River City's Gonna Have Her Boys Band

The problem with the weather being so nice is that I don't feel like sitting in front of my computer and posting to the blog. I'm guessing we were in the low 80's today, and should be in the high 70's tomorrow with nothing but clean air and blue sky. Ahhhh......

About the only thing that could make it any nicer would be to sit out on the porch and read the New York Times for free. Hey, wait a minute. I almost forgot. I can sit down on the porch and read the New York Times for free. In case you haven't heard (and since I'm always the last person to know about the really cool stuff I'm guessing you already have), the New York Times is now available for free over the internet. No, I'm not talking about the website - I mean the actual paper.

Go to this website, download and install the software, and you'll see what I mean. If you've ever tried Zinio then you're probably pretty skeptical about this stuff. I know I was, but it looks like the NY Times finally got it right - no zooming, no pan-and-scan, or any of that garbage. It's as close as anyone's come to as making the onscreen version of their publication as easy to use as the paper version. Download it and try it and see what you think. I think you'll like it, and, of course, it's free. I don't know how the NY Times can afford to give away their paper for free and still make their payroll, but like someone once said, "it ain't my problem."

(The preceding infomercial was brought to you by the New York Times Company. Heh, heh, heh, more of that viral marketing...)

Speaking of things online, as you know I've been trying to learn the piano. As you might also know, I recently bought a guitar and have started playing again after about 20 years away from the instrument. As you might not know, the only real music training I've had was a Music Appreciation class they made me take back in the 7th grade (that was back when public schools not only taught music, but made art and music mandatory requirements for graduation. How times have changed.)

Needless to say, I've long since forgotten almost everything I learned in the 7th grade, including my Music Appreciation class. In fact the only thing I really remember from that class was learning to read music. You know, A B C D E F G, clefs, time signatures, whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, quavers, semiquavers, whole rests, half rests, and on and on and on..., the whole bloody lot.

I also remember that for some reason dotted notes never made sense to me, and used to trip me up every time. We had these exercises where you had to count out the rhythms, like one, two, three, four, one, (two), three, (four), one, (two), (three), four, and so on, depending on the type of note. I'm sure if you ever had to learn standard notation you'll know what I'm talking about. Anyways, I never had a problem with rhythms except for those damned dotted notes. I hated those things because every time I saw one it meant I had to do math. It's like you have to divide it by two which is the same as multiplying by one-half, or something, and then you've got to take the result and multiply it by the sin of theta over pi r squared, or is that the cosine of theta times two pi r? Crap, I forgot. Oh well, then you take the cube root of the inverse ratio of that and round it to the nearest positive integer, and that's how many beats you count.

Or something like that. I'm telling you those dotted notes are complicated and have ruined many a promising musician. I mean, I just wanted to learn how to play "Louie, Louie", not have to do a bunch of math, and yet here they were throwing a bunch of screwy notes at me. I also remember when the music teacher handed out the exercises, the first thing I'd do is look for dotted notes so I could plan ahead.

"There's one. Okay, that's a dotted half so that means I gotta count to three. Remember that, when you get to that count to three. Count to three. Count to three. Okay, remember. Count to three. I got it. Here it comes. Alright. Ready. Here it is. Oh crap, what was I supposed to do. Count to five? Damn. I can't remember."

Music Appreciation class messed me up for years and years with stuff like that. I was pretty traumatized for a while, but eventually I got over it. So now here I am all these years later, and what am I doing? Learning music theory of course, which brings me back to the topic of online sites and the fact that I haven't really found a good one for learning music theory.

What I did instead was buy a book/DVD course called "Beginning Jazz Guitar" by a guy named Jody Fisher. It's pretty good, but you have to know how to play the guitar to use it. It's lots of scale work, which is to be expected because it's hard to learn theory without knowing your scales upside-down, inside-out and backwards. Of course it's hard to really learn your scales if you don't know the fretboard, and that's what I'm working on now: memorizing the fretboard. It's not that hard, but I bet you not 1 in 3 guitarists have the fretboard memorized. Most are like me and just know some chords and some licks and weird stuff you can do by playing with the knobs. It's too bad that most guitarists aren't taught the same way other musicians are. I wish that I was taught theory when I started out instead of having to learn it now, but, as you know, guitarists are stupid and can't handle all that music stuff.

But that's all water under the dam. Like I said, if you want to learn theory then there really aren't any great websites out there. However, there are some that are useful. Musictheory.net has some basic information for raw beginners, but what I like are their free training exercises. The note trainer is especially nice for a beginning pianist, although my problem isn't so much seeing "G" and knowing "G", but rather seeing "G" and playing "G". I can see a G on the staff and know what it is, but somewhere between the brain and the fingers the signal gets garbled and I end up playing and "E" instead. If I had a penny for every time I did that, then, well, that would be a lot of copper. Still, it's a good little trainer.

For the guitarist trying to learn his key signatures (uh, that would be me), then Zentao.com has a nice little tutorial page on the Circle of Fifths. It has the usual information and the wheel and all that, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page it has one of the simplest diagrams of the circle of fifths and circle of fourths I've ever seen - for a guitarist, that is. If you don't play the guitar the diagrams won't do you a bit of good, but if you do play, then just look at those things. They're easy to memorize, and you'll have your major key signatures down in no time. I still don't know who Father Charles was, though.

And finally, for musicians or anyone else who needs ear training, take a look at Ear Master Pro. It's probably the best ear training you can get outside of a classroom, and costs around 70 bucks. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and can say, without a doubt, that it hasn't done me a damn bit of good. But, this is hard stuff, my friend. I expect it will probably take years for me to really develop my ear, but the program promises that when I'm through with it I'll be able to hear a song on the radio and take out a piece of manuscript paper and write it down on the spot. We'll see, we'll see.

Anyways, that's all for a Monday. Gotta practice my scales, you know. Oh, and one more thing. I don't know where I read this, but someone did a survey and found that one of the things most people regret is not learning music. Sounded a little fishy to me at first, but you know there are probably a lot of people out there who regret never learning to play a musical instrument or learning how to read and understand music. Maybe someone like you. So, I say, get off your butt, go buy a piano or a guitar or a recorder or whatever, and learn to play. Sheeesh, don't just think about it - do it.

So there, don't you feel motivated now.