my ukulele progress

once every fortnight I go to the pub for an evening of women, wine, and song. Well, there is only the occasional flirt with a woman, and instead of wine I opt for whisky which is calorically more in keeping with my goals, and there is no song.

I usually read Greek or Latin poetry but this time around i revamped my scale charts. I made two innovations to my charts.

First I changed the visual aspect of my charts. I had used dots to indicate where to fret. I changed the dots to intervals. I did this so that I know what intervals i am playing instead of just playing a shape. This will be useful when I combine chords with my scales. By knowing what intervals I am playing it will enable me to use chord tones to match my scales to my chords. It will also enable me to link the scales together by utilizing common intervals.

Second I expanded my scales from 3 strings to 4 strings. with scales with the root on the G string I extended the scale past the octave to the A string. With scales with the root on the C string I included notes on the G string. I did this so that I could link scales more fluidly. This will allow me to link my linear scales and re-entrant scales.
 
I am immediately realizing dividends from my scale chart improvements. When I was playing dots I was just playing shapes which is a great way to play. Now instead of playing dot 1 then dot 2 I am playing b2 then 5 then 6 then flat 7. With this info I can then pivot to another scale which I know also contains the interval on which I will pivot. It makes it much more interesting to be able to combine scales.

Also, instead of just mapping out my scale from unison to octave, I included all notes of that scale on all four strings within a five fret span. This has also been beneficial because going from unison to octave isn't very musical. The trick is to bury the unison/octave so that they don't sound so much like terminal destinations that kill the flow. Now I can move above or below the unison/octave.

Lastly, now that I know what intervals I am playing, I can theoretically match my scales up with chords. For example, my favorite chord is the m6. Now if I use scales that have a flat 3 and a fix in it, it should sound good. We'll see. I haven't tried it yet and I know that sometimes theory doesn't work in reality.

My kitchen has some news. I found today a tomatillo sauce at the store. Tomatillo sauce is the illusive third member of the triumvirate including red chili and green chili sauces. Those are the only admissible sauces (sorry tomato, you don't count!). Texture is flavor and tomatillo provides that middle ground. Red chili sauce is a liquid. Green chili sauce is the diced vegetable. Tomatillo sauce is kind of like a runny jelly.

I bought a chicken because I heard about a new way to roast a chicken. In a pan, you put a layer of carmelized onion and stock, then a layer of potatoes, then a flattened chicken. You flatten a chicken by cutting out its spine with a pair of poultry shears. Then you can lay the chicken out on the potatoes and roast it at 450 for half an hour.
 
T
ripock said:
I am immediately realizing dividends from my scale chart improvements. When I was playing dots I was just playing shapes which is a great way to play. Now instead of playing dot 1 then dot 2 I am playing b2 then 5 then 6 then flat 7. With this info I can then pivot to another scale which I know also contains the interval on which I will pivot. It makes it much more interesting to be able to combine scales.

Also, instead of just mapping out my scale from unison to octave, I included all notes of that scale on all four strings within a five fret span. This has also been beneficial because going from unison to octave isn't very musical. The trick is to bury the unison/octave so that they don't sound so much like terminal destinations that kill the flow. Now I can move above or below the unison/octave.

Lastly, now that I know what intervals I am playing, I can theoretically match my scales up with chords. For example, my favorite chord is the m6. Now if I use scales that have a flat 3 and a fix in it, it should sound good. We'll see. I haven't tried it yet and I know that sometimes theory doesn't work in reality.

My kitchen has some news. I found today a tomatillo sauce at the store. Tomatillo sauce is the illusive third member of the triumvirate including red chili and green chili sauces. Those are the only admissible sauces (sorry tomato, you don't count!). Texture is flavor and tomatillo provides that middle ground. Red chili sauce is a liquid. Green chili sauce is the diced vegetable. Tomatillo sauce is kind of like a runny jelly.

