Wait, did I mention, how awesome it was to play in a dome. 
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I love your storytelling so much! Also, cannot really imagine how it is to play in a dome but from your description it sounds like an amazing experience!
The most important thing: you’re playing around, making music, experiencing all these things. Whether it’s frustration, joy, anger, “overthinking” (not sure if that’s a feeling or not, that’s why " " haha) - you seem to be channeling all your emotions into art and that’s what good artists do.
Thanks again for sharing your passion, it always motivates me to pick up my guitar and try and write something.
Glp- lol thanks. Glad to inspire you.
Popped in because
- Frustrated.
Evan (DiSilva) posted The Rainbow Connection. He’s one of my teachers who inspires the heck out of me. Figured I’d refresh it for Play on the Front Porch Day.
There’s a guy who, I’m pretty sure, lives by me somewhere that plays guitar and has a Billy Strings type voice going on. Fairly certain he almost confronted me when I had JUST come outside a week ago and I was trying to get my guitalele tuned from the weather.
I thought I heard his wife say “Sounds like she’s still taking lessons.” -which I am! BUT! I felt really pissed someone might be judging my playing completely by what I sound like freaking tuning a grouchy guitar complaining it was outside.
So I just did a few fancy sounding rolls and junk real quick before they turned the corner, and the guy abruptly stopped and turned around, and I immediately stopped and silenced the guitalele. To which he turned back around and walked on the way they had been going with his wife.
All I could think of was “Oh F—!” I didn’t think THAT would happen. It’s also probably the same guy that was playing to all the kids on the bar’s patio I saw.
It would be kinda nice to be able to play with someone
Other reason for popping in:
Saw This.
THAT IS COMPLETELY INSANE!
Not only is there so much wrong with everything about that article, the sheer absurdity added to the way I feel about censorship is my “trigger.” If a boss EVER confronts me about some insane snowflake issue like a professional correspondence term, I’m Immediately telling my boss I am taking a “time out,” to which I would spend chain smoking.
Prob would have edited this WAY more. Posted 2x accidently, so ya’ll got a raw rant which should have been a draft. Needs to be ranted about though. This particular aspect of the current movement is being handled so WRONG!
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Forgot music update stuff. (Other than trying to do something with the melody of Rainbow Connection and two chord shapes.)
I noticed a higher amount of weird junk I’m doing subconsciously recently. Like me dismissing the arpeggio thought the other day. It’s the annoying learning that crops up and I go wtf? It’s like me trying to learn the names of the notes on the fretboard. Nope. But yet I played all those A’s and was just like yeah whatever it’s just something that isn’t a big deal, but I couldn’t name or ID it 2 seconds earlier.
This should get you inspired glp-.
Fast forward to 8 minutes and watch till he starts at least. It was prob already posted somewhere here I’m sure, but if you didn’t see John handling technical difficulties: 
Had a big think about “fame.” I decided there’s two major types for me. Both types share the fact the famous person is an expert in their field. The second type is the “famous” that brings magic into someone’s life.
There’s a handful of people out there that I’d completely loose my shit over meeting. For whatever reason, those people did something I connected to on a deep level, and emotionally I made them a shrine. I’m assuming when someone thinks of fame, this is the first kind that comes to mind for a big majority of people.
Then there’s the famous that means I’ve heard of someone because they’re experts in their field, and I’m interested in that field. This is anyone. Any person who’s been in exposed in media for something they did, made, or figured out. Sports people, doctors, vets, musicians, actors, businessmen, etc.
Regardless of media exposure of any particular person, there’s a big difference between the two types of “famous” in my head.
I’m sure everyone knows someone in the “famous” category, but I bet no one ever thinks of that person as famous maybe because it’s someone you need to deal with daily. Your boss could be a world class something, and is known worldwide because they are on TV, but to you, they’re just your boss, and no one particularly any more special than anyone else.
That leads into the questionable category… The person is famous, but no one in the room knows who you are, category.
Personally, I’ve only “met” one famous musician. The person was an extremely unpleasant person, and if I was a fan of theirs, I would have stopped being one by the time they left the house. Because of that encounter I can spot famous musicians I never want to meet… I mean, I’d get their autograph, and respect their art still, but as people, no thanks.
So I’m not sure I appreciate fame properly. Is it just the magical people?
