my ukulele progress

[ripock]

I'm juxtaposing the familiar pentatonic minor (E G A B D) with an Asian pentatonic: the Hirayoshi (E F# G B C).

I'm pursuing a few different strategies.

1. melodizing with each scale
2. using chords using the scales' tones, such as E minor
3. pattern picking using double-stops. For the hirayoshi the open G and C strings are in key, so that I can finger the appropriate notes on the E and A strings and make open chords. With the minor pentatonic, it is just the opposite. The open E and A are in key and the two bass strings need to be manipulated

 

[ripock]

I submitted my grades and school's out 'til August. I'll have more free time to fill up with ukulele. I am looking for a weekend job because it just seems wasteful to have Saturdays and Sundays free but without any income incoming.

I defrosted some pork chops for my wife which I had cut from a slab of pork. I just a quick little marinade. I threw together some black pepper, butter salt, lime juice, garlic, smoked paprika, Ceylonian cinnamon, bouquet garni, and olive oil. That should do the trick.

I was fussing around with the chords derived from my Hirayoshi scale. I was using Em, CΔ7, Bsus4, Esus2, Eadd9. I wasn't quite satisfied because there's a chord I am wanting which I cannot name. I'll know it when I hear it but at this point in time there's just a whole in my song waiting for that lost chord to return to its place.

 

[bbkobabe]

Lucky!

I still have four weeks to go... just got back from a few days in the wilderness with my Class 8... Quite an adventure... learning how to build fires, create and sleep in improvised shelters, walk safely in the dark and make a way through a dense forest while blindfolded.

While there, it rained, snowed, hailed, and froze down to 24 degrees. One evening it was, what I would call "sugar snowing", cubic grains about 1mm on a side falling heavily. Anybody know that this is actually called? It wasn't graupel... It was like sand falling from the sky...

My pre-built shelter, which most resembled a backyard fence with a cedar bark roof on top of it (and not much of an improvement over being out in the open) was rimmed with icicles one morning. It was named the Grizzly House, but when it started raining I renamed in The Colander. Small drips everywhere. It took 3 sleeping bags and a tarp to stay warm and dry. I haven't been that cold for a long while. The kids weren't cold at all... I probably wouldn't have been either it I was still 14. They absolutely loved it!

I kept thinking: "I'm getting too old for this". During our stay in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, I managed to:

*Crack my head on one of the roof beams of the colander house, giving me a weekend long head ache and a large bleeding welt on my head
*Fall on an icy rock making left my shoulder hurt so bad I could hardly lie on it
*Sleep just a few hours a night while adjusting my sleeping arrangements, and...
*Being woken up by my students walking around in the dark forest chatting loudly at 2 am
*Driving in near whiteout conditions and being forced to turn around and barely making it back to camp
*Exacerbating my carpal tunnel issues on my left hand to the point I can't currently feel my left pointer finger and thumb

*And: giving a class of 14 year olds an experience they will never forget that they loved and will never forget

Worth it... but I'm starting to feel like I Might be getting too old for this...

 

[Patty]

Lucky!

I still have four weeks to go... just got back from a few days in the wilderness with my Class 8... Quite an adventure... learning how to build fires, create and sleep in improvised shelters, walk safely in the dark and make a way through a dense forest while blindfolded.

While there, it rained, snowed, hailed, and froze down to 24 degrees. One evening it was, what I would call "sugar snowing", cubic grains about 1mm on a side falling heavily. Anybody know that this is actually called? It wasn't graupel... It was like sand falling from the sky...

My pre-built shelter, which most resembled a backyard fence with a cedar bark roof on top of it (and not much of an improvement over being out in the open) was rimmed with icicles one morning. It was named the Grizzly House, but when it started raining I renamed in The Colander. Small drips everywhere. It took 3 sleeping bags and a tarp to stay warm and dry. I haven't been that cold for a long while. The kids weren't cold at all... I probably wouldn't have been either it I was still 14. They absolutely loved it!