I bought a chicken because I heard about a new way to roast a chicken. In a pan, you put a layer of carmelized onion and stock, then a layer of potatoes, then a flattened chicken. You flatten a chicken by cutting out its spine with a pair of poultry shears. Then you can lay the chicken out on the potatoes and roast it at 450 for half an hour.
Click to expand...
Thanks for mentioning the chicken recipe, ripock! I do the same thing but use 2 pounds of chicken thighs and add sliced carrots and 1 roughly-sliced red bell pepper to the roasting pan. And, at least 2 hours but as much as 24 hours beforehand, pour 1 cup of balsamic vinegar into a 1-gallon zip-loc bag or container that has a tight-fitting lid and add 1 tbsp of oregano, scallion, thyme and minced garlic. Carefully add all the chicken pieces (whole) into the container, stir around to be sure each piece is coated, and leave to marinate in the fridge before roasting. If you use the plastic bag, enhance the marinating effect by forcing air out in order to seal it almost hermetically.
 
Thanks for your recipe. I don't think it would work for me because one of my indulgences is 12 year old balsamic vinegar and decanting a cup of that precious liquid would be cost prohibitive. Plus, after a lifetime of ibuprofen usage my wife developed GERD and I try to minimize the acids in our cooking. I do put a splash of vinegar on her swiss chard or lime juice, but I have to keep a tight reign on my acid usage.

So I did what I could with my recipe. First of all it brought back some bad sonic flashbacks. Cutting the spine out of a chicken to make a flat chicken was easy with poultry shears, but the sound immediately took me back to when I was working with animal vets. It sounded just like when vets would snip off the distal phlanges of cats in that barbaric practice of declawing. So that gave me the willies but I did it and here's what I did:

in a lasagna pan I put down a layer of carmelized white onion, then I put a layer of sliced russet potatoes. I poured in a little chicken stock and threw on a liberal amount of bouquet garni and salt. Then I laid the flattened chicken atop it. I applied olive oil, salt and pepper to the chicken and roasted it at 425 for a while (under an hour). It actually turned out great with the skin crispy and the white meat juicy...or so I heard. I leave white meat to the wife and cats. I prefer dark meat which has more character.

white meat is like a major chord, so ubiquitous, predictable, and negligible. I greatly prefer dark meat and its musical analogues of minor chords and chords with extensions.

I watched a video about the current state of affair in jazz. It said that Jazz's problem is elitism which I don't have a problem with. Depending on the criteria used, I suppose I could be called elite, so I won't cast aspersions. But something did occur to me while watching the video: I'm not a jazz musician. Disregarding the level of competency which jazz musicians have and which i never will, jazz musicians follow a curriculum and a set of assumptions which I don't acknowledge. Basically I use jazz concepts every day but I use them in a way that is unique to me. That's why I prefer to classify myself as a Roots musician. I use the roots of the American sound, jazz and blues, and I make my own sound. I don't sound like a jazz musician playing a re-harmonization of "Stella by Starlight" or a bluesman playing "Statesboro Blues" although I am using a lot of the same things. My music sounds "nice" according to people who have heard me play. That means I make understandable melodies using the Roots tradition and its components. It is a little bit dissonant and outre but ultimately nice.
 
I've been struggling with some domestic issues.

I put on some carpet-laying knee-pads and scrubbed my kitchen floor. I put too much cleaner in the water. And to sop up some excessive water on the floor I used a dry mop. It left a residue and the mop left streaks. It is disheartening after so much work to have such a result. I pulled out an old sponge mop I had and have gone over the floor a few times just to rinse the soap residue away. It is looking better but a bit dull.

Secondly, I'm wasting beans and that's sad. I have been cooking for my wife and myself for decades. Now that I am only eating every other day abstemiously to lose some weight, I cannot get adjusted to how much food to make. A cup of beans seems like such a paltry amount, but two cups gets wasted. I tried pressure cooking 1.5 cups today. They of course turned out excellently. I added a bit of chicken stock, one bunch of cilantro, and a savory mix I have of chives, shallots, and garlic. Oh, and some salt. I'll see how long this batch lasts when I ration out my portions. My wife mentioned something that perplexed me. She said there are some people who don't like cilantro. That can't be, I thought. However there are racists and other such aberrations in the world. I suppose there could exist anti-cilantrites.

