my ukulele progress

[Down Up Dick]

We have a rice cooker. It works really well. When I was in Japan lots of families had rice cookers. One could even buy them in the BX.

I don’t remember the canned chicken, but I’ve seen canned corn on the cob. I’m sure we could go on like this all night.

 

[Down Up Dick]

Ha! What‘s the best ukulele tuning and strum pattern that one should use while waiting for the soup to cook and the bread to bake?

 

[ripock]

Ha! What‘s the best ukulele tuning and strum pattern that one should use while waiting for the soup to cook and the bread to bake?

since we've been expatiating on culinary matters, how about the pineapple, pineapple, apple strum? I picked this up from Stu Fuchs years ago. It is a rumba, samba, maracrena--one of those Latino rhythms terminating in an 'a'

It is a 7 beat strum. You just strum downstroke, upstroke, downstroke, upstroke, ad infinitum.

Once you have that going, say with each strum: pine-ap-ple pine-ap-ple ap-ple

Now stress the first syllable of each word with a more forceful strum

lastly, instead of strumming on the last syllable of apple, mute the strum

That's the pattern and it turns any song or progression into a sassy rhythm. For bonus points, keep your arm swinging up and down but only play the stressed syllables and you'll have a great syncopated rhythm similar to the clave rhythm

 

[Down Up Dick]

Gracis tibi.

 

[bbkobabe]

We used to go on long distance backpacking trips back in the day... it became a thing to see who could pull out the oddest food that could be carried for a week... and then pop it out on the final day... after having been dragged along for a week across the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Bacon in a can was a big hit one year... remember that stuff?

Another time I pulled out a coconut.

My mom would look on in disgust as we planned this foodie surprise. She referred to us as the "Young, strong, and foolish".

Sure with I was still possessed some of those qualities today...

 

[Patty]

We used to go on long distance backpacking trips back in the day... it became a thing to see who could pull out the oddest food that could be carried for a week... and then pop it out on the final day... after having been dragged along for a week across the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Bacon in a can was a big hit one year... remember that stuff?

Another time I pulled out a coconut.

My mom would look on in disgust as we planned this foodie surprise. She referred to us as the "Young, strong, and foolish".

Sure with I was still possessed some of those qualities today...

You’d carry a coconut on a backpacking trip? And presumably a hammer and chisel to get it open? Yeek!

 

[Down Up Dick]

One could open a coconut with a rock or a camp saw or a hatchet, etc . . . but why?

 

[kkimura]

Once you get the husk off there's a way to hit the shell so it breaks into two pieces.

 

[Tin Ear]

You’d carry a coconut on a backpacking trip? And presumably a hammer and chisel to get it open? Yeek!

Coconut is heavy too. You have to like to lug around a heavy pack and have a strong physique !

 

[Patty]

Once you get the husk off there's a way to hit the shell so it breaks into two pieces.

Easy for you to say.

Edit: Sorry for the digression. Back to you, @ripock.

 

[ripock]

I have been bamboozled. I bought a big can of Ghee for $17. In the past the same sized big can cost $36. It is "ghee" made with palm oil instead of butter. I didn't know anything about palm oil. It is processed and therefore not desirable but as far as I can see its main negative point is the ethics of its harvesting and deforestation. The smoke point and cooking qualities probably won't be an issue as long as the flavor is relatively neutral.

I should have known better. There is no such thing as a good deal. Over the years I have run across many a tight wad on this forum and I always wonder how satisfied they are with their cheap instruments. I suppose I could be content with a palm-oil grade of ukulele as long as I didn't know that butter existed. But once I have tasted clarified butter, that genie cannot be put back in the bottle. And once I discovered custom ukes, something like an Ohana just couldn't do.

 

[Tin Ear]

We all get took on food items or meals out at times. Sometimes we don't get what we think we are getting or it doesn't live up to our expectations or what we experienced previously.

 

[Down Up Dick]

As I get older (and older), I find that a lotta stuff “ain’t what it usta be . . .”

