Note to self: Don't make Wagon Wheel a signature piece
Monday, October 24, 2011
The crowd goes wild
When working on new material, pick a small venue and pay attention to the audience reaction.
Note to self: Don't make Wagon Wheel a signature piece
Note to self: Don't make Wagon Wheel a signature piece
Friday, October 14, 2011
Less tap, more glide
About three years ago I had a big Aha! moment. I had just decided to
get serious about playing the reso I had fooled around with for 15 years
and went online to learn about this box that had the cool sound and why
I wasn't sounding a bit like the stuff that got me interested in the
first place. I found a lesson by Ivan Rosenbeg and learned Will the
Circle Be Unbroken. Well, the light went on. I had been playing the
reso like it was just an open tuned guitar played with a slide. I
applied what I had learned from over 40 years playing folk music. I was
using my basic Travis style picking, occasionally throwing in some rolls
from my banjo days. You know, laying down a substrate of notes from the
chord and weaving the melody line through it.
That's not what Ivan was doing. He was throwing something into the mix that had never occurred to me: silence. He was shaping the sound as he played individual notes, sometimes with some picking around it, but a lot of the time just letting the voice of the reso sing the melody. And he'd let it stop to breathe. And sometimes he'd slide the low D up to a G and let it drone the open G string right above it. I got it! This was a unique instrument and not meant to be played the same way I would a regular guitar.
Lesson learned and apparently forgotten. As I was getting ready for my first Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp last year, I bought Steve's four-hour bluegrass workout book and CD and started learning some fiddle tunes. One I learned was Saint Ann's Reel, arguably the prettiest fiddle tune of them all. But Steve's arrangements were for flat pickers, either guitar or mandolin. None the less, I learned them note for note and played them on my reso. Pretty, but one problem--practice as much as I have, I just can't get up to jamming speed.
Then the next Aha! There is no way that I was ever going to be able to match what a flat picker with fingers and frets could do by finger picking and playing with a slide. Please spare me your links to some Jerry Douglas recording and your "Oh Yeah?" I didn't say Jerry couldn't do it; I said I couldn't. So last night I'm jamming at the Red Light Cafe in Midtown Atlanta and sure enough the mandolin player says "Let's do Saint Ann's Reel." Well I tried to keep up but ended up playing what felt like every other note just to stay with the others. Hmmmm, it didn't sound real awful. So this morning I worked through it and paid attention to the "money notes," i.e., the ones that really defined the melody, and I ignored the flourish notes. All of a sudden what came out was Saint Ann's Reel at jamming speed.
So I opened up my Mike Witcher book to see how he played it and, lo and behold, I wasn't too far off of what he did. Just for grins, I counted the number of notes in the first three bars of the B part. Steve's flat picker arrangement had 21 notes. I was playing 15. (Mike's arrangement for reso had 17--well, that's why he's Mike Witcher and I'm Mike Hughes.) Just that small reduction in notes, though, was all it took to get me up to jamming speed.
Being a tech writer by trade, my first analogy was that it was like editing a text, taking out the non-essentials and leaving the meat. But that wasn't quite right. In editing, we take out parts that don't add value, but in this case Steve's extra notes all added value.
It's more like watching Gregory Hines tap dance. Fast, furious, fantastic! But now imagine another dancer joins him on stage, Fred Astaire. Fred dances to the same beat, but fewer movements. He glides, lingers in space for a moment, then seemingly falls into the next step. Beautiful!
One's not better than the other; each is bringing his unique artistry and talents to the stage. The reso is more like Fred Astaire. It glides, it lingers, it uses its special tonality to add voice to the melody.
So my new mantra is "Less tap, more glide." I think there are some life lessons outside of music somewhere in that.
That's not what Ivan was doing. He was throwing something into the mix that had never occurred to me: silence. He was shaping the sound as he played individual notes, sometimes with some picking around it, but a lot of the time just letting the voice of the reso sing the melody. And he'd let it stop to breathe. And sometimes he'd slide the low D up to a G and let it drone the open G string right above it. I got it! This was a unique instrument and not meant to be played the same way I would a regular guitar.
Lesson learned and apparently forgotten. As I was getting ready for my first Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp last year, I bought Steve's four-hour bluegrass workout book and CD and started learning some fiddle tunes. One I learned was Saint Ann's Reel, arguably the prettiest fiddle tune of them all. But Steve's arrangements were for flat pickers, either guitar or mandolin. None the less, I learned them note for note and played them on my reso. Pretty, but one problem--practice as much as I have, I just can't get up to jamming speed.
Then the next Aha! There is no way that I was ever going to be able to match what a flat picker with fingers and frets could do by finger picking and playing with a slide. Please spare me your links to some Jerry Douglas recording and your "Oh Yeah?" I didn't say Jerry couldn't do it; I said I couldn't. So last night I'm jamming at the Red Light Cafe in Midtown Atlanta and sure enough the mandolin player says "Let's do Saint Ann's Reel." Well I tried to keep up but ended up playing what felt like every other note just to stay with the others. Hmmmm, it didn't sound real awful. So this morning I worked through it and paid attention to the "money notes," i.e., the ones that really defined the melody, and I ignored the flourish notes. All of a sudden what came out was Saint Ann's Reel at jamming speed.
So I opened up my Mike Witcher book to see how he played it and, lo and behold, I wasn't too far off of what he did. Just for grins, I counted the number of notes in the first three bars of the B part. Steve's flat picker arrangement had 21 notes. I was playing 15. (Mike's arrangement for reso had 17--well, that's why he's Mike Witcher and I'm Mike Hughes.) Just that small reduction in notes, though, was all it took to get me up to jamming speed.
Being a tech writer by trade, my first analogy was that it was like editing a text, taking out the non-essentials and leaving the meat. But that wasn't quite right. In editing, we take out parts that don't add value, but in this case Steve's extra notes all added value.