I kept thinking: "I'm getting too old for this". During our stay in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, I managed to:

*Crack my head on one of the roof beams of the colander house, giving me a weekend long head ache and a large bleeding welt on my head
*Fall on an icy rock making left my shoulder hurt so bad I could hardly lie on it
*Sleep just a few hours a night while adjusting my sleeping arrangements, and...
*Being woken up by my students walking around in the dark forest chatting loudly at 2 am
*Driving in near whiteout conditions and being forced to turn around and barely making it back to camp
*Exacerbating my carpal tunnel issues on my left hand to the point I can't currently feel my left pointer finger and thumb

*And: giving a class of 14 year olds an experience they will never forget that they loved and will never forget

Worth it... but I'm starting to feel like I Might be getting too old for this...

You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

 

[ripock]

I found the chord I was looking for.

I was at a building whose street address was 4210. If you discount the 0, then 4 cut in half is 2 and 2 cut in half is 1. 421 seemed to be full of ratios. And music is mathematics. Playing 4210 was a bit too much of a stretch. So I moved it up to 8750 and it was just the sound I was looking for--although the '5' and the '0' are the same note and unisons sound weird.

So now I have my Hirayoshi progression which is Bsus4 (rooted on the 2nd fret), CΔ7 (rooted on the 3rd fret), D#° (rooted on the 8th), and Em (rooted on the 4th). Patently D# is not diatonic whatsoever, but I don't care. It was the sound in my head and I'm keeping it.

So now I want to work on doublestops and also partial chords to play in patterns. My plan is to keep the G and C strings open and fret the E and A strings to make very open chords.

I may want to dabble in some pedal point riffs as well.

People say that the sky's the limit. I won't go that far. But I will say the bigas, my roof poles are the limit which give me a good 7 or 8 feet of space to work with.

 

[ripock]

I don't mind paying a few thousand for a baritone or eighty for a broadcloth shirt or seventy for a bottle of Laphroaig, but I had to pay $62.80 for a virtual consultation with my sleep doctor and that rankles me. The appointment lasted for 3 minutes.

Paul Simon once sang that a good day ain't got no rain. But to me a good day hasn't any wind. The last week has been blustery and I'm quite annoyed. It is difficult to manage facial hair or light a pipe or keep the pollen out of my nose. I'll be glad when it gets sweaty hot so that there are no competing wind masses.

I'm still trying to get a handle on my Hirayoshi doublestops/chords. I am familiar with doublestops in 6ths or by using descending doublestops in a blues turnaround, but this is a bit different. They don't sound bad at all but at this point it is all random. I don't have a feel for the sounds although I do like them. It is even nice to play the bass strings open and the treble strings fingered. It makes for a very wide arpeggio. But, as I said, at this point it is just a bit of doggerel as opposed to a sonic poem.

 

[ripock]

Today was shopping day and I picked up a small wedge of rocquefort merely because of the nostalgic value. I don't have any personal memories of rocquefort but it seems like it comes from a bygone day when people were reading the Better Homes & Gardens or Julia Child and making things like chicken à la king or steak Diane. Those things are rather rare and the rocquefort people certainly haven't been very aggressive with their PR.

What I didn't buy was some tempeh. The list of ingredients was a mile long. It may have less fat than a bacon cheeseburger, but the latter actually looks less processed. When I was eating veganly for years I never ate soy products because I tended to eat whole foods and nothing seems less whole than a brick. I once bought some whole soy beans and I remember it tasting nasty. When I see that something has wheat or soy, I turn the other way because that means you're entering into the realm of Food Inc. and processed foods.

I am making progress with my Hirayoshi scale. I making very open chords like 0089. The combining of the low and high notes is pleasing. If you pinch the inside strings first and move to the outside strings it sounds a bit pensive and eerie. Pinching the outside first sounds more melodic. Most of the tricks work with the chords as well--such as moving 3 frets above the target notes and then chromatically descend in triplets.

At this point I am just going by pitch. I'll be playing low and then decide I want something high and move to the 14th fret. And it sounds good but not as premeditated as I would like.

