my ukulele progress

[Tin Ear]

As a side-note. I just got off work and changed out of my sweaty clothes and am sitting in my jockey shorts and my legs are exposed. Maybe it is the lighting but the striations, the muscle separation, the chiaroscuro caused by the muscle mass--I haven't been this fit in 10 years.

Rip is now becoming Ripped ! Get yourself a big stick to fight off all the women.

 

[ploverwing]

I love fresh garden peas. The peas the Brits use don't deserve the moniker.

 

[bbkobabe]

Fresh is best... but a bag of frozen peas is the perfect thing when you bump your head, sprain an ankle, or bruise something.

Every freezer should have one. And in a pinch you could even eat them!

 

[ploverwing]

Every freezer should have one. And in a pinch you could even eat them!

We fresh freeze ours in the summer and enjoy them as a last minute addition to soups and stews all winter long, so they add that little bit of summer freshness. Mmmm.

But if you hate peas, not for you.

 

[ripock]

I like leseuer canned peas. And I don't dislike peas in general...as long as they are used in moderation.

I just listened to a rendition of "Cortez the Killer" and it was awesome. I do love me some Canadians: ploverwing, Neil Young, and Getty Lee.

 

[ploverwing]

Hah!

 

[Down Up Dick]

Nothing like big, fresh peas still in the pod. I can still remember their plink as my mother shelled them into the collander. I’d beg some from her, but they were “for dinner” so I only got a few. Then Dad would come in and get his share, and we were shooed out of the kitchen.

Fresh peas is good!

 

[bbkobabe]

I won't speak for Getty Lee or @ploverwing... but Neil "shakey" Young is one of the few who can utterly trance out and be subsumed into his playing.

There is only one other person who I have seen who experiences this: Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo.

Enter if you dare:

 

[Patty]

Nothing like big, fresh peas still in the pod. I can still remember their plink as my mother shelled them into the collander. I’d beg some from her, but they were “for dinner” so I only got a few. Then Dad would come in and get his share, and we were shooed out of the kitchen.

Fresh peas is good!

When my sister and I were little, like 2 and 4, we’d sneak into the garden and eat peas (pods and all) right off the plants.

 

[ploverwing]

When my sister and I were little, like 2 and 4, we’d sneak into the garden and eat peas (pods and all) right off the plants.

My sister in law used to leave the pods on the plant and strip the peas from them sneakily. Pissed her mom off no end

 

[ripock]

i never realized the relevance of peas. John Lennon said it best:

YouTube

www.youtube.com

I usually hate chicken breasts, but they were on sale. I flattened them with a rolling pin and marinated. I grilled them for my wife's protein and while they were grilling, I was listening to Queensryche's modern rock opera, Operation Mindcrime. I was stomping out the 3/4 time and I think my cat, Lykophron understood. Theory transcends species and language barriers.

 

[Down Up Dick]

Good Lord, ripock, you’re way up there today!

 

[ripock]

Haven't had much to report lately. I have merely been trying, without coherent methodology, of stepping outside of the pentatonic box. Like a lot of people I learned the five pentatonic boxes (well, I have 7--2 at the next octave; well I actually have 14 if I'm playing low G). Anyway, the boxes did serve their purpose but now they are proving a hindrance. Playing within a box tends to sound rather squamous unless you're playing actual blues standards which are given a pass because of their historical role. However new music cannot fall back upon that.

At this point I am just trying to establish new connections by playing, at most, a string or two of pentatonics and then jumping elsewhere. It kind of works except when I jump too far away and then the broad interval of the notes makes it sound random. I am still learning discretion in that regard.

I have to go take my nap before work and I just made breakfast, the only meal I'm eating nowadays. Here's the breakdown:

1. half pound hamburger seasoned with baharat and salt, and a sprinkle of gorgonzola cheese
2. two eggs over easy. I apologize to my French friends who poach eggs in butter, but like the polar bear said after taking a bite of an igloo: it is crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside. I would like a sunny side up egg but it takes too much effort and too much fat to baste the albumen. I just throw some tarragon into smoking fat, add eggs, turn down heat, and flip eggs
3. I put the eggs atop the hamburger and then added green chiles atop the eggs.

 

[ripock]

I don't usually use non-moveable chords for philosophical reasons but I was pleased with a stationary B7 today. The chord in question is 4320. I usually disregard this chord shape because I couldn't play 5431. I suppose I think it is cheating to use the nut.

but I was playing a 1-6-2-5 progression and that B7 seemed to be the sound I was looking for. Often I find the inctrements in a jazz progression to be too subtle and I want more sonic movement. Going from F#ø to B7b9 was on of the instances when the movement is a nuance. Instead I used my unmovable B7 and the sound was better for what I had in my head.

The morale is never to let philosophy get in the way of results.