It's more like watching Gregory Hines tap dance. Fast, furious, fantastic! But now imagine another dancer joins him on stage, Fred Astaire. Fred dances to the same beat, but fewer movements. He glides, lingers in space for a moment, then seemingly falls into the next step. Beautiful!
One's not better than the other; each is bringing his unique artistry and talents to the stage. The reso is more like Fred Astaire. It glides, it lingers, it uses its special tonality to add voice to the melody.
So my new mantra is "Less tap, more glide." I think there are some life lessons outside of music somewhere in that.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Live vs. Recorded
Warning: I have absolutely NO data to support the following assertion.
People have different tolerance levels for filler talk depending on if it is a live presentation versus a recorded one.
If I dial into a webcast, it doesn't bother me so much when the speaker starts off, "I'd like to thank Frank for inviting me here today, before I get started I'd like to let him say a few words." "Thanks, we are thrilled..."
BUT, if I encounter that at the start of a recorded webcast (where all of this goes on with just the boring cover slide up for the first five minutes) I go bonkers and drop off.
I'll leave it to others to prove such an experience is general (which I think it is) or to examine why we have different expectations. But if you believe it to be true, you should do two things:
- Prompt the opening speaker to have a clear jumping point from intro filler to meaty start of the presentation.
- Edit the intro filler out and start the recorded webcast at the meaty start.
At any rate, think about it the next time you are doing a presentation that will get distributed in a recorded format. Right before you get into the meat, pretend the camera just got turned on.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Consultancy 101
I have a really important presentation today in which I am bringing major stakeholders who have diverse opinions into an overview of a proposed UI redesign. I'm anxious because I already know they are opinionated and their opinions do not agree. Hence the meeting.
I'd like to get out of this alive and on good terms with everyone, so I am drawing on my old consultant days and a three step process that has served me well:
I'd like to get out of this alive and on good terms with everyone, so I am drawing on my old consultant days and a three step process that has served me well:
- Share my data with them, including the problems the solution is trying to solve.
- Give them my expert recommendation (after all, they've paid for it, they're entitled to it).
- Do what they want. It's their money; it's their project.
Monday, August 29, 2011
The warning signs that you are pushing for an unwarranted change
Seth Godin has an excellent blog called "The warning signs of defending the status quo." It's good and I agree with everything in it.
But I find it interesting that the rather obvious assumption is that defending the status quo is wrong--something that deserves a warning. Often the existing state of affairs is a desirable state--that's why it is the status quo.
So I did a little Zen thing where you contradict your assumptions to shake yourself up a bit. Here are some of Seth's warning signs in their original (in italics) and then in their contrary form.
When confronted with a new idea do you:
But I find it interesting that the rather obvious assumption is that defending the status quo is wrong--something that deserves a warning. Often the existing state of affairs is a desirable state--that's why it is the status quo.
So I did a little Zen thing where you contradict your assumptions to shake yourself up a bit. Here are some of Seth's warning signs in their original (in italics) and then in their contrary form.
When confronted with a new idea do you:
- Consider the cost of switching before you consider the benefits? Consider the fun of switching before you consider the costs?
- Highlight the pain to a few instead of the benefits for the many? Highlight the benefit to a few instead of the pain for the many?
- Exaggerate how good things are now in order to reduce your fear of change? Exaggerate how bad things are now in order to instigate a change?
- Undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people behind the change? Undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people who support the status quo?
- Grab onto the rare thing that could go wrong instead of amplifying the likely thing that will go right? Grab onto the rare thing that goes wrong with the status quo instead of amplifying the many things that go right?
- Focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you? Focus on short-term benefits instead of long-term costs, because the short-term is more fun for you?
- Etc, etc. I'll let you do the rest if you want.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
What to do when you screw up
I screwed up at work. Details are not important. We all screw up in a number of ways: We make a bad decision, we behave poorly, or we just make a mistake ("Hmmm, it was such a small change, who would have thought it would have taken the entire stage environment down"), etc.
occasionally land in the sand trap. So do the pros. The difference is that it would take me three strokes to get out and my exit shot generally landed on another fairway. Pros get out in one shot and put it next to the hole.
The aggressive reaction will be your first and instinctive one. Find something to distract you for 24 hours until it passes. Updating your resume is a good activity for a number of reasons. For one, it restores your self-esteem. It can also come in handy if it turns out that this was a really really major screw up.
When the aggressive reaction passes, you slip into the passive one. Have a drink and keep reminding yourself that this is a much bigger deal to you than it is to them. Go back to work with a bounce in your step.
Then take the beating. Admit the screw up, have a recovery plan, and get back to business. Do something visible that shows you have moved on and you are back in the saddle. It's better if that something is unrelated to the screw up. Something that establishes "Storm's moved on, nothing to see here."
Just like golf, people remember the recovery stroke that lands in the hole, not the slice that got you into the sand trap.
So you're telling me icebergs are bad things?
However you get there, you find yourself in the uncomfortable situation of having caused a problem and now having some degree of scrutiny coming at you. There are three ways you can handle it (hint: two of them are not good):
- Aggressively snap back. "I wouldn't have made the mistake in the first place if so and so hadn't done such and such."
- Get all passive and pouty. "Fine, I'll just do exactly like I'm told, Now, exactly, how do you want me to do my job?"
- Take the beating and move on.
The aggressive reaction will be your first and instinctive one. Find something to distract you for 24 hours until it passes. Updating your resume is a good activity for a number of reasons. For one, it restores your self-esteem. It can also come in handy if it turns out that this was a really really major screw up.
When the aggressive reaction passes, you slip into the passive one. Have a drink and keep reminding yourself that this is a much bigger deal to you than it is to them. Go back to work with a bounce in your step.
Then take the beating. Admit the screw up, have a recovery plan, and get back to business. Do something visible that shows you have moved on and you are back in the saddle. It's better if that something is unrelated to the screw up. Something that establishes "Storm's moved on, nothing to see here."
