Fellow Musicians!!

Off Topic!!!
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I’ve been a purely aspirational musician for decades. I was given an acoustic guitar at 20 and never used it. I bought an electric guitar at 30, thought it was broken, and stuck it in the closet. At 38 I realized it was a floating bridge guitar, stuck a USB stick behind the bridge, and played a couple hundred hours of Rocksmith, which teaches you almost nothing of importance, but at least it makes your fingers a bit more nimble. I plan to take actual 1-on-1 lessons this year, but am generally pessimistic about my own ability to improve at any task, regardless of effort.

On the other hand, I’ve been told I sing well, and I learned the words to MGMT’s Brian Eno this week after listening to it on a loop for north of 16 hours. So, I can be taught.

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I went crazy today and bought a keyboard. I played the first three measures of The Entertainer from sheet music over the course of ten minutes, then collapsed on the couch like Rocky between rounds.

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My drum kit lives in the basement and no longer moves. I have no roadies.

I recently bought a cajon with snares and it’s really frickin cool but I don’t play it enough. I also have a kazoo and a lifeguard whistle somewhere.

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My cajon ended up becoming the best end table I’ve ever had. So while I miss that table, I’m very happy that it is now part of a school music program.

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In January I got the urge to write a bunch of songs. I started on February 1st with the modest goal of 100 new songs by the end of the year. I had a strong start and then lost my day job (unrelated) and then I went silent for two weeks (may or may not be related). But I’m back at it now, and still ahead of schedule.

The purpose of this exercise is to flex the creative muscle. The more you write, the more good things you’ll have. It may still be a low percentage, but raw numbers is the name of the game here, people. I’m coming up with ideas and knocking them out quickly. At some point in the future I’ll pick the best ones to record for realsies.

Until then, enjoy the demos in various states of production. Currently I have 13 songs, only half of which touch on the subject of death. TBD if I get that percentage back up where if belongs by the end.

Anyway, you’ve read this far, so you may as well have a link to a webpage where you can follow the journey:

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I can now play ten bars of Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear. 14 if you count repeated bars. 20 if you count repeated bars that I don’t get to repeat yet because I haven’t learned the parts between the repeats.

If I keep going to this pace, I may be able to play a single song by the end of the year.

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