Speaking of racism, I did my part to bridge the gaps that divide us by combining the Hirayoshi scale and the Chinese scale. Disregarding the historical problems between these two ethnicities, they become one unified shape under my fingers. I started with the linear E Hirayoshi. That scale has an F# and G on the A string. These notes are the 2nd and flat third of the scale, but they are also the 7th and tonic of the G Chinese scale and I then played them as such, playing the re-entrant G Chinese scale. On the G string, there is a 5th and a 7th. Remember the 7th in the Chinese scale is the 2nd in the Hirayoshi, so that I easily resolved to the E after the 7th/2nd of F#. It actually sounded good. Quirky but good. The only thing that sounded a little odd was the flat 5 of the Chinese scale. For some reason it didn't quite fit in with the vibe that the Hirayoshi had established. However after I went on, it wasn't even noticeable; it was just one somewhat eccentric blip on the radar. And it did give some character to the line.
 
ripock said:
I am immediately realizing dividends from my scale chart improvements. When I was playing dots I was just playing shapes which is a great way to play. Now instead of playing dot 1 then dot 2 I am playing b2 then 5 then 6 then flat 7. With this info I can then pivot to another scale which I know also contains the interval on which I will pivot. It makes it much more interesting to be able to combine scales.

Also, instead of just mapping out my scale from unison to octave, I included all notes of that scale on all four strings within a five fret span. This has also been beneficial because going from unison to octave isn't very musical. The trick is to bury the unison/octave so that they don't sound so much like terminal destinations that kill the flow. Now I can move above or below the unison/octave.

Lastly, now that I know what intervals I am playing, I can theoretically match my scales up with chords. For example, my favorite chord is the m6. Now if I use scales that have a flat 3 and a fix in it, it should sound good. We'll see. I haven't tried it yet and I know that sometimes theory doesn't work in reality.

My kitchen has some news. I found today a tomatillo sauce at the store. Tomatillo sauce is the illusive third member of the triumvirate including red chili and green chili sauces. Those are the only admissible sauces (sorry tomato, you don't count!). Texture is flavor and tomatillo provides that middle ground. Red chili sauce is a liquid. Green chili sauce is the diced vegetable. Tomatillo sauce is kind of like a runny jelly.

I bought a chicken because I heard about a new way to roast a chicken. In a pan, you put a layer of carmelized onion and stock, then a layer of potatoes, then a flattened chicken. You flatten a chicken by cutting out its spine with a pair of poultry shears. Then you can lay the chicken out on the potatoes and roast it at 450 for half an hour.
Click to expand...
You’re a very creative cook.
 
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Tin Ear said:
Regarding the eggplant - could it be wrapped in bacon ? Lots of bacon.
Click to expand...
definitely a possibility although I always steer clear of processed meats. But if you don't have that scruple, I saw an interesting meat loaf recipe. You take long strips of bacon and lay them crosswise in a loaf pan so that the middle of the strips cover the bottom of the pan but the ends exceed the pan. Then you insert you meat mixture. Then you fold the ends of the bacon atop the meat mixture so that the meat is completed ensconced by bacon.
 
jupiter was visible tonight. I got a gander at it even with the clouds that we are unseasonably having. Those clouds and what little rain that accompanied them cancelled our festival with its armada of airships. I never attend but I feel bad for others. There was a couple that had traveled from Aberdeen, Scotland, and they must have been disappointed to have come all that way for nothing. Global warming screwed up their vacation.

I added some chords to the Hirayoshi/Chinese scales with which I was melodizing. I chose a VII III VI in G because that had a lot of the tones I was hearing. I also threw in a G7 for good measure although it was a bit odd sounding. I sandwiched it in-between two E chords, a E13 and Em. It sounded alright and served as a little variation before returning to the root of the Hirayoshi.
 
Hey rip - if you can find yourself a telescope to watch Jupiter you can see it's moons and watch them traverse across. That is interesting.