Just like golf, people remember the recovery stroke that lands in the hole, not the slice that got you into the sand trap.
Friday, August 05, 2011
Notes from a Grammar Anarchist
I've been involved in some grammar conversations lately, and I have been reading some recent articles about grammar in Twitter posts. It has reminded me that I am the opposite of a grammar Nazi, I am a grammar anarchist. Man, I am the Che Guevara of grammar!
I hold that as long as the communication is clearly understood, standing on points of grammar is hegemonic. By that I mean that we apply somewhat arbitrary rules as codes to tell "our kind" from "them." The power class assigns the concept of "correct" to their way of speaking and "wrong" to other dialects that identify someone as not being in the power group.
Easy example: the double emphatic negative in English. No one has ever been confused by a sentence like "I don't have no money," although many English teachers pretend to be. We in power have made the somewhat arbitrary decision not to use it (Spanish, on the other hand, includes it as part of its standard grammar) and we wield that rule to sort out those who do use it. There is usually a very slippery slope that gets attached to this: Different = Wrong = Uneducated = Unintelligent.
Let's take an example that might make us a little uncomfortable. Some people pronounce the word "ask" as "aks." This is often viewed as "wrong" by people who pronounce it as spelled, and the insinuation is that the one pronouncing it "aks" lacks education or sophistication.
Instead of branding it as wrong, let's describe it for what it is: it's called a metathesis, i.e., a "transposition, more especially of the letters, sounds, or syllables of a word." There are lots of them around. But if you are a member of the power class, your metathesis is deemed "how the word is pronounced."
Everyone I know who rails against "aks," blithely pronounces the day after Tuesday as "Wenzday" as if it were spelled Wendsday. But it is spelled Wednesday and should be pronounced Wed-nes-day. After all, the day is named after Woden, not Woned. BTW, Woned is the mythical husband of Wonelly and the two of them are the German deities who go around stopping mules.
So why is "our" Wenzday right and "their" aks is wrong? They're both just examples of a common language phenomenon of metathesis.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for speaking clearly and unambiguously, but grammar Nazis stop the conversation. Their corrections are more distracting than whatever aberration they might be attacking.
Example:
Bill: "This evening couldn't have been more perfect."
Mary: "You shouldn't modify an absolute--if something is perfect there is no way it could ever be more perfect. So will you call me tomorrow?"
Bill: "Uh, I think I'm leaving the country, yeah, I have to go on a secret mission and will be out of touch for about three years."
So here's my point: Language is pretty screwed up and is full of inconsistencies. We need to be careful when we brand our inconsistencies as "the way it is" and others as "that's wrong."
I hold that as long as the communication is clearly understood, standing on points of grammar is hegemonic. By that I mean that we apply somewhat arbitrary rules as codes to tell "our kind" from "them." The power class assigns the concept of "correct" to their way of speaking and "wrong" to other dialects that identify someone as not being in the power group.
Easy example: the double emphatic negative in English. No one has ever been confused by a sentence like "I don't have no money," although many English teachers pretend to be. We in power have made the somewhat arbitrary decision not to use it (Spanish, on the other hand, includes it as part of its standard grammar) and we wield that rule to sort out those who do use it. There is usually a very slippery slope that gets attached to this: Different = Wrong = Uneducated = Unintelligent.
Let's take an example that might make us a little uncomfortable. Some people pronounce the word "ask" as "aks." This is often viewed as "wrong" by people who pronounce it as spelled, and the insinuation is that the one pronouncing it "aks" lacks education or sophistication.
Instead of branding it as wrong, let's describe it for what it is: it's called a metathesis, i.e., a "transposition, more especially of the letters, sounds, or syllables of a word." There are lots of them around. But if you are a member of the power class, your metathesis is deemed "how the word is pronounced."
Everyone I know who rails against "aks," blithely pronounces the day after Tuesday as "Wenzday" as if it were spelled Wendsday. But it is spelled Wednesday and should be pronounced Wed-nes-day. After all, the day is named after Woden, not Woned. BTW, Woned is the mythical husband of Wonelly and the two of them are the German deities who go around stopping mules.
So why is "our" Wenzday right and "their" aks is wrong? They're both just examples of a common language phenomenon of metathesis.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for speaking clearly and unambiguously, but grammar Nazis stop the conversation. Their corrections are more distracting than whatever aberration they might be attacking.
Example:
Bill: "This evening couldn't have been more perfect."
Mary: "You shouldn't modify an absolute--if something is perfect there is no way it could ever be more perfect. So will you call me tomorrow?"
Bill: "Uh, I think I'm leaving the country, yeah, I have to go on a secret mission and will be out of touch for about three years."
So here's my point: Language is pretty screwed up and is full of inconsistencies. We need to be careful when we brand our inconsistencies as "the way it is" and others as "that's wrong."
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Why did it take this long?
Getting old has its compensations for what it extracts from us. Case in point:
I did a demo yesterday of a mobile application we are about to release. The manager of the product management group was monitoring the chat during the demo and forwarded a comment to me over SameTime chat.
"One of the participants noted that the email follow-up icon was not intuitive and looked more like it would be to edit the ticket being displayed. Did you consider other icons, maybe something more intuitive like an envelope?
No action required, I'm just passing this along to you."
I started to respond that we wrestled a lot with the icon selection on that and eventually decided to use the standard mobile icon for email.
I then thought about explaining that icons are a crap shoot at best and that we would have some customer education to explain that entire feature.
Finally I responded:
"Thanks"
Why did it take me so long to develop that communication skill?
I did a demo yesterday of a mobile application we are about to release. The manager of the product management group was monitoring the chat during the demo and forwarded a comment to me over SameTime chat.
"One of the participants noted that the email follow-up icon was not intuitive and looked more like it would be to edit the ticket being displayed. Did you consider other icons, maybe something more intuitive like an envelope?
No action required, I'm just passing this along to you."
