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2017 Individual Challenges
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Christa's 2017 Reading Stuff Thread
Yaaaaaaayyyyy!!!!!!You have no clue how much this post made me grin like an idiot. :-D
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "It might be the lightest instrument in the world. :PMaybe I should pick one up, although I think I'm more of a banjo kind of person. I really want an acoustic guitar. I've got an electric here an..."
Well... banjolele is a thing :D
That's a great list. Also, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY9av...
Last night I turned this song into a ballad because I couldn't play it fast enough. And I like it better as a ballad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9p7I...
MrsJoseph wrote: "Yaaaaaaayyyyy!!!!!!
You have no clue how much this post made me grin like an idiot. :-D"
heehee! I've been smiling so much my face hurts. And, well, as you know about the crap that happened last month... I needed this in my life right now, more than ever. New beginnings and all that.
The uke forum I'm been lurking in has this thing called Seasons of the Ukulele, where they offer up a different theme every week and people post videos of themselves playing (and sometimes singing) songs in that theme. No one cares how good anyone is, it's about music discovery and community. I might start participating. Maybe.
I'm glad you're enjoying it! :DAnd Homey, I now fully understand how awesome you are, you must be to be playing I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire :D
Christa wrote: heehee! I've been smiling so much my face hurts. And, well, as you know about the crap that happened last month... I needed this in my life right now, more than ever. New beginnings and all that."YES!!!! *hugs*
So happy you're happy!!
^I was in one of those at pianoworld for a while. It is good times. I was also on one from harmonycentral for keyboard geeks which was entertaining because the variety was so ridiculous. I went a long time without piano. Probably ten years which is stupid. But I picked up guitar in that absence and it made me understand piano better. So many wasted years as a youth. I probably could have been a pretty good piano player instead of the hack that I am. But I still love playing.
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "So many wasted years as a youth. I probably could have been a pretty good piano player instead of the hack that I am. But I still love playing."I sometimes wonder what kind of musician I'd be if I'd chosen my own path instead of having it forced on me. I'll be 42 years old this year. All those years of playing music and I'm only now feeling genuine joy from it.
But I have no regrets. I don't do regret. Onward and upward, uke-a-doo, uke-a-doo...
:)
42's a good number.I'm 47 this year. I wonder what I could have done on guitar if I had picked it up when I was 10 instead of 30. Or if I had actually loved piano to start and practiced.
If you've got Netflix and its still around you should watch "It Might get Loud" which was worth the time just for the Jack White segments. The Edge and Jimmy Page parts were interesting, but Jack matches me more philosophically. Fighting with the instrument. Definitely.
Some day maybe I'll make a few youtube videos for the piano and keyboard. It'll be terrible.
I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, so...
I saw this and thought of you. 
:D I see those on Amazon every time I'm browsing instruments. :)
:-D
DoodlePanda wrote: "LOL, is that an actual thing? :D"LOL Yeah, but "pocket guitar" is really a misnomer. It's just 6 metal strings on a board used for practicing chord positions, working on dexterity, etc. It's not an actual instrument.
Christa wrote: "DoodlePanda wrote: "LOL, is that an actual thing? :D"LOL Yeah, but "pocket guitar" is really a misnomer. It's just 6 metal strings on a board used for practicing chord positions, working on dexte..."
huh. I thought it made music. :-(
Well, some of them are tunable to some degree and make a small amount of sound (think a "muted" guitar sound - the tones are there, but vewwy, vewwy quiet) and those could be helpful for working on chord progressions for learning / writing songs.
Christa wrote: "Well, some of them are tunable to some degree and make a small amount of sound (think a "muted" guitar sound - the tones are there, but vewwy, vewwy quiet) and those could be helpful for working on..."That's better than nothing - but I was thinking it was a mini instrument that you could actually play.
Nah, I wrapped that up a couple weeks ago, I think? (I have no concept of time so I really don't know. LOL) Then it was time to wrap up the business taxes, so that kept me busy.When I finished ME:A I started another playthrough but it wasn't over the first one yet. I can't describe how much I enjoyed playing it and just trying to do it again felt hollow, somehow. And nothing, NOTHING could fill the void. Until I pulled up Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on Netflix. It hit the spot. I needed character-focused scifi with interesting aliens. :D I love the show so much. So I've been watching 2 or 3 episodes a day, and right now I'm somewhere in the first few eps of season 4.
That also helped me get past not being able to muster excitement for any other games, and I'm now playing XCOM 2.
And reading again, finally.
Good to see you've unblocked yourself, so to speak :) I'm a few hours into ME:A but haven't quite settled into it somehow. I think I'm missing Shepard too much and can't stop thinking of Scott Ryder as a young upstart whippersnapper. I'll get there, I'm sure...
