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Don’t give up indeed. And glad that you survived the big C and the misery that is Mohs surgery and recovery.
Andy, thanks for the videos. Wonderful stuff.
The extra light tension won’t hurt the guitar. It might necessitate a truss rod tweak if the rod is set for normal tension.
Nashville is fun, though. Finger picking in it is different….
Linda suspects coq au vin may be her destiny, even if she is a hen. 😀
I just got sheet music/tab for a Renaissance lute piece called “Aria di Fiorenza” by Kapsberger. I’ve wanted to play it for years, and it’s now clearly the time. It’s really a short melody with a nearly infinite possible set of variations, and a few more or less standard ones…..it’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve been told that once the basic harmony is learned, it’s relatively easy to extract new voicings for each chord
This is the gold standard. I’ll be playing it on a steel string OM which might get tuned down to enlarge the compass.
Pretty much daily. I’m spending a lot fo time with the Real Book and the ‘nome. Learning to swing with a click is hard work!
Whichever is built the lightest, Nashville tuning takes most of the tension off the instrument, so you want to use the very lightest instrument you have for it. I used to take instruments with failing tops or in need of neck resets and extend their lives until work could be done by using Nashville on ‘em.
I’ve used both on an 00-29 and prefer the light tension. It sings a little more and has a bit more nuance. Mine’s a 2012 and has used those strings most of its life.
Yep. Bonnie Raitt said of him that he was as close to Mark Twain as we’d get in this lifetime, and I think that’s right. He was an acute observer of the human condition, and he made all of his characters real, from Sam Stone to the Devil in “He Forgot that it was Sunday.”
I’m in a similar place – playing and being thankful for being healthy.
And yes, the Zorro dread is channeling Edward R Murrow and sending out signals – “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea”.
My OM’s been getting played. I am working from home and spending waaaaaaay too much time doing so – I mean, 12+ hour days 6 days a week – but otoh I’m still getting paid, so all good there.
We’re washing hands and groceries and sitting in the yurt of an evening when there’s time with a glass of wine and a guitar. Hoping that there’s a vaccine that works soon…..when the crisis lifts, it’s time for a jam.
I’ve been practicing the violin I recently had repaired and my playing is terrifyingly bad. I’m hoping to be merely awful by the end of the year. This is so much harder than I remember from playing as a wee lad. Or maybe I was having more fun then, heedless of the horror I was inflicting on others.
😀
It’s certainly possible, though I’ve found that my Martin 2-18 from about 1895 tends to be more stable than some newer instruments, notwithstanding the lack of truss rod and very light construction. It seems to have reached an equilibrium where it doesn’t move much.
I’m sure there’s some science on the hygroscopic variability of wood over time and whether it changes. I’d be curious to see – I bet the people who work on old wooden boats know about this stuff.
Working from home means I know when it’s 5 o’clock. However, it’s been a bit raw and damp, and so the odd tiny dram in a hot toddy to warm up a body is not awful.
As I work, I’m helping Beth learn to solder – she needs to learn because of the maker space projects she does at work. It makes for a nice break from normal work. And today I reorganized my home office so as to have power strips hooked up in a way that will not incinerate us.
I also had a conference with the cat, who sat on my keyboard and talked (I think) about my performance. He seems to think that our attendance has improved markedly but the volume of snacks and attention is insufficient, and that we need to work on it. Since he was clearly attempting to give me boss-style instruction, I put on his collar that has a tie on it; this has given him additional agency, to the point where his newfound sartorial splendor entitles him to walk anywhere and lick any plate.
And it’s only the second week of shelter-in-place.
I have a 00-29, same scale length and size as the Skye, and it’s fine a half step down. I use the SCGC lights and they’re fine – they do not get floppy at Eb. Do the same thing with my OM – it’s pretty common, actually. Stevie Ray Vaughn tuned his strat to Eb for many years.
Enjoy your Skye – those are amazing instruments.
/mh