I started to respond that we wrestled a lot with the icon selection on that and eventually decided to use the standard mobile icon for email.
I then thought about explaining that icons are a crap shoot at best and that we would have some customer education to explain that entire feature.
Finally I responded:
"Thanks"
Why did it take me so long to develop that communication skill?
Monday, July 25, 2011
Two reasons you don't want to carpool with me...
Two reasons not to carpool with me:
The first is easy; I'm a terrible driver. I know this because I just finished a road trip with my 34-year old son who is also my insurance agent. His critiques aside, even I noticed it. I drive like an old man. (Well, I'm 62!) I run over curbs at the drive-through, miss exits, take my attention off the road while I fiddle with x (x can equal radio, CD, GPS, etc), get befuddled about which way I was going before I exited for gas, start the car even though it's already running, etc. In my defense, I did avert an accident when someone who drives worse than I do turned into our side of the four-lane divided highway, but instead of turning into the near lane swung all the way over into my lane (I was doing sixty). I've been meaning to take the new Jeep off roading but the dirt shoulder of a highway wasn't what I had in mind.
But that's not the only reason you don't want to carpool with me.
I just got a new instructional book and CD for Dobro. This one is by Mike Witcher. Now instructional CDs are a lot like girlfriends. At first you go through a lot of them, looking for "the one." Each time, I would think, now I will be able to play like x (x = yadda yadda yadda). But somehow it just doesn't work out. But this time I'm very optimistic for two reasons. One, like with girlfriends, there has to be a bit of "this one is right for where I am now in my personal development." Instructional CDs, like girlfriends, aren't bad, but they might not be the right one for where you are right now. I had Mike Witcher as an instructor this year at the Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp, and as I listen to the songs on his CD I can tell that I will be able to learn them. But I've also learned a lot about learning in the last year. For one, I've learned about the incredible amount of repetition it takes for the finger muscles to learn something new. So I'm not so easily discouraged. "This is too hard" has been replaced with "This is new." I know it will be easy--by the 100th repetition.
And there is another trick I picked up at Kamp. This one I got from one of the other kampers at lunch who got it from one of his flat pick instructors. "You can't learn to play a song until you learn to sing it first." That's been one of my problems, I've been trying to learn a song by picking it out from the tab or sheet music. Sure, I would listen to it first, but not learn it. But now I'm trying just to learn the song first by singing along with the CD. And that's the other reason you don't want to carpool with me. I've been playing the 1 min:15 sec version (medium speed) of Angelina Baker back to back to back during my commute to work. I sing along with it, "Lah dee dah, lah diddy dah..." Again and again and again. Not playing (hey, I'm a bad driver but not THAT bad), just singing the melody to nonsense syllables. Now the tablature tells me how to play a song I know, so it's not so frustrating to grind through it trying to figure out how it's supposed to sound in three weeks when I get some kind of reasonable speed.
It's a 20-song set and I've set an aggressive pace of one song every two weeks. So in forty weeks I'll have it. Man, that's gonna be a lot of lah dee dah.
The first is easy; I'm a terrible driver. I know this because I just finished a road trip with my 34-year old son who is also my insurance agent. His critiques aside, even I noticed it. I drive like an old man. (Well, I'm 62!) I run over curbs at the drive-through, miss exits, take my attention off the road while I fiddle with x (x can equal radio, CD, GPS, etc), get befuddled about which way I was going before I exited for gas, start the car even though it's already running, etc. In my defense, I did avert an accident when someone who drives worse than I do turned into our side of the four-lane divided highway, but instead of turning into the near lane swung all the way over into my lane (I was doing sixty). I've been meaning to take the new Jeep off roading but the dirt shoulder of a highway wasn't what I had in mind.
But that's not the only reason you don't want to carpool with me.
I just got a new instructional book and CD for Dobro. This one is by Mike Witcher. Now instructional CDs are a lot like girlfriends. At first you go through a lot of them, looking for "the one." Each time, I would think, now I will be able to play like x (x = yadda yadda yadda). But somehow it just doesn't work out. But this time I'm very optimistic for two reasons. One, like with girlfriends, there has to be a bit of "this one is right for where I am now in my personal development." Instructional CDs, like girlfriends, aren't bad, but they might not be the right one for where you are right now. I had Mike Witcher as an instructor this year at the Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp, and as I listen to the songs on his CD I can tell that I will be able to learn them. But I've also learned a lot about learning in the last year. For one, I've learned about the incredible amount of repetition it takes for the finger muscles to learn something new. So I'm not so easily discouraged. "This is too hard" has been replaced with "This is new." I know it will be easy--by the 100th repetition.
And there is another trick I picked up at Kamp. This one I got from one of the other kampers at lunch who got it from one of his flat pick instructors. "You can't learn to play a song until you learn to sing it first." That's been one of my problems, I've been trying to learn a song by picking it out from the tab or sheet music. Sure, I would listen to it first, but not learn it. But now I'm trying just to learn the song first by singing along with the CD. And that's the other reason you don't want to carpool with me. I've been playing the 1 min:15 sec version (medium speed) of Angelina Baker back to back to back during my commute to work. I sing along with it, "Lah dee dah, lah diddy dah..." Again and again and again. Not playing (hey, I'm a bad driver but not THAT bad), just singing the melody to nonsense syllables. Now the tablature tells me how to play a song I know, so it's not so frustrating to grind through it trying to figure out how it's supposed to sound in three weeks when I get some kind of reasonable speed.
It's a 20-song set and I've set an aggressive pace of one song every two weeks. So in forty weeks I'll have it. Man, that's gonna be a lot of lah dee dah.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Better to be Dominant (Than Diminished)
[ I first wrote on this over a year ago. I've since gotten some additional insight from my tech writer perspective.]
