I received my second covid vaccination. I don't see what all the fuss is about. Yes, I was feeling a bit run-down. Then I took a nap. So much for side-effects.
A theme that has popped up a few times in my life recently has been the struggle against what is natural. I bought this horrible cheese whose brand name was Cabot. It was rubbery and lactose-free. So it was a non-dairy dairy product. WTH is wrong with people? If you don't/cannot eat dairy, then don't eat dairy. You can't have it both ways. Of course, I also saw something along these lines on the forum. Someone wanted to take GCEA strings, loosen them to DGBE and have them as tight as they were in standard tuning. WTH? Loose strings have a timbre. If you don't want that, then don't loosen your strings. One of the many reasons to appreciate someone like Kimo Hussey is how he accepts a ukulele and understands the nature of that particular instrument and cooperates with it instead of fighting it and forcing it to do something it isn't meant to do. And I actually try to practice acceptance myself. I purposely shop at a little corner market because it doesn't have all the variety that a supermercado has. It has produce and it has meat and it has some dry staples like beans. Shopping there you don't get everything you want, but you get everything you need. It is good practice, especially in this age where the entire society curries to our sense of entitlement.
As I mentioned earlier. I have accepted a corporate job with a lot of responsibility. My purlieu will be all of California and I am in the midst of a three-week training session. So I'm not getting a lot of ukulele time. But I am still moving forward with my musical plans. I randomized and received the number 7. So I'm not focusing on the 7th degree of my scale as a pivot point. For me, that's the D#. Patently, there are a few clear advantages to D#, despite it being the leading tone of the scale. Firstly, it is part of the D# dim7 arpeggio, so that I can move around with it. And since it is the leading tone, it wants to resolve up to the E.
Just to re-iterate, the point isn't to go from the D# super lokrian bb7 down to the C Lydian #2; that's too easy and too obvious. In that case you're just uniting two shapes--which is important, but not what I am intending. My goal is to almost create a new shape by pivoting on the D# in the middle of a shape. For example, using the D# that's in the middle of the B phrygian dominant to jump down to the middle of the A Dorian #11. That creates a new sound. When you jump from the beginning/end of a shape, then it just sounds like you're playing two shapes back to back. When you jump from the middle, it seems somewhat random and more fluid.
So, as always, the set-up is the same. I have 14 shapes to work with. 7 from the G string (linear tuning) and 7 from the C sting (re-entrant). Every shape has a D#. The key is to be cognizant of that fact and use the D# as a spring-board.
Where, oh where are my D#'s? G8, C3, C15, E11, A6, A18. Okay. Now for the practice. The thing that makes this exercise so valuable is the discipline it forces on you--the discipline to always know where a certain note is regardless of the scale you're playing.