I’ve been really fortunate. I haven’t had a set or a song that went sideways in a long time. Most of the time, we’ve managed to make it all the way through the song with it mostly intact. Until the jam this week. We had one song that turned out to be a train wreck. And you know what, that’s okay.
A complete train wreck of a song or set has lots of lessons in it. Just as this one did. In this case it was just one song. The rest of the set went pretty good. Including my shaking hands on the first song. But that’s about normal for the first time I do a new song. And while I usually manage to make it through it pretty solid on guitar, this was a little different because I was playing the intro. I looked and my fingers on the frets and they were shaking like I don’t know what. I managed to get through it though and get to the song. I even took a lead that I thought went pretty well.
Back to the train wreck. We wanted something a little more up beat since we had two slow songs so we chose a song that relies heavily on a very predominant riff. It’s played through the whole song except the stops and at the end. I can play the riff. I can sing the song. I’m still working on playing the riff and singing at the same time. That means I have to rely on the other guitar player to carry the riff while I sing. That means they have to carry it until we get to the break. Things didn’t really go that way. I tried to pick up some sort of rhythm but I got off and lost my place. Then the bass player got lost and the other guitar player couldn’t find his way back. Train wreck. Near total derailment.
What did I learn from that? You mean besides that it’s not the end of the world?
That song is not my strongest. I’m not strong on the vocal and I’m not that strong on that riff, which really is the rhythm riff. I am better if I am just playing the riff. If I try to 
do both, sing and play? No. The most basic thing I learned with that song is that, I need to work on it more. It’s not that I won’t be able to do it. I will. I just need to be able to play the riff, and keep it going, and sing over it. That sounds like a tall order given what I’ve said about it so far. And maybe it is. However, there is a reason for it.
If I’m going to do that song, I need to be able to hold the rhythm and the pace and keep us all in the same place, even if someone wanders off. I need to hold the line so that others can find their way back if I’m going to lead that song. And as the singer, and rhythm guitar player, that’s my role on this song. It’s not that I can’t rely on another guitar player to carry the riff, I just need to be prepared to do it if they can’t, or if they lose the riff.
I also need to pay better attention when discussing a possible song with others. I am pretty up front when someone asks if I know a song. Usually, I will tell them I don’t know the song, or that I only
kind of know it. I might want to play it but I know my limits and I will share that so that if it’s a tricky song, whoever is leading it has the option of choosing something else or letting me fumble my way through. In this case, when I was discussing the song, there were clues in the conversation that this might not go so well. I didn’t pay attention and we forged ahead. I could have been upset about it. What was the point? It was one song in a set of three and the other two went pretty good. And look at what I got to learn.
I’ve been aware for the past couple of months that I was at a point where it was time to step up my playing again. Time to make that next move towards the next level of skills. Then, I traded in those guitars for two new ones that are a couple of steps up from what I had. And now when I play those, along with my Les Paul and my Gretsch, all I can say is, it really is time to get busy and step up my game to meet my guitars. This experience, was just one more reminder. One more voice, or email, or insistent notice saying ‘Get with it. You said you want to do this. You can do this. Now do it.’
Thanks to Kevin, I came home with some homework and lots of stuff to work on. I’m excited. I can’t wait to dig in. I feel a bit like my friend’s son. She posted that he’d been at band camp all day marching and drumming and he came home, had dinner and went up to his room and started drumming again. Even after a full day of playing, he was ready to keep going. I relate to him. I would have done the same thing if it weren’t for having a day job that meant I had to be up early. And I can say that after that day job, I came home and unpacked everything and got in and started working on a way to make that song work for me. And I started working on my homework.
I have the video from the previous jam edited. I just need to get it uploaded. I don’t plan to post the train wreck. Just because. I only have partial video of the first song from this week’s jam so that won’t go up either. I have the last song and I will probably post that. There’s another jam coming up again this weekend so I’ll be practicing and learning new stuff and working on making the old stuff better. I’ve got a couple of recommends to add to my repertoire that I’ll get started as well. Enjoy some pictures from the jam. Along with a picture of the new guitars.