My first Dobro lesson was with Mark Van Allen who spent two hours reviewing theory with me. It was a fascinating tour of the fret board, scales, and chords. Mark pointed out that if you play the scale of G on all the strings, and if you put a dot down every place you "fretted" a string, you create the basic chords included in the key of G.
G B D 0 0 0 GBD G major 2 1 2 ACE A minor 4 3 4 BDF# B minor 5 5 5 CEG C major 7 7 7 DF#A D major 9 8 9 EGB E minor 11 10 10 F#AC F# dim
Mark describes the patterns as bar, chevron, chevron, bar, bar, chevron, hockey stick (oh yeah, we'll talk more about that hockey stick later).
Recently, I was at the Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp where Ivan Rosenberg established the same set of patterns. He did it by applying the following technique for making a triad chord: "Play a note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note." He started at G and went up the scale, producing the same pattern that Mark had.
The first six chords have a particular beauty and closure about them. The three major chords are the tonic (G) dominant (D) and subdominant (C) chords. The three minor chords are their respective relative minors. (A relative minor is the minor that has the same key signature as its relative major. Their scales share the same notes but start on different roots-one yielding a major scale and one yielding a minor scale.) So for G, we have E min, for C we have A min, and for D we have B min.
Then we get that darn F# diminished! What's with that? It's like meeting the folks in a jam: The banjo guy says, "I'm Fred," the mandolin player says, "I'm Skip," the guitar player says, "I'm Jack," and then the fiddler says, "I'm Throckmorton." What the...??!! How did he end up with the others?
Even Ivan kind of dismissed the F# diminished saying it wasn't very useful for what he wanted to cover that day. The problem I have with it is that it just doesn't seem to belong. Have you EVER played a song in G where an F# diminished showed up? I haven't. But the other six chords are mainstays for G progressions.
I've fretted (no pun intended) over this for a while, and I think I've resolved it, at least for me. That seventh chord is a D7 without the root D. A seventh is the 1 3 5 b7 and in the case of D the 3, 5, and flatted 7 would be F#, A, C--exactly what we have. That would make more sense, except now I have the problem of where did the lost root go? That's the problem I have been pondering for the last year or so.
Then my tech writer background kicked in and solved it. Think of these seven chords as a seven-page document in a word processor. The first six are in Portrait and the page is three strings wide. That's plenty wide enough because major and minor chords are properly rendered with three notes. 1, 3, 5 or a 1, b3, 5.
But what if the last page is supposed to be in Landscape? That would make the page four strings wide and--lo and behold--look what we now see if we go into Landscape view: D, F#, A, C our D7. We were missing the root because it takes four notes to properly render a dominant 7th and we were looking at just the last three! Now it's as if that fiddler named Throckmorton winks at me and adds, "But my friends call me Buddy." The world makes sense again.
OK, one problem solved, but I now have two more: (1) Why doesn't F# get its own chord and (2) why does D get two chords?
Once again my tech writer perspective kicks in on the first one. In document design or screen layout, there is a well-known phenomenon that if two elements are too close they create a visual tension. For example, text too close to table borders are the visual equivalent of nails on a chalk board. Or put a button too close to the edge of the screen and the user begs for some padding to give it some breathing room. I think F# is just too close to G! Our ears don't like a chord that is only a half-step away from the root.
And as far as D getting two chords when everybody else gets just one? Well, maybe that's why it's called the dominant.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Living Large
For someone who is not the least bit afraid or reluctant to speak in public, I am still quite nervous when I play music in the presence of others. My stint on stage at the Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp was a breakout moment for me.
And last night was another step forward when I took the stage for open mic at the Red Light Cafe and got the chance to play with my favorite band, Cedar Hill of Atlanta. I sang "Bring Your Clothes Back Home." When else can you stand up in public and sing "Sure I'm sitting there watchin her flip-flop-a-doopie, oh Baby."
And in a bar no less :-)
And last night was another step forward when I took the stage for open mic at the Red Light Cafe and got the chance to play with my favorite band, Cedar Hill of Atlanta. I sang "Bring Your Clothes Back Home." When else can you stand up in public and sing "Sure I'm sitting there watchin her flip-flop-a-doopie, oh Baby."
And in a bar no less :-)
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Bucket List...check...check...check
So there I am backstage at the Clayton Center for the Arts in Maryville, TN. I'm trying to stay focused on my solo that will be coming up in just a few minutes while the stage manager corrals my group in the wings. While I'm standing there, Stacy Phillips (Reso players, yeah, THAT Stacy Phillips) comes up and gives me some mic tips about the resophonic. "Let the mic point here--not there--and during your solo, step in and flatten the guitar out."
Wow, thanks.
Then Ivan Rosenberg (yeah, THAT Ivan Rosenberg) gives me some reassurances that I'll do fine. While he's talking to me, Kenny and Amanda Smith go walking by me.
Wow, wow.
Then I hear them announcing my band and I hear them say my name. The handler herds us onstage. The sound technician positions the mic exactly where Stacy had said it should go. The mandolin player kicks it off and we do our song, "Love of the Mountains." My solo part comes up, I step forward a bit and turn my guitar a little flatter and away I go. Fifteen seconds later I'm done and the crowd applauds for me.
OMG Wow!
That was Friday, June 24, the last night of the Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp. At the start of the week, my class instructor asked us to go around and play a little so he could get a gauge on our relative skill levels. I completely froze up and could barely remember anything I had ever played. Eventually I stumbled through "Grandfather's Clock." So I signed up for the band scramble. That's where you put your name in an envelope for your instrument, and on Friday they randomly assign you to a band. You're given 45 minutes to come up with a vocal and an instrumental (along with a band name). Then the competition begins in front of all the other campers. That's one way to get over your fear of playing in front of others. What was I thinking? As it was, my group won and that earned us the distinction of getting added to the Friday night concert as the opening band.
Well, it all turned out well--as the beginning of this blog documented-- and it was the thrill of a lifetime to be on that stage (and to not screw up).
