Saw this today. It’s mostly encouraging I guess. I don’t sound like I want, but I sound so much better than I did a year ago. So I’m on the steep part of the curve, which can only be good.

I want to hold onto the feeling I had last week. I definitely had it on Friday when I played my regular show; I was all amped up just from a rehearsal for my Saturday show. And Monday I still had it but it had faded a little. Tuesday I channeled it into solitary playing – practice or shedding or whatever. I want to put the feeling to paper [/web] before it evaporates and I go back to living in darkness (unlikely)… Continue reading →

Been quiet for a while because I could feel something on the horizon and didn’t want to overthink it. Well I crested that point on the horizon this weekend. Also yesterday was the first day out of my entire life – except maybe when I got a guitar for Christmas as a kid – when I just sat down to play music for the fun of it. Didn’t feel any compulsion or guilt or anything – just pure musical experience.

Here’s a post I made on a web forum about my experience.

Continue reading →

My wife and I like to laugh at intellectuals who collect six syllable words like choice artifacts. There’s something about that magic 6 that really captivates the mind of the blowhard. So I submit decompartmentalize as a choice neologism for all you collectors. Continue reading →

Before I start trying to encode what I’m accomplishing with my Tonal Recognition Woodshed, here’s a quickie demo of how I currently go about adding to my tonal vocabulary.  Continue reading →

Music Learning Theory is a little like reformed theology: it is a well reasoned, comprehensively vetted system of understanding that you pretty much already understood from stumbling through the subject on your own. Just as with good, learned theological resource, the precise knowledge of the very nature of the subject imparted by MLT makes a huge difference in practice.  Continue reading →

I already got sidetracked. I hatched the idea to study every tune I could recall that is based on the “1950′s changes” – i.e. I vi IV V, that is either a standard or still in heavy circulation due to newness. So I made a novelty song that mashes up all of the following, complete with smarmy, Wolfman-type voiceover: Continue reading →

In another post I just wrote that television is a substitute for consciousness; it struck me that I’d never thought of it quite that way before, and I am currently combing my memory for things I’ve read to that effect. I did read Amusing Ourselves to Death when that book was hot – maybe that idea was explored there? I remember Susan Sontag talked about being transported into the world of a photograph in On Photography. Continue reading →

Added a tuner to the blog.