Yes. That does mean I passed the test. For now I have my free time back to myself. I don’t know that I won’t have something else to work on after this. For now though, I’m very happy to be back to figuring out how to play this and how to play that, and all that good stuff.
guitar that I had in my teen years that I sometimes wish I had not gotten rid of so when I started playing again, and acquiring guitars, adopted the attitude that I wasn’t ever getting rid of another guitar. However, as I started seriously looking at my collection, what I play, what I don’t play and why, and what I want, it didn’t make sense to hold on to that attitude. Now I’m working from the idea that if I don’t love it, I won’t keep it.
That’s not to say that I don’t have a few guitars that I keep for sentimental reasons. I do. That’s a different sort of love for the guitar. So those stay.
this post.
And then there was the hurricane. First and foremost. I am extremely fortunate and grateful to live where I do. The weather event, while tedious in it’s duration and lack of drama for me, it was only tedious and lacking in drama. Fortunately. I did not sustain any damage, flooding, or prolonged power loss. Yep. I got to watch the weather coverage all weekend. Not healthy. However, it was just about all I could do for a good bit of the time. The anticipation is killer. And I find it to be especially debilitating when it comes to hurricanes. I have a more than healthy respect for Mother Nature and after living in Central Florida in 2004, I have an extreme dislike of wind events. As I imagine many who were there for that time do.
I had planned on taking one of my pet birds to the vet because she has been having a lot of trouble getting around. I suspected she is dealing with arthritis but wanted to make sure it wasn’t something else that was being neglected. It’s arthritis. There isn’t much I can do for her other than more comfortable perches and pain medication. Comfortable perches works for her. Pain medication not so much. She was cooperative about taking it the first two or three doses and from there she got increasingly less cooperative. She got really good at hiding from the dropper. She figured out how to bury her beak into my hand and leg and jacket so good that I had no chance of getting to it.
All the effort and struggle to give the bird her medicine was just more than I thought she could take and I didn’t want her mad at me so being the soft touch that I am when it comes to animals, after her dosing, she got proper head scratching. A process that could go on for forty-five minutes to an hour easily. I got tired before she did. Yep she’s definitely got me trained.
My family is fairly small and there aren’t a lot of our little nucleus left. And now there is one less. A week before I went on break I received a call that my Grandfather was in the hospital. His wife called to let me know and was really good about keeping me, and thus the rest of my family, up to date on how he was doing. After a little over a week they moved him to hospice. This was the first week while I was on break. Saturday morning after that I received the call that he had passed. So a trip back to Oklahoma was now in play. I have a sister and she and I are next in line there. My father passed five years ago and he was an only child. My Grandmother passed 15 years ago. Both his brother and sister passed a few years ago as well. He was 94. He lived a good long life and he out lived most of his family and friends. I went back for the funeral and to help with cleaning up what little bit of stuff I could. It’s not a trip you ever want to make and no matter how much we might intellectually accept something like a death is coming, I’m not sure you are ever totally prepared for it when it finally happens.
There are lots of experiences and feelings and events that can occur as a result of someone’s passing. The hospitality of a stranger was not one I was expecting. As you can imagine, staying at what had been my Grandfather’s house was going to be tight since there was other family coming in. So I was anticipating grabbing a hotel for the couple of nights I was going to be there. Except, a neighbor lady, who I had never met and had only met my Grandfather’s wife a few months ago, offered the use of her spare room with an en suite bathroom and shower. I am in admiration and appreciation of her hospitality. She was a very welcoming hostess. And quite an exceptional person with some great stories of really amazing adventures that have been her life. I am very happy to have had the chance to meet and converse with her, and again appreciative and grateful for her hospitality.
nights, so I traveled as light as I could. I expected that I might be coming back with a few more items than I went with and I really wanted to make the return trip as easy as I could. So I did not pack a computer. A kindle yes, but not the laptop. So studying while I was there was out. Not that I would have had the time really. That meant that upon my return I was going to be spending much more of my time left studying just to make up for the time away. And I did. I have a little more to read, just one chapter, and some quizzing to work through. I’m far enough, and what’s left is more peripheral information so while I’ll still be studying this next week, I have at least made it through the bulk of the information and am a little less stressed 
about getting through the material in time for taking the test. The next step there is to schedule it. I’ve already purchased my voucher so it’s paid for, now I need to commit to a day, time, and location.