And it was the lesson of a lifetime. I am honored to have been surrounded by these great musicians and witness first hand their humility and ability to listen all week to students and encourage them. Their universal talent across the board was to hear a student play and filter it down to one thing the student was getting almost right. They ignored the good and the truly awful of what you did and went for the one thing that could make you better--the logical next step. And that's all it took.
My personal thanks to my instructors, Mike Witcher and Ivan Rosenberg, for neither berating me nor trying to make me great (in one week). Thanks for accepting the player I was and leaving me just a little better than when you first encountered me. And thanks for teaching me how to make that happen on my own now, week by week.
Did I say Wow?
Wow, thanks.
Then Ivan Rosenberg (yeah, THAT Ivan Rosenberg) gives me some reassurances that I'll do fine. While he's talking to me, Kenny and Amanda Smith go walking by me.
Wow, wow.
Then I hear them announcing my band and I hear them say my name. The handler herds us onstage. The sound technician positions the mic exactly where Stacy had said it should go. The mandolin player kicks it off and we do our song, "Love of the Mountains." My solo part comes up, I step forward a bit and turn my guitar a little flatter and away I go. Fifteen seconds later I'm done and the crowd applauds for me.
OMG Wow!
That was Friday, June 24, the last night of the Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp. At the start of the week, my class instructor asked us to go around and play a little so he could get a gauge on our relative skill levels. I completely froze up and could barely remember anything I had ever played. Eventually I stumbled through "Grandfather's Clock." So I signed up for the band scramble. That's where you put your name in an envelope for your instrument, and on Friday they randomly assign you to a band. You're given 45 minutes to come up with a vocal and an instrumental (along with a band name). Then the competition begins in front of all the other campers. That's one way to get over your fear of playing in front of others. What was I thinking? As it was, my group won and that earned us the distinction of getting added to the Friday night concert as the opening band.
Well, it all turned out well--as the beginning of this blog documented-- and it was the thrill of a lifetime to be on that stage (and to not screw up).
And it was the lesson of a lifetime. I am honored to have been surrounded by these great musicians and witness first hand their humility and ability to listen all week to students and encourage them. Their universal talent across the board was to hear a student play and filter it down to one thing the student was getting almost right. They ignored the good and the truly awful of what you did and went for the one thing that could make you better--the logical next step. And that's all it took.
My personal thanks to my instructors, Mike Witcher and Ivan Rosenberg, for neither berating me nor trying to make me great (in one week). Thanks for accepting the player I was and leaving me just a little better than when you first encountered me. And thanks for teaching me how to make that happen on my own now, week by week.
Did I say Wow?
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Something old, something new
My Wrangler died and I have replaced it with a new ride, a larger, more "grown up" Jeep Commander. I now have such amenities like power windows, doors with detents (not web straps) and the like. It is longer and wider than my Wrangler was, so I must align myself with the garage door with a two point turn before going in (as opposed to just a simple turn into the garage I could do with the Wrangler).
One nice feature is that it has an RF proximity detector on the back that alerts me if I am about to back into something, and that keeps me from running into the Red Tips as I back up for my approach into the garage. Hooray, technology!
But I've been having trouble judging the length, and I stop before I'm in far enough for the garage door to close. Hmmm, no high tech solution built in. So I hung some fishing line with a bobber on it so that the bobber taps up against my front windshield when I'm in far enough. The line and bobber were handy, and the ability to slide the bobber up and down the line made it easy to "calibrate."
So I have a RF proximity detector for not backing into the trees and a bobber on a fishing line for getting all the way in without crashing into the front of the garage.
Scoff at at no solution that works.
One nice feature is that it has an RF proximity detector on the back that alerts me if I am about to back into something, and that keeps me from running into the Red Tips as I back up for my approach into the garage. Hooray, technology!
But I've been having trouble judging the length, and I stop before I'm in far enough for the garage door to close. Hmmm, no high tech solution built in. So I hung some fishing line with a bobber on it so that the bobber taps up against my front windshield when I'm in far enough. The line and bobber were handy, and the ability to slide the bobber up and down the line made it easy to "calibrate."
So I have a RF proximity detector for not backing into the trees and a bobber on a fishing line for getting all the way in without crashing into the front of the garage.
Scoff at at no solution that works.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
One bag and a carry-on
A principle of Eastern philosophy that I have come to appreciate says that a source of unhappiness is not knowing how the world works. If you do not know the nature of something or someone, you set up the wrong expectations or you attribute wrong causes or motives to others. The end result is you spend a lot of time angry or frustrated. Rocks by their nature are hard; don't expect them to make great pillows, and don't blame them for your sore neck in the morning if you do try to use one for that purpose. (Lesson learned from primitive camping.)
In my current role I do a lot of negotiating back and forth between product managers/stakeholders and development. I am reminded of a study I did back in my doctoral days as I observed the differences between these two camps during a product development cycle. I arrived at the metaphor of a couple packing to go on vacation. One is thinking of being there. That one has an extensive list of things to pack, and can change or add to the list up to the last minute. The other is thinking of getting there, and is focused on getting everything into one bag and a carry on. Every time the former makes a change, the latter sighs deeply, unpacks everything, and adds the new item, sometimes forcing a swap with something already packed. As frustrating as the latter can find the former during the packing phase, once there, all benefit from having what is needed (like sandals AND loafers AND sneakers).
Product managers are like the partner thinking of being there. That is their nature to think of all that could be useful and to keep updating the list until the last minute. Developers are like packers, focused on the constraints that each new item adds--that is their nature.
Whichever side you are on, if you can recognize the value of the other--great! If you can't, at least accept how the world works.
And be happy!