As for melodizing, I didn't use chomaticism as Bill suggested merely because it isn't working with my head at the moment. Instead, I did a much more easy and somewhat mechanical exercise: string skipping. I don't know what it is exactly but I know guitarists do it. I am assuming that the name of the technique is accurate so I just skipped strings, playing G string then E then C then A. I can see possibilities here, especially if it was done less robotically by repeating/reverting to certain strings. The right hand struggles with this technique a bit as it is used to moving string by string. As I said, I could see using it briefly for a riff but it were overused then it would be a squamous as playing scales.

 

[Oldscruggsfan]

My sister in law used to leave the pods on the plant and strip the peas from them sneakily. Pissed her mom off no end

Until now, I've remained silent on the subject of peas. Though I can take or leave the soft, thin- skinned, bright green variety that I assume Ron is disparaging (I tend to refer to those as "English" or "Sweet"), I very much enjoy the firmer consistency of Crowder peas, brown field peas and both black-eyed and pink-eyed. I'd never heard of or tried the latter until a 2022 visit to Jaemor Farms near Lula, GA but am now a confirmed fan even though I otherwise avoid anything associated with the contagious malady of the same name (conjunctivitis).

Peas occupy a special place in my heart for another reason. When our now-28-y-o daughter was around 3 or 4, she drew a cartoon featuring animated peas and named it "Whirled Peas", a toddler variation on World Peace. Even today, I think she should turn that into a children's book.

Back to uke, earlier today I downloaded the original version of "It's Only A Paper Moon" thanks to the genuinely wonderful work-in-progress "Cliff Edwards Project" by @BigJackBrass. It's now painfully obvious why my attempts during the past two weeks to master the tune have been dismayingly unsuccessful, despite indulgent and exceedingly patient help, audio recordings, backing tracks and painstaking guidance from @Renaissance-Man, @Canada Jim and @AZChris. Problem was, I'd made the silly error of over-trusting my infantile musical knowledge by manually transposing an arrangement from Key of G to Key of C. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I screwed it all up. There, I said it.

As the saying goes, "back to the drawing board". I have, however, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by having come very close to mastering a fully- picked Key of C arrangement of Randy Newman's "You've Got A Friend In Me", intro, chorus, tempo and all, by which I've checked a long-empty "to-do" box in the creative/happy lobe of my little brain.

 

[ripock]

As an appeasement, let me say I like field peas and crowder peas. I can tolerate English peas (the lime green ones). I actually like the baby peas which are a subdued pale green such as these

 

[Oldscruggsfan]

Ap-peas-ment, indeed. Touche’, Ron!

 

[ripock]

I was watching a Grace Potter video on Youtube. It wasn't because of the music, to which I am rather indifferent, but the setting of the video. It was filmed at a diner which enjoys the patronage of my wife and I. So it was fun.

What wasn't fun was then watching a French cooking video that defies all reason. The recipe called for a roasted bell pepper. The cook charred the pepper on the stovetop and then dipped the pepper in water and scraped off the char!!

Isn't that like baking and icing a chocolate cake, and then scraping off the frosting? Why put it there in the first place? I pay about $7 a bottle for my favorite green chile or my tomatillo sauce because it is flame-roasted. St. Therese church on 2nd street backs up traffic because it is administering a chile roast-off with the proceeds going to charity. In the fall even my market has a big tank of propane and a hand-cranked bingo cage within which the chiles are roasted.

So, yeah, who doesn't like blacked chiles and peppers? But why go through the trouble and then abrade the results off the vegetable. The french are demented.

 

[ripock]

I know. People used to think I was weird because I would eat raw capsica. I would start at the bottom and circle up to the top until nothing was left but the stem and all the seeds hanging off the stem.

 

[ripock]

I haven't been playing too much lately as I have been acclimating to the CPAP nose-device that I am required to use by my new job. So I have been working and sleeping.

I have been zoning out with a rather pedestrian blues progression of Em, Am7, B7sus4 with some chromatic fills between the chords. Over the chords I was playing some pentatonics and a few modes. My goal was to not stay within my scale patterns but to move around the fretboard. It has been somewhat successful.

My wife told me that Heinz is going to merchandise a blend of ketchup and ranch dressing...or 1001 Island dressing as I called it. I just shook my head and said "What a world."

I have never had a bottle of either in my house due to philosophical (classist) reasons and because I don't eat food upon which you would slather goop.

I suppose the only condiments I have in the house are my homemade curry mustard, Worchestershire sauce, and Bunster's hot sauce. That isn't to say that I am Spartan (even though I do enjoy bucolic poetry which employs a lot of Doric dialect); I just create flavor during the cooking process with garam marsala, bakharat, zaatar, tarragon, red chile and tomatillo suspensions, and green chile chunks.