Yeah, processed meats aren't too good for you, but darn they taste good. I just had a couple slices of fried braunschwieger along with my fried eggs and a piece of local made herb bread toasted with a dab of healthy spread. Kind of a good, the bad and the ugly breakfast. Sort of a Spaghetti western breakfast, but it would be shot in Germany. A little good coffee and now I'm set until the Packer Game in awhile this morning !

Nice work with your uke diary... But I'm more drawn to this thread for your food commentary as I can at least understand or grasp most of it.

I enjoy your written style but wonder if conversation would be as interesting. If so, it would be a hoot talking with you. I can tell you're an intelligent person. A person's humor or wit is usually indicative of their intelligence. But who know's, maybe your wife writes all this stuff and ripock is just a uke pen name with your persona sprinkled in. Nah.....
 
I played around with creating both the chords and the melody from a scale. I used the linear version of the piongio scale. I noticed that contained within that scale were chord shapes. I was playing the E piongio and it contains an F#m7, a B7sus4 and an E7sus2. I was a really easy way to construct some music. Since all the chord tones were contained within the scale, the chords sounded very safe and unchallenging. I don't think I mean that. After all suspended dominant chords aren't garden variety. There was a bit of a re-harmonized vibe. I think what I was getting at is the chords all worked well together without any push/pull that you get when you improvise normally. Usually a chord will be a little outlandish but then you reign in the progression with the next chord. These piongio chords were all very appropriate.
 
Since the students have a two-day break I don't have to grade tonight. Since I had a surfeit of time on my hands, I browsed the internet and I saw a video which listed the only kitchen knives you need. It said all you need is a chef's knife, a long serrated knife, and a paring knife. I usually dismiss those types of lists but I had to agree. I have 6 knives versus the 3 mentioned and they are not necessary. I have a 6 inch utility knife which I rarely use. It makes logical sense to have it but in practice I don't really use it. I think since it is a jack of all trades it is a master of none. Instead of using the knife which would kind of work, I use the specialized knife. I also have a five-inch serrated knife and I do use it quite a bit--actually more than my large serrated knife. One function of serrated knives is cutting fruit and vegetables and the smaller knife seems more convenient although the larger version would be preferable for cutting bread or carving meat or cutting something large like a watermelon. Lastly, I have a vegetable cleaver. It is a cleaver with a thinnish blade. I actually use this knife more than my chef's knife. The most prominent advantage of the cleaver is that you can scoop what you cut with that wide blade.

It was fun to take inventory of the kitchen and compare it to a generic list to see how I stacked up. Now I have to keep my eyes peeled for cookware. I exclusively use cast iron. And I have 4 skillets, a dutch oven, a sauce pan, two baking pans, and a wok. That is what I use on a daily basis. I do have things like a turkey roaster that collects dust atop the fridge but it isn't part of my core tools. I wonder what a list of cookware would mention.
 
I added to my E Piongio studies by sliding into some chords and chromatically walking down between chords.

I felt like I really knew what I was doing for a while because this is my favorite place to play on the fret board so in my melody parts I interchanged the piongio with minor pentatonic, harmonic minor, and melodic minor modes. I also threw in some diminished arpeggios or good measure. And I could really pick through the notes quick. It was fun to pretend that I was very competent for a while, even though I know if I moved down to a Scriabin scale in C, it would be a completely different ballgame.
 
I see there's one of those threads going where people ask what strings do I put on this particular ukulele. I guess I'm missing something; you put whatever strings you want on it. They all work. Oh well, but I guess people don't care about what I care about.

I walked outside and Jupiter is still shining bright. It doesn't seem to move although the moon which was near Jupiter a few days ago is now far to the east. It is curious because I would have thought that Jupiter would have moved as well.

Something that always caught my fancy since I was a boy is the fact that the stars we are looking at aren't the stars as they now exist but the stars as they existed in the past. We could be looking at the image of a star which currently has blown up but we won't see that until some time in the future.