In my current role I do a lot of negotiating back and forth between product managers/stakeholders and development. I am reminded of a study I did back in my doctoral days as I observed the differences between these two camps during a product development cycle. I arrived at the metaphor of a couple packing to go on vacation. One is thinking of being there. That one has an extensive list of things to pack, and can change or add to the list up to the last minute. The other is thinking of getting there, and is focused on getting everything into one bag and a carry on. Every time the former makes a change, the latter sighs deeply, unpacks everything, and adds the new item, sometimes forcing a swap with something already packed. As frustrating as the latter can find the former during the packing phase, once there, all benefit from having what is needed (like sandals AND loafers AND sneakers).
Product managers are like the partner thinking of being there. That is their nature to think of all that could be useful and to keep updating the list until the last minute. Developers are like packers, focused on the constraints that each new item adds--that is their nature.
Whichever side you are on, if you can recognize the value of the other--great! If you can't, at least accept how the world works.
And be happy!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Lessons Learned at Armuchee
Went to Armuchee (BTW, pronounced Ar-mur-chee) for a Memorial Day Bluegrass festival. Camped and jammed for two nights. I packed up tired and a little down, thinking about how good I should be playing--compared to the folks I jammed with. Got home and let the Dobro sit a day. Opened it up yesterday and felt all excited about how good I could be playing if I keep at it.
Bluegrass just keeps teaching me about a lot more than music. We shackle ourselves with expectations and drag them around with us like Jacob Marley's chains. It's good to aspire to be better, just don't forget to enjoy where you are in the moment.
Bluegrass just keeps teaching me about a lot more than music. We shackle ourselves with expectations and drag them around with us like Jacob Marley's chains. It's good to aspire to be better, just don't forget to enjoy where you are in the moment.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Focus, Focus, Focus
If you want to get someone's attention, you have to get their focus. There are two ways to do this:
I love my email client and I am loathe to use them as a negative example, but they really blow it on method 1 when it comes to adding new contacts. Although I remember each time I go to do it that it does something weird, every time I'm left helpless and frustrated for two minutes until I relearn it. See if you can figure it out:
There is a New contact button way over in the left-hand navigation section. As Norm McDonald would say, "Wait..what??!!" Why is it in a navigation section and why is it out of my field of focus? I would have put it with the other buttons at the top of the Contacts working panel.
Speaking of focus, I once did an illustration where I showed a user focusing on a screen--it looked something like this:
Everyone told me I had the arrow going the wrong way. Interesting that we think of vision and focus as something we project outward into the environment, as opposed to a filtered taking in of stimuli from the environment.
Addendum: After giving it some thought, I thought this might be the more accurate illustration:
- Figure out what they are currently focusing on and step in front.
- Wave your hands and holler until they shift their focus to you.
I love my email client and I am loathe to use them as a negative example, but they really blow it on method 1 when it comes to adding new contacts. Although I remember each time I go to do it that it does something weird, every time I'm left helpless and frustrated for two minutes until I relearn it. See if you can figure it out:
There is a New contact button way over in the left-hand navigation section. As Norm McDonald would say, "Wait..what??!!" Why is it in a navigation section and why is it out of my field of focus? I would have put it with the other buttons at the top of the Contacts working panel.
Speaking of focus, I once did an illustration where I showed a user focusing on a screen--it looked something like this:
Addendum: After giving it some thought, I thought this might be the more accurate illustration:
Friday, May 20, 2011
Birthday Resolutions
I turn 62 tomorrow, and I feel that's a good occasion to set some self improvement goals:
- Play slower
- Play softer
- Play more precisely
- Play more artistically
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Musical dimensions
I am a hopeless Aristotelian; I love to create classifications and taxonomies that make neat little boxes and then I put hopelessly messy realities into them. On my ride into work today, I created a way to classify all musicians (or more accurately the ways we are musicians) along two axes--thus creating four quadrants within which I can box myself or others.
The two axes are
There is nothing judgmental about this system, nor is one's position in a quadrant fixed. I, for one, can be found in quadrants I, II, or IV depending on when you snap the picture.
I do think, however, that your dominant quadrant can shape how you play. For example, I spent most of my life in quadrant I, playing folk songs on the guitar by ear and writing my own music. When I started learning Dobro, I stayed in that mode pretty much exclusively. As such, I have a tendency to want to maintain a full picking pattern as "background" and pick the melody line out as I lay down a carpet of notes around it.
I have a buddy who is primarily quadrant II. He's quite literate on piano, and although he learns guitar songs by ear, he can play a very literal rendering of the source he learned the song from. I don't do so well at learning by ear because I have a dyslexic ear. 1. 3. 5 and 1, 5, 3 sound alike to me. Or if I get 5 out of 7 notes, well that's as good as all 7. Unfortunately, playing by ear has been my learning style most of my life.
I've started operating in quadrant IV a lot--participating regularly in bluegrass jams, and this has driven me to quadrant II. I try to learn a song from a jam, but I can tell I'm not quite "getting it." So I have started to read music so that I can get the melody line correct. Then I arrange it for the Dobro. But my quadrant IV perspective has made it so I am not as compelled to lay down the carpet of notes any more. I'm getting used to having others establish the full body of a song, and I am learning to add grace licks or transitions. And since the Dobro does not play certain chords very well (open tuned to a G-major), I'm learning to pick through those awkward chords with delicate melody or harmony lines rather than playing robust multi-string chords.
I'll probably never get to quadrant III, although I envy those folks. That's where most session musicians operate, you know, folks who get paid to play. It's OK, just moving into II and IV has rejuvenated my appreciation of music and my enjoyment.
Be careful about quadrant IV, though, that's a real addictive neighborhood.
The two axes are
- Social--essentially a binary axis of "plays alone" and "plays with others"
- Literal--"free style or creative" on one end and "plays it like it's written" on the other
There is nothing judgmental about this system, nor is one's position in a quadrant fixed. I, for one, can be found in quadrants I, II, or IV depending on when you snap the picture.
I do think, however, that your dominant quadrant can shape how you play. For example, I spent most of my life in quadrant I, playing folk songs on the guitar by ear and writing my own music. When I started learning Dobro, I stayed in that mode pretty much exclusively. As such, I have a tendency to want to maintain a full picking pattern as "background" and pick the melody line out as I lay down a carpet of notes around it.
