Triumph

a picture to help me remember what they are supposed to look like

I wish I could say these were for my new barn find vintage motorcycle but they are for the garage...some kind of Triumph convertible they're working on. The diaphragms were shot and the pistons were stuck. These petty accomplishments are how I spend my days. Stromberg 175 CD-2

old but servicable

Cool Guitarist Needs More Hobbies

god please send me a job so I can occupy my time more productively

Honestly, I bought a jazz guitar masterclass cd-rom method and it might be the final piece of the puzzle. No single method has explained everything but between the ten different methods I've looked at and the hundreds of hours studying the constellations for philosophical correlations I've actually figured something out.

There are two main positions that matter and every pro guitarist uses them. One is called Aeolian...the other is called Phrygian...if you can't switch between the two effortlessly, which is actually childishly easy once you understand what has to be done, and if you can't play in the Aeolian position but then visualize that you will now be playing the Phrygian position of another key, without moving your index finger, then you are faking it. Every method basically adds up to that fundamental skill: visualizing simple scale formations and then either moving up or down the neck to play a different position of the same key or visualizing a new scale pattern beginning in the same position you already are playing in but in a new key. If you can do it for the two positions mentioned then you can do it with the remaining 3 positions. They are all based on chords you learn in the first week of guitar CAGED. The Aeolian position is based off the G major chord and it's called Aeolian because your index finger on the 6th string sits on the 6th scale degree of whatever key you decide to play in. And the Phrygian position is based off the C major chord and it is called the Phrygian position because your index finger on the 6th string sits on the 3rd scale degree of whatever key you decide to play in. Boom!

It's totally basic (it takes a single paragraph to explain) but everyone from Mel Bay to Joe Pass to Chet Atkins to Steve Vai all manage to confound the simplicity behind redundant scales and often totally ignore the obvious visualization skills you need...so no one ever learns how to play. This supports my theory that masters of playing an instrument may have forgotten how they learned to play and probably have no idea how you will learn to play. Ask Robert Deniro to teach you how to speak English. Even this excellent Jazz method book explains half of it and then fails to point out that the formations are based off basic chord formations. Hell, that guitar solo in the Take me Back to Tulsa song is almost all based off these two positions overlapped in the 9th position. Maybe this is one of those hidden benefits of my mild autism...so I'm happy to share it with the world as long as you don't make fun of me for posing shirtless with my guitar.

Cuatro Milpas

only four corn patches remain at the ranch that used to be mine
of the little house , so white and beautiful not even a wall is left.
if you would lend me your eyes, brown woman
with the heart that they see no more
the rubble of that little house so white and beautiful.
how sad it is.


Do not be lured by the merry melody...the song is of drought and death...and it's possible that even the woman he is speaking to is a ghost. I think I was in the right frame of mind when I first played this in La Paz, admiring the rubble of the fictitious romance that I'd cultivated...speaking to ghosts, loving shadows...but there is a verse that isn't included in my songbook...it's one of hope that since the brown woman or ghost is still with the narrator then he hasn't lost everything. Remembering the four corn patches that only remain of that grand hacienda, I realize that I have lost nothing, since you are here with me. That's what matters. undefined http://lyricstranslate.com Read more at http://lyricstranslate.com/en/las-cuatro-milpas-four-corn-patches.html#lVvfvCBHCOTYlMrr.99

Summertime

After a near electrocution I've taken some tips from my jobs. It'll be no accident if I survive much longer.

Call Oggy for expert furnace repair as long as it was manufactured in 1955

Summertime in March means making the furnace Joe-proof...so I disconnected all the heater terminals and taped them up and wired it for air conditioning only. 94 degrees and climbing...200,000 years from now some alien will surely locate our graveyards and mine our bones for fuel to run their air conditioners and it''s totally what we deserve.

Get Your motor Running

This is a never ending battle with the ghost of communist bloc nations. The starting and drive clutches seem to be engaged when they shouldn't be. and this leads to other problems..such as the near amputation of one finger when I strayed too close to the flywheel. I actually took the drive clutch out and it still turns the back wheel. That's a bad sign since that means the starting clutch/flywheel is slightly engaged with the transmission at all times...which means it won't stay running if you stop. Could this be the idle speed too high or something else? But if I lower the idle speed then it dies all together.