Recent content by ripock

I really hate April. It is so blustery. It messes up my hair and makes my tobacco breaks at work unpleasant. Since the weather is so foul, I decided to make some fowl. I bought a turkey tenderloin which I'll bake. I also bought some more chicken thighs. Last week, I screwed them up whilst...

I was playing melodies which I cannot re-create but I did employ a chordal interlude: F7 rooted on the 5th C+ rooted on the 3rd, but also on the 5th B13 rooted on the 2nd b7 rooted on the 4th Em rooted on the 4th. While I was playing that, I did wonder why there were no m6 chords, which are my...

If you want less tension, try concert strings and not baritone strings as previously advised. Just make sure the concert strings are long enough for a super tenor scale. Worth strings work because they are double the length. To alleviate tension I also downtune to EAC#F# instead of GCEA...

I agree that markers are a bit decorative, and on my custom ukes I insist on the decorative pattern of a side dot on all the pentatonic frets to pay homage to the roots of American music, especially needed now in light of white nationalism.

The camel wore a nightie.

okay, now it is actually time for bed. Beethoven hasn't copyrighted A, B, and C, so I could argue I am not plagiarizing him but then I started playing more and more of his song. My larceny is now pellucidly transparent. That's the benefit of playing scales. If you play scales on three...

I have to go take my pre-work nap, but I quickly wanted to annotate what I was doing. Capitalizing on my recent success with A, I plagiarized Beethoven's A, AAA B CC. Obviously that's just a whole step then a half step jump. So then I was responding to the melody but with odd chord qualities...

In Greek they use the word areté which roughly means excellent. The idea is to be excellent. In practical terms that means to have a principle and commit to it excellently. That's my definition of a good person: have a guiding principle, which I may or may not agree with, and just embody it...

I have been rather satisfied with my perambulations through the modes of E Double Harmonic Δ. Primarily because I was able, though by accident, to shift the tonal center to A. I was just playing around and when I landed on A, it just sounded right to stop and resolve. That is successful modal...

first of all, you probably shouldn't get a custom at the incipient stage of your musical journey. Not because of all that rigamarole about earning the right to a custom but because you need to know what you want in order to ask for it. Then you tell the luthier what these essentials are. I'm...

By including the enharmonic keys

Like a 25 year old, I enjoyed a pyrrhic victory over my wife. I was right, but sometimes, you can be right and still be wrong. Even though I knew better, I rubbed her face in it and forced her to acknowledge my truth step by step. Even though I am right, she will now sulk for a week. So What...

techniically, there are 3 dim7 chords--all the same shape--but varying in position. The dim7 is a quadrilateral; just make sure one of the corners of the dim7 touches the note you are after, and then you're golden

to hide the cracks in my melodies I tend to engage in a few practices. Just to name a few: a glissando, using a dim7 to shake things up, alter the strum briefly, use a picking pattern for a beat, double-stops, or even soundboard tapping to fill the gap with some percussion. Or you can just...

I was forcing myself to play some modes which were rather uncomfortable. I don't primarily mean physically uncomfortable although there are one or two 3-fret gaps such as the interval between C and D#. It is a big jump but nothing that planting a pinky or even a quick slide cannot overcome...