 

[ploverwing]

I buy butter bricks and turn it into ghee. It's cheaper: I buy about $40 worth of butter and get about $100 worth of ghee, then I know what's in it, plus I can take it just the tiniest bit too far to get a bit of brown butter essence to the end product.

 

[ripock]

I buy butter bricks and turn it into ghee. It's cheaper: I buy about $40 worth of butter and get about $100 worth of ghee, then I know what's in it, plus I can take it just the tiniest bit too far to get a bit of brown butter essence to the end product.

I had already thought of that but in my area butter and ghee cost about the same, if you don't include the labor and time involved. I'll just have to pay much more attention to the finer print on the labels

 

[Patty]

I can’t imagine ghee made of palm oil. “Clarified palm oil” seems like a contradiction in terms.

 

[ripock]

Everyday on my way to work I pass a center for homeless people with the very appropriate name of Center of Hope. The reason that I have been struck by this is another center I passed in Wake County in North Carolina. It was not so aptly entitled Lighthouse for the Blind. If you took the time, energy, and money to erect a lighthouse for the blind, it would be a complete waste of resources. Blind people could not see the beacon because they're blind. Maybe if someone were merely legally blind they could still discriminate the light from the surrounding darkness but the average blind person could not make use of a lighthouse.

 

[ripock]

I can’t imagine ghee made of palm oil. “Clarified palm oil” seems like a contradiction in terms.

You're right. Palm oil doesn't have milk proteins which need to be clarified to circumvent burning. What I have is probably just palm oil with the word ghee on the tub to trick people like me who don't take the time to read with enough circumspection.

 

[ripock]

I used a spoon of palm oil to cook some lamb and eggs and it seemed to be okay. But I always love my lamb or goat. At my market they aren't butchers. They're just raconteurs with a chain saw. They just slice cross-sections of meat and bone and freeze it in a bag. And it is really cheap. It is always amusing when a karen comes in demanding a certain cut of lamb or for it to be de-boned. Their argument to her is that we have bags of meat, buy it or don't. When the cuts of meat are too bony, you use them for stock. When they're meaty you cook them like steak. I'm doing both, I cook the lamb as steak and pull off all the meat which is convenience and leave the rest of the meat and connective tissue on the bone to make a nice stock.

For music, I was just playing around with the Arabian Riff. After all it is in aiolian mode and therefore amenable to other b3 scales.

For chords I settled on the rather ordinary Em, Am6, B7. Then from the E I would venture into the sub-tonic shape of the minor pentatonic. Then fill in some gaps with the Arabian Riff or something from the harmonic minor family. All these things kind of sound good together, but they also have a few notes betwixt them that grate a bit and call for resolution. So it is all to the good.

Something I still struggle with is transitioning from chords to notes. I don't mean I'm not fast enough. I can make the switch in a heartbeat. My problem is matching them up. The pitches of the chord and of the note are different. I think in my head I want the switch to seem natural and therefore the pitches should be in the same ballpark. Maybe that it is erroneous and if I just go from a chord to a chord tone, that's all that matters. After all it is just a beat in a measure and if I didn't care so much about it, it would be buried in the avalanche of sounds which follow.

 

[Patty]

My husband loves lamb. For several years he was a war correspondent in the Middle East. One day he went to a butcher’s stall in a marketplace and asked for a cut of lamb. The butcher called into a back room, someone brought out a live lamb in his arms, and in a matter of seconds slit its throat, skinned and gutted it and handed it to butcher, who produced the desired cut.

No my husband didn’t become a vegetarian, and he still eats lamb. But he’s never forgotten that scene, and he’s always mindful of where his meat comes from (I’m thinking, “Little lamb, who made thee?”). Did that lamb in the Middle Eastern market have a worse life and death than the ones we see in the grocery store? I don’t know.

I don’t like lamb myself—tastes too gamy. I feel the same about pheasant, duck, and venison.