for someones betterment. And what's funny is I think it is me criticizing and critiquing.
It ain't easy.

I do for it as well. I bought it new springs and a steel tremolo block from Callaham.
Raw Vintage Springs
Callaham Trem Block

And then the big switcheroo.
The almost too good to be true Villex passive mid boost.

It does not have a name yet. And I don't know why. Most of my guitars get named fairly quickly. There is usually just some aspect that stands out and makes naming easy.
This one seems to be, "Pal."
--------
Being sick throws everyone off, but for a musician or someone that breathes music, having a clogged ear is a nightmare.
I wonder what illness throws a carpenter?

Fake It Until You Make It Part Deux

Tips for appearing to know what you are doing.

1. Stop looking at the neck. I seek out someone in the audience to make eye contact..."He's playing to me!" Or close your eyes altogether.

2. Dress the part. Punk means no shirt and tie. By the same token, unless you are in a dirt band, dress up a bit. Looking good adds, does not take away.

3. If you fvck up big time, laugh.

4. Talk to the audience while tuning. Good anecdote time, especially if it segues into the next song.

5. "I meant to do that." is part of your repertoire. Be a cat.

6. Don't blow through people after you leave the stage. Many of not most come for the meet and greet afterwards.

7. Sloppy drunk or high is bad, mkay? A nice buzz is great. Enhances your interactions. Falling asleep on stage is really bad.

8. As part of #7 - eat before you drink before you go onstage. No burritos, nice and light but enough to mitigate what lies ahead. 

9. If you introduce me to your mom with the words, "You two have a lot in common," you are so off the list.

10. Share with anyone in the venue that has a direct impact on your sound - sound guy, lighting, the girl bringing you drinks...all of them.

11. Really, stop looking at the neck.

Black Holes

Yeah...I mean the gravitational monsters that have physicists and laymen alike wondering what they are and what does it mean to me?

N.P.R. had a fascinating article about the interior of black holes.
Stretch Or Splat? How A Black Hole Kills You Matters ... A Lot

It struck me as completely over thought.
(Many times in life what staggers others seems glaringly simple to me and conversely I can be the densest person in the room)

Gravity was classically though of as a force of attraction. The more mass an object contains the greater its attraction.
Wrong Mr. Newton.
Mr. Einstein showed us that magnetism is the only attraction related force in physics.

Gravity pushes you, not pulls you. This was an incredibly significant deviation from Newton.
The greater the mass the great the object deforms space around it, until like a bowl with no friction you slide to the bottom of the well created by the mass of that object.

What the artist doesn't show is the bowl extends in all directions, enclosing the planet like a shell, the depth and reach are the function of the mass. The center of the object being the focal point for the deformation of space. Where you are being pushed.

In this depiction of a black hole (the eponymous "artist rendition") we can see the leeching of a nearby planet as it enters the field of the black hole.
The surrounding accretion disk of spinning material, and the jets of material from the polar extremes.

Quantum physics demand nothing created, nothing destroyed. The information contained in your body must be preserved even after entering a black hole or all of quantum physics fails. It must go somewhere.

The other side of that coin in the N.P.R. piece is there is nothing inside a black hole. Space and time end.

Two things strike me as glaringly obvious.

As a fire clears a forest for new growth, black holes are galactic cleaning tools. We have found the womb of the stars, we can watch dust and matter coalesce into balls that gather mass and momentum. Some ignite when the pressures needed for atomic reaction are met. Some fall a tad short and become Jupiter. Gas giants that should have been stars, but failed.
Black holes remove matter from the visible universe. And to a man looking at fire a thousand years ago we might see that he thought a forest fire to be a most destructive force, consuming everything in its wake. A force of evil, a thing to be fought and defeated.
Black holes are natural things; therefore they serve a purpose. Admittedly beyond our understanding at the moment, but were someone to find a "cure" for black holes I would tell them to abandon the idea. They serve a natural purpose as do ants and cockroaches and earthquakes and volcanoes and fires.

And two, to satisfy the quantum crowd I say this: your body and being would be reduced to the size of an atom in an instant. All the information is preserved, it just takes up far less space.
No spaghettification at all.
Galactic smushing.
If the universe is oscillating then the need for dark matter may be closely tied to black holes?

I haven't violated Einstein or Hawking. Have I?

