READIN

Thursday, April 6th, 2006

🦋 Fiddle Practice

Tonight for the first time I felt myself starting to get comfortable in the second and third positions. All along I have been trying to work them in to my playing without any real luck. On Tuesday, Bill and Aaron were saying how they'd really like to hear the high notes and advising me to practice scales up the neck -- aagh! my bane! repetitive practice! -- so I set out to try it.

Last night I was playing the scales but without any real clue what I was doing. But tonight I changed my strategy a little. First, I decided only to work on the key of G for now, since the songs I've been playing with Bill and Aaron are primarily in G. And second, I decided not to worry about the bottom string since I was having a lot of trouble there.

I started playing some scales, sounding a little better than last night; and after a little while I moved into playing melodies and solos -- mostly in third position. Still having to hunt for notes a bit and sometimes drifting away from the proper position. I'm trying to figure out how to move between positions now.

posted evening of April 6th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about 13 Scotland Rd.

I had dinner last night with Unfogged commenter Idealist (whom I am planning to start calling IdeaList) -- we went to La Espiga. He is also from the Central Velley, grew up in Davis, and has been missing good Mexican food since he moved to NY. La Espiga did not disappoint. The menu is limited on weekdays, e.g. they did not have chiles rellenos, which IdeaList had been hoping for; but the dishes they did have were great. I had chivito en adobo, which I was a little surprised to see on the menu -- I had thought of it as more an Ecuadorean or Columbian dish -- and of course a couple of tacos. (Best taco filling available on weekdays is carnitas IMO; best on the full menu are barbacoa and lengua.) Update: Jim says chivito in adobo is Mexican. My mistake.

posted morning of April 6th, 2006: Respond

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

I was jamming again tonight with 13 Scotland Rd, and got a lot of good stuff on tape. Where last time I felt pretty up-in-the-air about whether I was playing with or against Bill, tonight I was starting to click and hear what I was doing right or wrong. Bill was also teaching me the songs in a way he was not doing last week, which was really helpful. Between Bill and Lisa Gutkin I feel like I have really happened on two ideal music teachers. We played:

• "Dream", which we had finished out the evening with last week, with me playing a really pretty intro. Had a hard time getting back there, but after a couple of times through I broke through and started getting it.
• "Used to be" -- just blew me away, a beautiful song. Aaron taught me an intro that I picked up fairly quickly. On the solo I'm having a hard time really going into it aggressively without also being sloppy.
• "If You Were Mine", which I've been practicing most of this week.
• "Always", which is really difficult for me to hear the key of.

posted evening of April 4th, 2006: Respond
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Sunday, April second, 2006

Pointed out by someone in my department: for a moment on Wednesday morning, it will be 01:02:03 04/05/06 for the first time since 1906, and for the last time until 2106.

posted afternoon of April second, 2006: Respond

Saturday, April first, 2006

🦋 Inside Man

I just got back from watching Inside Man with Ellen. (Sylvia is away at her first sleep-over! Yay!) It was a good movie -- I thought so anyways, Ellen was not as happy with it. Which is funny in a way, because I went there prepared not to like it and Ellen was predisposed to enjoy it, I think -- it was her choice of movie, and she likes Spike -- whereas I have never (before tonight) watched a Spike Lee joint that I enjoyed without reservation.

I think the crux of our difference in opinion, was the plausibility of the story. Neither of us found the plot to be very believable; for Ellen this interfered with her focussing on the movie, but not for me. I was able just to open up and let the movie pour into me unfiltered, and I loved it. Will it stay with me? Not sure. But it was an excellent movie viewing experience.

posted afternoon of April first, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about The Movies

Thursday, March 30th, 2006

🦋 Indigenous languages

A statistic, from the opening chapter of Guns, Germs and Steel, to make the mind reel: of roughly 6,000 known human languages, 1,000 are spoken only on the island of New Guinea. This seems incredible to me; but Teofilo, who knows more of these things than I, confirms that it is straight up. Some Googling brings up a list of Papua New Guinean languages, and there are certainly a lot. Also the full text of Papuan Linguistics is online in PDF form. Update: there is also about a ton of interesting stuff on PapuaWeb, from beautiful pictures to scholarly articles.

posted evening of March 30th, 2006: Respond
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🦋 Non-fiction

I've never been much of a reader of non-fiction. Maybe part of the reason is I fear writing style like that found in Unequal Childhoods, which I finished the other day -- full of potentially useful information but written in such a way as to stymie concentration in even the most willing reader. But today I started Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel; if the first chapter is any basis for expectation, reading it will be a different story. His voice is clear, engaging, direct.

I've encountered Diamond's name a number of times over the years, mainly referred to by Crooked Timber posters, and always thought his stuff sounded interesting. I'm looking forward to this book. (And I realize on reflection that Crooked Timber has been responsible for encouraging a good deal of my non-fiction reading over the past couple of years.)

Note: Here is a Crooked Timber post with pointers to a wide-ranging controversy about GGS.

posted morning of March 30th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Unequal Childhoods

🦋 Quitter

Yesterday I read The Quitter, Harvey Pekar's new book about his childhood. I've always loved American Splendor and this book is a fine addition. (It actually reminded me quite a bit of the AS movie -- Pekar as a kid in the main story, and Pekar as an old man stepping in occationally to comment.) Lovely art, moving story. Definitely recommended to the Mineshaft crowd, who I think will identify.

posted morning of March 30th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about The Quitter

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

🦋 Joining a band

Tonight I practiced with 13 Scotland Rd, which is Bill Binford on guitar and vocals and Aaron Seglin on harmonica, flute, percussion and vocals. I have jammed with Aaron before at Bob and Janis' house, but had never heard him playing 13 Scotland Rd songs, and never met Bill. The music was just lovely. I played coherent, pretty solos with two of their songs, and less together stuff with a couple of other songs. I did "John Hardy" with Aaron. Anyway -- they were happy enough with what I was doing, to ask me back -- so I will be practicing with them for a while, and if it goes well, performing with them! I'm very excited about this -- I've wanted to be in a band for as long as I can remember.

posted evening of March 28th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Fiddling

Sunday, March 26th, 2006

🦋 That was pretty exciting

Yesterday morning I went to Sylvia's school to help build a garden for the students to cultivate flowers and vegetables. Fun working and meeting some other parents. And by a stroke of luck one of the parents I met was Matt Hauser, drummer for Felt. We got to talking about music and I asked if his band could use a fiddler. He responded pretty enthusiastically and said they were playing at St. James Gate in the evening, I should come by and check it out.

So when I got there, Matt's bandmate Tarquin asked me "Where's your axe?" I hadn't been thinking I was going to play and begged off, but Tarquin talked me into it (pretty easy to do actually.) I drove back home and returned with my fiddle. I ended up playing two songs with them, "Pass You By" by Gillian Welch and "Deal" -- I haven't really figured out how to play into a microphone though, so I was totally inaudible on "Pass You By" -- on "Deal" I was getting it a little better and people in the audience could hear at least some of what I was playing.

Leaving aside the issue of whether anyone off the stage was able to hear it, I was able to keep up with the band and improvised some really nice licks. They asked me to play with them again. (I need to get a pickup!) And: 13 Scotland Rd was in the audience and played a couple of songs at the intermission -- I have jammed with Aaron and have their CD, but have never listened to them live -- they just blew me away! And Bill was interested by what he could make out of my fiddling, and asked me to practice with them.

posted morning of March 26th, 2006: Respond

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