1.) Another amazingly talented artist friend I knew from high school died somewhat recently. My friend isn’t dealing with it well.
2.) I settled for fame is just experts I’m aware of btw. That was an unfinished accidental post due to the horrible GIANT reply button as well as the trash button right where I’m actively typing. (I have to figure out how to move the stupid buttons up to the top.)
- October 15th, 2018 is my anniversary of starting to play ukulele. I received my little purple $12 ukulele today on the 13th from Amazon, but didn’t do anything but keep trying to tune it for a couple days. I found RockClass101, learned the Walking Dead theme, got a cheap suction cup pickup and posted my first “whole song.” So cringey, but I am still super proud I did that in two weeks. I had a boatload of fun pitching my voice in Audicity to sound like a zombie saying; Happy Halloween!
(And REALLY TRYING to play Moon, but I could only play the first two pages gimping, and Evan is amazing, so yeah. Didn’t play Moon two weeks into ukulele lmao. Bet I might be able to now if I found the tab after 4 years. (One being a pretty intensive quarantine year)
Then I got here after waking up after being super sick and instantly decided I was ready to learn guitar with the poor tiny acoustic with the broken neck. Well… there. The other forum, but I need to pull info out of my other roadcase to get my guitar anniversary.
So… 4 years combined between the two. I really should record progress this month at least. I was thinking of seeing if I could learn something in 2 weeks again, but with everything going on, it probably won’t happen.
Btw- If you decide to send cake, I really enjoy a nice lemon cake with French buttercream, or chocoflan…
And finally:
- With Justin going on about transcribing being important, I figured I’d give it a more proper go than my string of numbers that I understand. (If I know how the song goes… why care if it’s written right, since I only use it to jot something down if I don’t record it.)
After a lot of internal struggling I decided to write down the thing I was noodling with since it was simple. Got 8 bars of that, with a plan. I’m thinking of tossing it in the Collab section and see what happens… Probably should look in that section of forum before writing this, but meh.
Getting stuck on the noodle, a bit of time passed. I started to transcribe Catch and Release because it was easy, and Billy didn’t go all bluegrass crazy. Now I know the words “easy”, and “transcribe” don’t go together at all. I’m just talking about the song.
I am only to the fill? at the 5 second mark at the end of what so far, is my 4th bar. Gotta write stuff out that I can, and go from there.
For how much time it took me to 1) Hear it. 2) Find what I think is going on somewhere. 3) Learn to play it somewhat close to whatever it is that I think I hear in order to tell if it sounds kinda right. 4) Write it down, involving a lot of “now wtf was I just playing again? Where is that now in a spot that makes sense?”
Actually helped me realize more stuff I didn’t know I knew, actually sank in somewhat. 
Getting myself to be able to continue is the $100,000 question.
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Love your updates, Becky. I really appreciate the fact that you share the unvarnished thoughts unreservedly here, even if some of the posts are ‘birthed prematurely’ here.
I especially found your thoughts about fame and the famous interesting. I think one can throw the word ‘celebrity’ into that. A local singer, Karen Zoid, has a song that mentions a song about continuity announcers on TV being celebrities and ‘famous’, which is a little ridiculous if you think about it.
Anyhow, good to hear from you. Keep making your music.
Hi Becky, good luck with your transcribing exercises.
Hiya Becky
Always good to read your histoire and musings. I have a 3rd category for Famous and I am sure we all could reel of many who fall into it. Those famous for being complete wazzocks, numpties or downright buffoons. They will be on your list to avoid but invade our life’s everyday.
This is an edit. That …f…rrrrraaahhhh!!!.. mo-POST button!!!
How do I move it!!! Please help me!!!
I’ll put the humorous thing here that caused the “uh uh uh uh”, as a fast placeholder people might enjoy, to get rid of the mandatory number of characters needed to delete an accidental post.
Here it is:
I need to go to the store and buy…
Centrum Adult 50+ Politically correct, non gender specific vitamins.
Thank you very much, as far as I’m aware, I wrote that lol.
I’m 97% sure I will be unable to resist finding the nearest employee and asking for them just, like, that now… because… Lmao. Straight face delivery is going to be important, I think…
Now if you’re unfamiliar with Centrum Vitamins, stare at a stocked row of Centrum 50+ trying to figure out which one to pick for someone, and the joke writes itself when they school you on formulary differences for an hour after picking the wrong one.