XCOM!!!I was totally addicted to the original one from 1994.
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "XCOM!!!I was totally addicted to the original one from 1994."
I never played any of the originals. In fact, the rebooted XCOM from 2012 was already a few years old when I got interested. And I felt the pacing was horrible. XCOM 2 feels much better in terms of progression. Though I do have a couple of mods installed to make things a bit easier because my real goal is to complete the game with my original squad intact. :D
I'm just not good enough at these games to play them as intended, but I do enjoy them nonetheless. :)
That's why the original XCOM was so good. Turn based, position your troops and decide what they are doing and see what happens. So many times I'd lose a guy because the alien was just around the corner. So hilrarious. Times were definitely different when I played it on my first PC. I totally loved that game.Do you have any books involving music recommendations? I'm waffling back and forth on a few right now.
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "Do you have any books involving music recommendations?"It took me longer than it should have to parse that question. LOL
The AYBBTU challenge for that category allows for either fiction or non, right? Do you have a preference?
It's a poorly written question.Do you have any recommendations for books involving music?
No preference. Currently I'm thinking:
The Piano
or
Songs That Saved Your Life (Revised Edition): The Art of The Smiths 1982-87
The Smiths are one of those bands who I inevitably fall back on when I can't think of what to listen to. So I guess that makes sense to fall back on them for something to read too.
Hey Rosetta!. Billy Bragg. The Smiths. Oscar Peterson.
Do you like Jazz?If yes, maybe Jazz: A History of America's Music? I borrowed it from the library and it looks pretty.
I've got That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas on my "upcoming" list. At less than 250pgs, it's one of the few decently-rated music history / bio books that clocks in at a fairly low page count. Seriously, just about every other music bio in my collection is 600+ pages which is probably why I haven't gotten around to them yet.
Though they aren't technically about the music, the Rat Pack Mysteries by Robert Randisi were loads of fun to read. :)
https://www.goodreads.com/series/6193...
Those might be a good options. I don't mind Jazz, but maybe I'm thinking Blues over Jazz right now. I'm going to do some more trawling for a foreign book. The Piano was quite enticing since it would hit New Zealand which I've read very little from. Morrisey's autobiography looks interesting too, but it's 500 pages of apparently random stream-of-consciousness.Car crash that you can't look away from might be that one.
Christa wrote: "I've got That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas on my "upcoming" list. At less than 250pgs, it's one of the few decently-rated music histor..."
600+ pages?? And I'm stalling with this one at 400+ pages.
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "Those might be a good options. I don't mind Jazz, but maybe I'm thinking Blues over Jazz right now. I'm going to do some more trawling for a foreign book. The Piano was quite enticing since it woul..."Well, the Blues IS a form of Jazz...
(Couldn't help that, lol. I got kicked out of class once (college!) because I said Billy Holiday was a Jazz singer. Which she was - because Blues is a sub of Jazz. But the teacher was not aware and was mad at me and kicked me out.)
I'm a heathen though. In my book there is only The Blues, everything else is just a different delivery with better or lesser results.From my actual understanding, Jazz and Blues pretty much developed at the same time so the concept that one is rooted in the other is slightly problematic. But whatever. Until you start going into other cultures there's only twelve notes. So have at it because you are going to be repetitive. Your delivery is what you bring to the table when it comes to music.
Pfffftttt!
LOL! I have taken shit for putting Billie Holiday and Etta James and some others under "Jazz:Vocal" in my music collection. In my case, the reason is because a lot of the female vocalists usually categorized as Blues tend to fall on the spectrum closer to other types of Jazz vocalists over in the Vocal Standards and Big Band realm, where as my Blues subgenres tend to lean toward roots blues / traditional, Chicago, New Orleans and later, blues-rock music. (Okay, a lot of it comes down to the "socks and underwear" method of organization - Put shit where I can find it later.)Billie Holiday is most definitely a jazz singer, though, not only because Blues is a subgenre of Jazz, but because her talent and scope of work runs the gamut of nearly the entire Jazz Vocal spectrum.
But then... the number of genre designations I use in my music collection usually leads to exploding heads anyway. :D
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "I'm a heathen though. In my book there is only The Blues, everything else is just a different delivery with better or lesser results.From my actual understanding, Jazz and Blues pretty much devel..."
Sort of. While they did develop as you describe, blues and jazz are categorized as related / derivatives. The main reason for blues often being seen as a sub is that jazz and blues both came into being before music marketing came into being. That changed the dialog because we needed to organize record stores, basically. So it's more about discussing things in terms of organization as opposed to talking about the historical relationship between them.
Either way, I should NOT have been kicked from class!And the dang teacher referenced a MOVIE to prove me wrong. AS IF!