 

[ploverwing]

What I didn't buy was some tempeh. The list of ingredients was a mile long.

Weird. Tempeh is just cultured/fermented soybeans. There shouldn't be anything other than soybean & starter culture in the ingredients. But if you're not able to eat soy, then yeah, not a good choice. Looks like (from the linked recipe) you can make it with anything pulse or grain related. I am interested to try. A friend of mine made natto and I really liked it.

I don't mind paying a few thousand for a baritone or eighty for a broadcloth shirt or seventy for a bottle of Laphroaig, but I had to pay $62.80 for a virtual consultation with my sleep doctor and that rankles me. The appointment lasted for 3 minutes.

Value for investment is severely skewed on that appointment.

 

[Oldscruggsfan]

I found the chord I was looking for.

I was at a building whose street address was 4210. If you discount the 0, then 4 cut in half is 2 and 2 cut in half is 1. 421 seemed to be full of ratios. And music is mathematics. Playing 4210 was a bit too much of a stretch. So I moved it up to 8750 and it was just the sound I was looking for--although the '5' and the '0' are the same note and unisons sound weird.

So now I have my Hirayoshi progression which is Bsus4 (rooted on the 2nd fret), CΔ7 (rooted on the 3rd fret), D#° (rooted on the 8th), and Em (rooted on the 4th). Patently D# is not diatonic whatsoever, but I don't care. It was the sound in my head and I'm keeping it.

So now I want to work on doublestops and also partial chords to play in patterns. My plan is to keep the G and C strings open and fret the E and A strings to make very open chords.

I may want to dabble in some pedal point riffs as well.

People say that the sky's the limit. I won't go that far. But I will say the bigas, my roof poles are the limit which give me a good 7 or 8 feet of space to work with.

Wow! Is that a bigas tent, or do you have a pole supported roof over a horse drawn cart in which you transport a rice cooker?

 

[ripock]

a biga is a localized architectural term. It is a telephone-pole sized log that lies atop your walls and then a roof of planks are nailed to them. I guess it is just an exposed beam except it is a log.

 

[ripock]

I haven't really interacted much this week because the topics aren't floating my boat. There are a couple of tuning a baritone like a soprano or tuning a tenor like a baritone threads. It is illogical because I never play in standard tuning, but these threads motivate me to eyeroll. I acknowledge it is a me problem and I stay out of the discourse.

It is a good time for me because, after two months, my clock is back. It cost just under $500 but my mantle clock has been "overhauled." I don't know what that means but my clock is back and working fine. Hopefully it will last another 30 years, by which time I shall be dead. My clock is kind of the soul of the house. Similar to how other homes center around a TV. I've been living timelessly for about two months. Now the clock is back and I can hear the ticking and the chime every quarter hour.

I am making some new beans. I am using Anasazi beans. They are basically a pied purple/white bean which resembles a pinto bean after cooking. I usually adhere to a few abuelita recipes when making beans. I opted for the vegetarian version this week.

You just put the beans in a pressure cooker with half an onion and a whole bulb of garlic with the top sliced off. After it is cooked, you remove the onion and garlic and separate the beans from the broth. Then you sauté the other half of onion, cut in Brunoise cubes, and add the beans. You mash them. And then you ladle in the broth until you achieve your desired consistency.

Pretty easy. Not as easy as the pork and bean recipe--but easy nonetheless. The house is redolent of onions. It is rather appetizing.

I am still working on my eastern/western pentatonic fusion (perhaps I should say african/japanese) and I'll have more to report soon. I am essentially using the Em chord which they both have in common to join them. And I'm using the ubiquitous AABA format that I learnt from Rhythm Changes. I use the Hirayoshi for the A and the Minor Pentatonic for the B

 

[bbkobabe]

There was a time in my life when I was eating so much tofu and soy products that my breasts started swelling...

I've cut way back these days, and my "moobs" have returned to normal.

 

[Patty]

There was a time in my life when I was eating so much tofu and soy products that my breasts started swelling...