Before anyone in the current gender movement gets offended, Just don’t be. If someone can’t make fun of any movement’s propaganda, there’s a problem. If you’re using the word “trigger” in your head while reading about non-gender specific vitimins, I’d be willing to dust off my censorship battle-gear and saddle up my trusty mount Free Speach if anyone wants a good harmless war? 
Off to see the reaction… And I’ll fix my actual post at some point…
Hey Becky, not sure if joking about gender movements would count as ‘political’ and be something we’d prefer to avoid here in the Community. Irrespective of that and the degree of harmlessness in a war of verbals, that we won’t want here.
Meanwhile, I am not sure if moving the Reply button on the Platform is within our power. There are a few other user experience issues on the list, specifically related to the experience when accessing with a phone.
Happy to help with a post move, just not sure of what you would like to move to where.
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David ty, and it’s the enormous orange REPLY button hovering a millimeter from a place on my on screen keyboard.
If there’s feedback on this stuff, just have someone program in, or turn on the “do you really want to do that?” function.
I need that on reply or there’s going to be a time while I scan what was in whatever I was writing about, and in that-however long reading takes, what shouldn’t be posted in the first place, isn’t being at all filtered.
And fine.
I will no longer write about politically correct, non-gender specific vitamins.
My censorship flag is a-flying and my warhorn is a-blowing with the squelch though because it’s rediculus.
Justin said songs are ok.
You REALLY need me to make a jingle about politically correct, non-gender specific vitamins to use it?? 
Seriously??? If you’re serious, I totally will.
I get the why of the annoyance possibility, but that’s mine. I’m using it. Not mad, at anyone. Really don’t want to get kicked out of here either, but if it comes down to being kicked over that, let me know now so I can just go find somewhere else to journal about music. I get it.
Thanks Becky, maybe I am slow but now fully understand the point and will share it. I can believe on certain devices with limited screen real estate it could be easy to prematurely hit that button.
I appreciate that keeping to etiquette can be tricky at times. I have seen posts that two me were harmless and other folk found it less so. As such we tend to be more digital and less analogue.
That said, You’ll certainly not get kicked out if you share something that seemed harmless and the moderator consensus is perhaps that it is not harmless enough (that’s a heavy hat to wear). There’d be interaction first, and we’d only kick a repeat offender out for serious transgression of the etiquette.
So please continue to journal about music and I shall take a Centrum to help me relax.
Maybe they do a version for Guitarists ?
Centrum SG for Senior Guitarists 70+
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Lol at the vitamin jabs 
Like I said David, i’m not mad. 
I know you have to do what you do. People get weird about things and customer service is the way to go. Thank god you didn’t challenge me to a piano battle over this… I don’t know how to play piano! 
But, I am 1000000% positive I can offend or annoy every single human being alive or dead, with absolutely NO effort whatsoever! Simply by existing quietly in an area, thinking about something, while watching a patch of flowers blow around in the wind.
It would be a walk in the park for me to alienate the world with a song about shopping.
But it’s actually partly written, so thank you. Who knew I’d be this excited to write an inappropriate, about shopping for vitamins, in defence of an innocent term. Thanks for winding me up. It sparked creativity that was going to be put on hold because I don’t DO lyrics. So I guess wind me up, and watch me go. Lol. (Don’t worry. I won’t slam a link up somewhere in the performance section when I’m done. I’m crazy, but a piece of art, just isn’t a line that would cause me to be intentionally mean to anyone David. I will totally be a smartass though, as long as intent is established, because I’m a backer. If I believe in something, I’m 100% standing behind it, unless someone can convince me otherwise that I’m wrong and doing something that’s hurting someone. But I offered to leave quietly. That should say something. I’m not a psycho. Just maybe a bit activist on strong beliefs.
(Is it because I went to Hell In A Bucket with bagpipes the other night? 
Probably. I did enjoy that unexpected ride.)