And now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Band In A Box 2014 & Tumblr

The new and improved BIAB is out and boy, is it a winner.
The GUI has been completely redesigned. Things like the mixer, an integral component was somewhat hidden in the old layout.and now occupies close to a quarter of the layout.

Zones have been laid out - Songs, Views, Transport, Drop, Tacks, Tools, File, Mixer and the actual composition window.
Each has been made a little more intuitive; much easier to find what I need without resorting to having the manual laid across your knee as you try to build a piece from scratch.
Little things like a 'Tap' button to tap out the beat you wish to use.

From PG Music's website:

We’re very excited to offer one of our biggest upgrades! Band-in-a-Box 2014 includes over 50 great new features and enhancements, 101 more amazing RealTracks, 54 MIDI SuperTracks, 36 Artist Performances and that’s not all. 

The GUI has been redesigned with a great new look and many time-saving enhancements! The Toolbars and Song Title Area have been redone, and the chord sheet now has a “Real” looking handwritten font for chords. We’ve addedUserTracks. Now you can make your own RealTracks to add to your song. Plus there’s a handy Instant Preview of styles, RealTracks, and RealDrums so that you can quickly audition them to choose the best ones for your song. Loops now support Acidized Loops. A Legato Strings feature that automatically optimizes MIDI string parts to prevent retriggering the same notes, a new Master Volumeallows you to boost volumes of all songs with one setting, 8 new Hi-Q MIDI sounds, and many more…

I first discovered BIAB in 2009 and have been a fanboi ever since.
I cannot imagine trying to compose and then lay down backing tracks without it. It allows me to be creative with little overhead. A tiny learning curve for the basics to be absorbed; although mastery would take a good deal of time. It is worth the time spent.

Joez Blues

Throw together a blues progression (I, IV, V), pick a style; in this case Joe Zawinul and you're off.

A month ago I heard a rap piece in which I liked the progression a lot. I sat and wrote the chords down. Opened BIAB and laid it out. Changed the beat, and the style from hip-hop to a jazz thing and all of a sudden I have a great tune that sounds nothing like the original.
(Fine, I also changed a couple of chords - the resolution was major and I wanted more open ended, like sustained etc)

I cannot recommend this enough to my musical friends.

TUMBLR

I dislike MusicClout - the "services" they offer are of little reach, are over-priced and generally of no use to a musician trying to get their music "out there."
To fill the otherwise incessant barrage of ads with "content" they from time to time, offer advice via a blog style column.

One of them had a cogent suggestion. Rather than using a third party such as ReverbNation or SoundCloud that an aspiring musician needs their own website.
Not subject to the whims of the site owner as far as may be possible.

In this they are 100% correct. Just as MySpace used to be the premier site for self promotion, as times and content changed, MySpace's relevance as a music platform diminished.
I had been using FaceBook as a tool for networking. It came to naught. Today, my 3,400 "friends" have become a steady stream of what they ate for lunch, a pithy quote from someone taken out of context so that Ronald Reagan seems coherent and wise, or a plea to buy their latest CD, jewelry making or custom built guitars.
In short - FaceBook is now mostly an ad platform.

I moved over to Twitter as a way to promote and be engaged with the people who can actually further my musical ambitions. It has been fairly successful to this point.
I've gotten airplay on radio stations, found composition competitions worth entering, met a number of people who are flying higher and closer to the sun than I and have gotten the wind from their wings just by proximity.
But I still am just linking people to my page on Soundcloud rather than hosting my music.

So I took a site at TUMBLR:

The Importance of Being Ernest Page

And quickly posted three of my tunes. As time progresses I will fill the pages with content that may be somewhat of an overlap with this page. So be it.
(Apologies to Mr. Wilde)

Grateful For...

My head cold, stuffed head and attendant tickle starting in the throat.

Music.

Lou, Gregg, Dave Lou Sr - Styles Music, Pomona

Music

Sunny days, frigid nights.

My green thumb.

The twists and turns the life metes out to each of us may seem daunting at the moment, but most episodes become cherished memories.
It may be a product of aging, or just the wisdom that comes with it, or even the realization of a childhood dream.

Music.

It has been a tight year in terms of the material - and yet, not.
For every 'no,' there seems to be two or three, 'yes;'  we're laughing!


Merry Christmas,

And be happy for your lot in life.