MrsJoseph wrote: "Either way, I should NOT have been kicked from class!And the dang teacher referenced a MOVIE to prove me wrong. AS IF!"
OMG "Lady Sings the Blues" used to kick you out of class. That is sooooo wrong.
Haha, I tend to categorize music into two piles:1) stuff I listen to
2) CRAP
I categorize my music autobiographically.
Oscar Peterson is living on my own, Violent Femmes is first love, Sarah Harmer is my first son and driving arouund Newfoundland. Billy Bragg is everything: high school, first love, my wife, Newfoundland, folk festivals, best friends. Pixies is getting drunk playing D&D. Ella Fitzgerald is Los Angeles for a weekend to see a good friend get married. Tom Waits is shitty stores in Toronto and a lonely bus ride home across Northern Ontario.
I love music. It can make me cry with happiness at the mess of my life.
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "Haha, I tend to categorize music into two piles:1) stuff I listen to
2) CRAP
I categorize my music autobiographically."
My life would be a lot less complicated if I could do it that way. :D
My genres:
(view spoiler)
Christa wrote: "My life would be a lot less complicated if I could do it that way. :DMy genres:"
Wow!
I might need to look up "RK: Hellboogie" though.
Dazrin wrote: "Wow! I might need to look up "RK: Hellboogie" though. "
That's sort of a made-up genre name that I stole from a reference that I've now forgotten, but imagine if Surf Rock and Italian rock music had a love child. That's basically it. :D Check this band out: https://ilmaniscalcomaldestro.bandcam...
Nice. I do appreciate the Italian lyrics. They sound just so subversive. They could be singing about fluffy kitties and I'd never know.I'd go for Horror Punk which I've heard used before. But then music tends to be even worse than books with respect to genre hairsplitting. :P
Silly me stuck listening to Forbidden Dimension. Yes I had to translate from a German Wikipedia page. They are from Calgary?!?
Related bands in my autobiographical system: Huevos Rancheros, Man or Astroman?, The Volcanos, The Blue Stingrays, Dick Dale, The Tiki Tones, etc.
Christa wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "Either way, I should NOT have been kicked from class!And the dang teacher referenced a MOVIE to prove me wrong. AS IF!"
OMG "Lady Sings the Blues" used to kick you out of class..."
YES! I was shocked. As a reader I wanted to pop her, lol.
As a student...very discouraged.
HomeInMyShoes wrote: "Haha, I tend to categorize music into two piles:1) stuff I listen to
2) CRAP
I categorize my music autobiographically.
Oscar Peterson is living on my own, Violent Femmes is first love, Sarah Ha..."
Oh my!
That's lovely.
You know, you may really want to try that Questlove book I'm reading. It's not MY thing because I'm much more books than music but you love music.
Questlove is...very much a musical nerd. And he thinks about music in the same way you mention: as firmly attached to memory.
I think you'd enjoy it.
Christa wrote: "HomeInMyShoes wrote: "Haha, I tend to categorize music into two piles:1) stuff I listen to
2) CRAP
I categorize my music autobiographically."
My life would be a lot less complicated if I could ..."
O_O
Added Questlove to the to read list. Might be the music winner.Thanks.
Welcome!I hope you like it.
So I started reading The Handmaid's Tale, finally. Had it forever, but you know how it goes - there are always so many books waiting to be read. Anyway, since there was buzz about the TV show it kept ending up in front of my face so I pulled it out of the virtual pile and went to it.Now, I hadn't paid much attention to details about the show, so I went into the book pretty "clean" of outside influence. But there I am reading last night, with the TV on as always, and Elizabeth Moss was on the Late Late Show and they showed a clip. So now here I am stuck with Elizabeth Moss in my head as the main character. I'm sure it will fade as I get back into reading it some more (I stopped seeing Harry Dresden as Paul Blackthorne easily enough while reading the Dresden Files) but for the moment, I am irked. LOL
So glad I don't have TV.The Handmaid's Tale has been on my to read list forever. I might get to it this year. I really enjoyed the Maddaddam trilogy from Atwood.
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Maybe I should pick one up, although I think I'm more of a banjo kind of person. I really want an acoustic guitar. I've got an electric here and a JX-8P, a Fantom-X8 and a 1941 Heintzman upright piano. Damn I love playing piano. Love, love, love. Music has always been a part of my life and always will be. Even when my hands are decrepit and can't play anymore I'll probably hold the sheet music in my hands and play in my mind.
Awesome stuff you're playing.
I've been working on:
I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire
The Scientist
The Girl from Ipanema
My Foolish Heart
playing blues piano with a six-month old on my lap
some Mendelssohn Songs without Words
Schumann Opus 15
a few Chopin Mazurkas
I am all over the map in what I love playing.
From High Fidelity:
Dick: I'd guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope.
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No fuckin' way.