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Ok, back to this. (Might as well get this out of the way)
I came on to excitedly share I’m aware I’m doing something! I have no idea what exactly, because of whatever makes me suck at learning anything! But it’s starting! Lol
I came on to actually say,
I approached ear training by doing the spider exercise back on uke. I continued on guitar. The chromatic one that moves up one fret or down, depending on which way you’re headed. Play the 4 frets, move up one, etc. Nothing fancy. I was essentially doing the listening exercise Justin posted so I’d know what sounds were available. (Notes eventually gain characteristics after listening over and over daily, but it takes as long as it takes to learn to hear anything.) I also had hope for the muscle memory, LMAO.
This eventually caused me to just start finding a note somewhere else without thinking about it. Now this drives me crazy. It’s a great thing! But not doing it purposefully is maddening.
The Sting thing.
I honestly stopped on Fragile. It became a leap to mess around improvising over his song. (Sorry Sting, but it’s a really fun song.) Then I was just playing the single line melody all over because basically people said it’s good, if you want the truth.
I’ve been working on playing single line stuff everywhere for quite a while now. It’s not exactly easy in all areas.
I’ve been messing with the micro area? That is something I’ll be messing with for awhile, but having fun with it.
The exciting thing that snuck up on me this morning, was I grabbed my guitar and started messing around. I wasn’t thinking about anything but the song notes and I suddenly realize I’m playing parts using 3 fretted notes. In weird places. Still the melody, but that third finger is finally sneaking in there. Once I realized what was going on, I couldn’t do it again.
Don’t know exactly what that means other than I’m getting the fretboard slowly I guess. I’m hearing whatever it is, and I’m applying something when I’m not paying attention, so, yea? I’m just happy 3 of my fingers joined the party for a few minutes and knew where to go.
It’s kind of sad after 4 years I am still “starting” to feel I can tune my instrument, at least for overtones. It still takes me a tuner to go into green before fine tuning starts. (I need the tuner to make sure I don’t go orange. My clip on tuner is different then FL’s Tuner, so who knows what’s really right.)
Then I talk to perfect pitch people in a chat and find out people with perfect pitch really suck to please. So no matter what I think I hear, I probably have no clue. lol. I just gotta grab my slide, hope for the best, and just go for it… (Fist bump to whichever pp person made me laugh one night. It made me ask why they were heckling, and got me thinking why they’re fans if something drives them so crazy. Same reason I’m friends with my friends who drive me crazy.
That got me thinking about that weird mob mentality in people and pack instinct in dogs. That leading back to music, and emotion. (And to old school AD&D’s bard class specs and game design… Because I’m a nerd)
Interesting stuff. Weird interesting stuff though to me. When I lost faith in humanity and music died in me, It might be that I just hate mob mentality. I mean, everything else in my music past really sucked except our grade school’s pretty awesome Popcorn performance with blacklights and stuff in the 70’s. But faced with that mob mentality… when I really needed anything but that, at the time… Hmm.
Oh, and today’s Tomo video on Wes Montgomery octaves. That helped a bit with Lee Ritenour’s Wes Bound, I like. The thumb explanation helped me link string accents with what I do with my right hand vs the strum sound he’s making. So thank you Tomo. I really just want to try to play jazz songs at this moment because I enjoy them, not because I’m ready for jazz, or any genre for that matter lol.
On Justin- I don’t know who wound up Justin, but nice man! He mentioned pushing himself singing over involved fingerstyle, but the added bits of stuff to the song performance videos, and other bits and bobs is pretty exciting. He just really has to stop having yearly finger smashing anniversaries now lol. I tried counting out loud again while I’m playing anything and it becomes 1,1,1,1 very quickly. So all you all who sing and play, my respect for the skill goes out to you all. Once my horrible real voice starts drowning out any sounds that I like, that I’m trying to think of, it’s over for me. It’s also a skill I don’t personally need at this time considering I’ve been focused on making everything that has lyrics in it an instrumental solo thing. (Well, trying to figure out how anyway lol!) So I’m going to keep on trying to get there. Talking over fingerstyle is definitely the next level for me. Counting to 4 successfully 3 times in a row is hard enough with my brain playing a song while I’m trying to physically do whatever, and not sound overly terrible, and stay relaxed and focused.
Ok 24 pages of text is plenty of babble, but this was my original intention before I needed to respond on the Phrase That Should Not Be Named, that should not be named, first. Lol.
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I just love your posts, Becky, the totally open and natural way you share your thoughts, what you are doing, the progress, the associations.
Always sounds to me like you are making great progress, doing far better from where I sit than maybe your own self-assessment. I guess that’s another fairly normal, common human thing.