I have a buddy who is primarily quadrant II. He's quite literate on piano, and although he learns guitar songs by ear, he can play a very literal rendering of the source he learned the song from. I don't do so well at learning by ear because I have a dyslexic ear. 1. 3. 5 and 1, 5, 3 sound alike to me. Or if I get 5 out of 7 notes, well that's as good as all 7. Unfortunately, playing by ear has been my learning style most of my life.
I've started operating in quadrant IV a lot--participating regularly in bluegrass jams, and this has driven me to quadrant II. I try to learn a song from a jam, but I can tell I'm not quite "getting it." So I have started to read music so that I can get the melody line correct. Then I arrange it for the Dobro. But my quadrant IV perspective has made it so I am not as compelled to lay down the carpet of notes any more. I'm getting used to having others establish the full body of a song, and I am learning to add grace licks or transitions. And since the Dobro does not play certain chords very well (open tuned to a G-major), I'm learning to pick through those awkward chords with delicate melody or harmony lines rather than playing robust multi-string chords.
I'll probably never get to quadrant III, although I envy those folks. That's where most session musicians operate, you know, folks who get paid to play. It's OK, just moving into II and IV has rejuvenated my appreciation of music and my enjoyment.
Be careful about quadrant IV, though, that's a real addictive neighborhood.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The Cost of Lost Productivity--Myth?
In a very ironic twist, while working today, I took a Twitter link to a web article that discussed the distractions that keep us from working. It was like one of those dream inside a dream things in Inception. The article showed statistics for the things that distract us (like social networks and reading Internet articles). It did some quick math and concluded "That hour per day translates into $10,375 of wasted productivity per person per year, assuming an average salary of $30/hour."
I see this reasoning a lot, especially in ROIs and such. "By reducing the support desk's search time by 15% we would save $375,000 a year, justifying the addition of three positions to overhaul and maintain the new knowledgebase files."
The flaw is this: If given that hour back, most people would not get an hour's more work done. Especially the kinds of workers who are in a situation where they can get distracted by email and Internet related things.
I was at an STC conference once where a panel was discussing trends and the topic came up of how technical communicators could show their value. One person made an argument similar to the one above, "By making the support group more efficient we can save $x.xx per year in support costs." I pointed out that in my company (not IBM at the time, BTW) such a claim would have to be supported by the Help Desk manager committing to reducing the head count by that equivalent amount. Otherwise, the money will not have been saved. Jeez, you would have thought I was advocating euthanasia.
But it pointed out the fallacy of the argument. If you really were making folks 15% more efficient, then you should be able to get by with 15% less people. The unwillingness to advocate the headcount reduction shows a lack of faith in the assumption.
We all need to be a little bit skeptical of these "productivity" arguments that assume more output automatically follows more bandwidth. ROIs are bogus unless the customers are writing bigger checks or the company is writing smaller checks.
Now, I need to get back to work.
I see this reasoning a lot, especially in ROIs and such. "By reducing the support desk's search time by 15% we would save $375,000 a year, justifying the addition of three positions to overhaul and maintain the new knowledgebase files."
The flaw is this: If given that hour back, most people would not get an hour's more work done. Especially the kinds of workers who are in a situation where they can get distracted by email and Internet related things.
I was at an STC conference once where a panel was discussing trends and the topic came up of how technical communicators could show their value. One person made an argument similar to the one above, "By making the support group more efficient we can save $x.xx per year in support costs." I pointed out that in my company (not IBM at the time, BTW) such a claim would have to be supported by the Help Desk manager committing to reducing the head count by that equivalent amount. Otherwise, the money will not have been saved. Jeez, you would have thought I was advocating euthanasia.
But it pointed out the fallacy of the argument. If you really were making folks 15% more efficient, then you should be able to get by with 15% less people. The unwillingness to advocate the headcount reduction shows a lack of faith in the assumption.
We all need to be a little bit skeptical of these "productivity" arguments that assume more output automatically follows more bandwidth. ROIs are bogus unless the customers are writing bigger checks or the company is writing smaller checks.
Now, I need to get back to work.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
A turn in the road
Ta da! A new brand for my blog. I turn 62 this month--three score and twain--and I feel like it's time to shift my life focus a bit. I'm not changing it entirely, more like broadening it. My tag line still mentions technology, but it now encompasses music and social interaction. And my professional associations and credentials have given way to other associations by which I am defining myself more and more.
In spite of my opening this blog with a mention of my age, I don't see this as a maturing process, not even a moving on (which is a lot like "moving away from"). It's more of a "staying in motion" thing.
As my buddy, Miranda, has wisely told me, "Your gear is your fear." I've dropped some of the credentials that said "I'm smart," but I have replaced them with mentions of clubs that say "I belong." Maybe there is a Maslow's hierarchy of fears theme here.
As my mentor, Carol Barnum, has often said, "Writing is thinking." I'm going to write about different things, or at least write more about things I care about outside of technical communication and software design. I'm afraid of thinking the same old thoughts over and over again. My brain wants to think new thoughts.
Please stay tuned and think some of these new thoughts with me.
In spite of my opening this blog with a mention of my age, I don't see this as a maturing process, not even a moving on (which is a lot like "moving away from"). It's more of a "staying in motion" thing.
As my buddy, Miranda, has wisely told me, "Your gear is your fear." I've dropped some of the credentials that said "I'm smart," but I have replaced them with mentions of clubs that say "I belong." Maybe there is a Maslow's hierarchy of fears theme here.
As my mentor, Carol Barnum, has often said, "Writing is thinking." I'm going to write about different things, or at least write more about things I care about outside of technical communication and software design. I'm afraid of thinking the same old thoughts over and over again. My brain wants to think new thoughts.
Please stay tuned and think some of these new thoughts with me.
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