Gee, that's a method I never tried.

 

[ripock]

I made an interesting potato casserole.

I cut a few potatoes into discs and roasted them.

I made a sauce with bacon, onion, and sour cream

I bought two cheese wedges. Manchego and aged gouda

In a pie dish I put down a layer of potatoes, then a layer of sauce, then another potato layer, another sauce layer, and I topped it with the cheeses. When there was a crack between the cheeses I filled it with roquefort crumbles.

I baked it at 375 for a while--'til the cheeses were browned.

I'll let you know about my ukulele progress later.

 

[ripock]

I played for about 90 minutes or so. I primarily used the tonic and subdominant minor pentatonic shape as well as the Hirayoshi scale. The main chords were Em, Bsus4, CΔ, and Esus2b6 which I just made up.

The interesting chord was the CΔ because it is so uninteresting. It is so normal that it sounds abnormal in the context of the others.

As a turnaround I did use some doublestops derived from the Hirayoshi. Oddly enough they were the same shapes that you see with sixths doublestops: xx89, xx77, xx33, and xx22.

Lastly the sus2 was fun because it was a triple barre chord. You barre all four strings, then one fret higher you barre the top three strings, and again one fret higher you only barre the top two strings.

 

[ripock]

Since we had some extra time today at work, we had to clean out the autoclave which is an RV sized tube for sterilizing medical waste. At our elevation it operates at 202 F. So you open it up and step into the breach with a pick axe and chop off all the solid detritus that has accumulated. It takes about half an hour with a team of 7 people rotating in and out lest the heat should overwhelm. I usually work 'til there is so much sweat in my eyes that I cannot see. One piquing circumstance is the boiling water dripping from the top which has a way of finding its way into your shirt collar.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

Since we had some extra time today at work, we had to clean out the autoclave which is an RV sized tube for sterilizing medical waste. At our elevation it operates at 202 F. So you open it up and step into the breach with a pick axe and chop off all the solid detritus that has accumulated. It takes about half an hour with a team of 7 people rotating in and out lest the heat should overwhelm. I usually work 'til there is so much sweat in my eyes that I cannot see. One piquing circumstance is the boiling water dripping from the top which has a way of finding its way into your shirt collar.

Damn that's pretty hardcore

 

[Down Up Dick]

Since we had some extra time today at work, we had to clean out the autoclave which is an RV sized tube for sterilizing medical waste. At our elevation it operates at 202 F. So you open it up and step into the breach with a pick axe and chop off all the solid detritus that has accumulated. It takes about half an hour with a team of 7 people rotating in and out lest the heat should overwhelm. I usually work 'til there is so much sweat in my eyes that I cannot see. One piquing circumstance is the boiling water dripping from the top which has a way of finding its way into your shirt collar.

Boy, ribock, you need a nuther job. I think that would’ve been my last day. A brilliant person like you shouldn’t have a job like that — medical waste? detritus? boiling water? I feel very sorry for you. I hope it pays well.

I’m very sorry if I’ve offended you. I was just really shocked.

 

[ripock]

No offense taken. Maybe my motivation will explain. I wasn't ready to get old. I had been, among, other things working a sit-down corporate job. I was just getting fatter, losing strength and mobility, and I was just acquiescing to the process. So I turned it around by taking a low-level and demanding job. Since the job has a lot of repetitive motions which don't train the whole body, I've also been getting back into my olympic lifting. I've lost about 40 pounds. That's good. Imagine walking around with two bowling balls everywhere you went. Now imagine how much easier it would be without the bowling balls. That's probably how my heart and body feel.

 

[Down Up Dick]

Well, it’s yer life and good luck wid it.

I certainly understand your motive. I’ve lost almost 35 lbs just watching my food intake, but yesterday, I decided to do some sit-ups and begin to rid myself of my still bulgin’ belly. I did one shaky one, and, then, I could hardly get up off the floor. Exercise doesn’t seem to be a forte’ of mine any more — ahh, well, bulging’ bellies are kinda “in” nowadays.