And my feelings always seem on the money to me when I listen to any of the recordings you’ve shared in the past. They always sounded pretty good to me. But hey, maybe my inner judge is pretty clueless and declares things to be sounding good that it shouldn’t.
Take it easy, keep doing your thing!
I’m saying thank you to someone I’ll never see or hear about in advance.
Before seeing any results of what, out of deep respect to the music community, n my one remaining musical hero that’s magic, please let yesterday’s cleanup be a sign you finally heard me. 
I love you. Edited to add, YOU who did something YOU are MY family
Please disregard the prior text.
I went to the Family in Chicago. I was so shocked at people. I cried out I need you, and everyone and everything I encountered that night, made me feel unwelcomed and unloved. Music DIED in me. Something I wanted more than anything, but life funneled things to stop me. I finally said FINE LIFE. YOU WIN. I’ll settle into a life of suck until I die.
I grab some instruments start learning how to music, (it’s worded like that intentionally btw) Bobby’s brand pops up randomly on my feed. I learn people saying they’re Family, are either liars telling good stories, (all good w me) or what was said to me is true last night.
Since someone working directly with NugsNet has sitewide channel moderated me for standing up and speaking for the sea of people directly affected by the bug.
I accept that. It’s sad, but I accept that. I try to explain to chat people what I was trying to accomplish by attempting to get anyone officially connected with the tour, to fix a bug affecting 100’s of thousands of people worldwide perhaps. I make a desperate plea to my former sound guy and the entire YouTube sound community to contact Bobby’s crew.
I get ereased, heavily modded, ignored, and told I’m being wang. Someone said to me tonight in angry warning everyone hates me in almost those terms, and someone representing my hero’s brand, and every single deadhead watching chat. Saw my plea to make a miracle happen.
What I asked the 200+ family there to do was relay a bug to staff. There’s proof of people asking who aren’t ereased.
To solve 100’s of thousands of people’s bug, I straight out said, when directly asked why I was being a troll last night. I responded to get someone to fix the bug. It should be easy, just needing a knob tweak maybe? I alienated the sound community.
Not 1 person, twice now, has been remotely supportive of me. I stick up for a guy I understand by saying goodnight, but please stop being annoying, then immediately get ripped apart by the mob.
Except this time I was told my hero, his band, and everyone associated with the Dead, doesn’t care about me, or any other polite person in chat asking about this issue.
We get: The audio streams are free, and sound beautiful, so if you can’t hear any band audio. Be Grateful you don’t get to enjoy any bit of the next 4 hours of your life and say thank you to everyone for nothing. If you don’t, we will ban you.
I didn’t shut up. I get told I’m a buzz kill, go away, I’m not welcome. I did. And was nice about it.
I am going to Dropbox audio and/or video that I am going to record on my camera, of the professional mix everyone is politely being told all of us should be thankful we have access to, and how beautiful the sound is.
If I can record 4 hours of anything on my camera I’d like to propose a challenge to every single person who considers themselves “family.”, Anyone who considers themselves a true loyal fan OR friend to any member of the band involved:
If I can copy full shows of what I, and thousands of others are hearing, and stick them in dropbox.
Anyone who can listen to the full shows I hopefully can provide, start to finish, including breaks, while hopefully watching real time live chat, to line up with appropriate areas that were deleted of my desperate plea.
All the shows, spending full attention on the show and chat. Anyone who can honestly do that with the audio I provide, and not lie about it. Those people. That’s my family. The ones that sat with the band, listening to THAT, with, other then me, or any responses towards my actions, in otherwise unaltered chat.
Listen to the full show strait though as if it were live. For at least a week, one show daily, to line up with how many days I asked nicely, if not frustratingly, not ever repeating a phrase in any way, other than to explain what we hear, and maybe boo-ing 2x in a row 1x.
Until family told me to shut up, the band doesn’t care about any of us because we use a cell phone with a particular mono? speaker set up. We aren’t allowed to enjoy a free show because we don’t have money? Did I miss something? Has that always been that way?
Anyway people mod this. I don’t care anymore, but please don’t erase this. If you make changes just tell me why in a PM.
Goodnight. At least I know where I stand now. If someone makes a shirt I’ll wear it proudly to stand behind every one of my actions.