Those are my celestial concerns. My terrestrial problems were about trying to fix some blind spots in my playing. Yesterday I was on cloud 9 because I could play what I know how to play. I decided to move to an area of the fret board that I know less about and try to work up to a level of competency. I decided to go low. I went to the A on the second fret and I gathered my thoughts on what shapes were around that A:

subdominant shape of the E minor pentatonic
A Lydian Dominant/C# Aiolian b5
A Dorian #11

And I added the A Enigmatic scale

Then I looked for what chords I could derive from the enigmatic scale and I came up with a little descending progression in Bb: Eb9, F9, BbmΔ7

I followed a normal pattern of setting a groove with the chords and then intercalate a melody derived from one or more of the above modes/scales.
The problem that faced me was jumping from scale to scale. If I decide on a certain scale I can improv within it just fine but it is difficult to jump to another scale. I think I need to be more conscious of the actual intervals I am playing and the notes I am playing. I think that would facilitate my decision making because then, instead of being stuck in a shape, I would be thinking of a particular note and which notes surround it in a Dorian or Lydian or pentatonic or enigmatic context.
 
I made what you may call oeufs réconciliés. The albumen and the yolk undergo a brief trial separation. both make improvements. Then they reunite. I separate the eggs. I beat the albumen for under five minutes (not to the point when they are whipped and with a peak; just enough to make them foamy and rarefied). I added a few things to the yolk (today, ginger and tajín, a local condiment consisting of lime and red chili). Then I fry the albumen, flip it, and pour the yolk atop. It approximates a sunny side up egg but its texture is completely different, and texture is flavor.

I combined the reconciled eggs with a loaded farinata. I included kalamata olives, leeks, a bulb of garlic, and whole peppercorns. The additions burnt a bit--after all a farinata is baked at 450. And the peppercorns were a bit much. Peppercorns work with something like a steak a poivre where the flavor and mass of the beef counterbalance the pepper. But when it is garbanzo bean versus peppercorn, the peppercorn dominates. It was fine but you had to like pepper for this experiment.

I am starting to get some insight to the melodizing I have been doing on the 2nd fret. I am basing it on the A Enigmatic and morphing that into other scales. The trick for me is being aware of the note I'm on and which scales share that note. Of course, that requires some preparation work and experience. Here's what I mean:

You cannot be robotic and think about notes. Music happens too quickly for that. You need to have a personal relationship with certain voices so that when you approach a note you can remember "oh, I love playing that note in this scale" or "when I'm playing that scale, I love playing that note and then this other note."

So what I find is that I need to be very aware of what I'm doing, put those experiences into a data base in my head, and reference that data base when the time comes to improvise.

That's primarily why I write all this out. I realize that the vast majority of people don't give a rat's ass about what I'm doing. I'm not writing for them. I'm writing because the act of writing involves analysis and synthesis, and by writing down what I did, it encodes it into my head.

I forgot to mention, I was having some issues with my chords. My fingertips were seeming sensitive. And the more I fought it, the more sore they became. Maybe I've been playing too much. To make matters worse, I was playing a shape that gives me problems physically. I have been playing Eb9 rooted on the 3rd fret of the C string. The basis of that chord is the shape most people think of as the go-to D7 where you barre with your index finger and fret the A string with your middle finger. I find that difficult, so I always make that dom7 chord with my middle finger forming the barre and my ring finger fretting the A string. I can form that in an Augenblick. However I need my ring finger to fret the 9 in the Eb9, so I need the middle finger to assume duties with the A string. It is a little easier if I plant the middle finger first there seems to be a lot of pressure making that finger stay where it should and the A string just digs into it. I'll see if practice doesn't make it better.
 
ripock said:
I made what you may call oeufs réconciliés. The albumen and the yolk undergo a brief trial separation. both make improvements. Then they reunite. I separate the eggs. I beat the albumen for under five minutes (not to the point when they are whipped and with a peak; just enough to make them foamy and rarefied). I added a few things to the yolk (today, ginger and tajín, a local condiment consisting of lime and red chili). Then I fry the albumen, flip it, and pour the yolk atop. It approximates a sunny side up egg but its texture is completely different, and texture is flavor.

I combined the reconciled eggs with a loaded farinata. I included kalamata olives, leeks, a bulb of garlic, and whole peppercorns. The additions burnt a bit--after all a farinata is baked at 450. And the peppercorns were a bit much. Peppercorns work with something like a steak a poivre where the flavor and mass of the beef counterbalance the pepper. But when it is garbanzo bean versus peppercorn, the peppercorn dominates. It was fine but you had to like pepper for this experiment.

I am starting to get some insight to the melodizing I have been doing on the 2nd fret. I am basing it on the A Enigmatic and morphing that into other scales. The trick for me is being aware of the note I'm on and which scales share that note. Of course, that requires some preparation work and experience. Here's what I mean:

You cannot be robotic and think about notes. Music happens too quickly for that. You need to have a personal relationship with certain voices so that when you approach a note you can remember "oh, I love playing that note in this scale" or "when I'm playing that scale, I love playing that note and then this other note."

So what I find is that I need to be very aware of what I'm doing, put those experiences into a data base in my head, and reference that data base when the time comes to improvise.

That's primarily why I write all this out. I realize that the vast majority of people don't give a rat's ass about what I'm doing. I'm not writing for them. I'm writing because the act of writing involves analysis and synthesis, and by writing down what I did, it encodes it into my head.

I forgot to mention, I was having some issues with my chords. My fingertips were seeming sensitive. And the more I fought it, the more sore they became. Maybe I've been playing too much. To make matters worse, I was playing a shape that gives me problems physically. I have been playing Eb9 rooted on the 3rd fret of the C string. The basis of that chord is the shape most people think of as the go-to D7 where you barre with your index finger and fret the A string with your middle finger. I find that difficult, so I always make that dom7 chord with my middle finger forming the barre and my ring finger fretting the A string. I can form that in an Augenblick. However I need my ring finger to fret the 9 in the Eb9, so I need the middle finger to assume duties with the A string. It is a little easier if I plant the middle finger first there seems to be a lot of pressure making that finger stay where it should and the A string just digs into it. I'll see if practice doesn't make it better.
Click to expand...
Thanks, Ripock. This statement is a lesson for all of us: ". . . the act of writing involves analysis and synthesis, and by writing down what I did, it encodes it into my head". I also feel validated that your corner of the English-speaking world refers to the south end of a northbound rodent to convey, "not of general interest". I first heard and appreciated the term in 9th grade and have clung to it like a wet sock ever since.
 
I watched a jazz piano channel that I frequent. Most of what they say goes above my head but I glean what I can. They were analyzing the music of the band Sade and especially the band's tendency to follow a 1 7 6 7 progression. However they didn't mention what I thought was a salient point. Those chord qualities are just a blues shuffle. Although the band has jazzed it up, it is still rooted in the blues as all good music is. This is much in my mind because frequently keyboard-warriors on the internet disparage the pentatonic scale because it is entry-level, ubiquitous, and hackneyed. But that would be like a young writer denigrating vowels. Yes, vowels are everywhere and over-used. But they are the building blocks of words and writing would be absurd without them. Same thing with pentatonics. The blues is rather dated and playing the blues is a somewhat antiquarian gesture but the pentatonics are still the corner stone of music and they need to be utilized.

Since I was watching jazz piano, the altered scale was on my mind. I learned the altered scale by another name, the Super Lokrian. So I practiced the A Super Lokrian. This scale has quite a bit of chords built into it. The linear shape has a 9, 7, m, m7, mΔ7. The re-entrant shape has 2 m6/9/ø, +, m. Plenty of good chords to imbricate within my melodies. I would really like to play that re-entrant shape but it is on the 9th fret, smack dab in the middle of my comfort zone and I am trying to play lower on the neck. So I'll be playing on the second fret.

And I saw a Stu Fuchs video about an 8-beat rumba strum with accents on the 1, 4, and 7th beats. I think I'll try it with some of the chords. However I will greatly slow it down lest it be way, way too upbeat a sound for me.

I have to go attend to my beans. Another week, another batch of beans. Have to add some cilantro and green chili that I have on hand. For the curious I made my wife a stir fry consisting of curried sardines, egg-coated millet, and Chinese cabbage.
 
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