I apologize for the 2.5 weeks break in between posts. Update: I've been hired by the Red and White Fleet and started work this week!
Whew! It's been fun, but also pretty damn hard. I'm on my feet a lot more with this job than my other job as a special education paraeducator, and yesterday was pretty busy. I'm off today, but tomorrow should be even busier since it's the weekend.
But it's been mostly fun. I met another training supervisor, who happens to also be a musician! He has an album out on iTunes with his former band, Red Light Mind, and it's really good. Has a psychedelic, Hendrixian feel to it. Although he no longer goes around doing performances, he still plays and write songs. We chatted about music during our down times, and he has some great insights.
I made a post on Facebook about JM, which I didn't expect to blow up like it did. But in the end it made me realize how much JM really means to me and so many other people. I got pretty long-winded, but I essentially said I feel like I'm a stronger, braver, and more compassionate person, and JM played a big role in that, not just with his music but also from listening to interviews and watching videos like Eastwood Allen's "Someday I'll Fly".
Got me thinking: what if a bunch of us wrote essays on the impact JM has had in our lives, put them together as a book and sent it to him! It would be nice if they got published and we made a bit of profit, but ultimately just to see JM get it and making his day, if not his week, month or year, would be satisfying enough.
Sounds cool?
Got "Walt Grace's Submarine Test, January 1967" playing as I type this:
I applied last week for a customer service position with Red & White Fleet in San Francisco:
I just had my interview this morning, and I felt it went well. They later e-mailed me about doing a background check, which according to my buddy is a good sign.
"Walt Grace" is a great them not just for the nautical aspect, but because the song is about a man who out of "desperately hating his old place" (like me in my current job) took a gamble.
"And his wife told his kids he was crazy".
When I told my mom about the initial e-mail requesting an interview from R&W, she didn't seem too happy about it. Just a few weeks ago there was a recent announcement that they had a few permanent positions open. I know my mom and some of my co-workers were telling me to do it since it meant a steady paycheck and benefits, but I couldn't. The last time I took a job for security was the fall of 2012, and I was literally losing my mind. At one point I punched a hole in the wall. It wasn't just the job, but a combination of things, but the high-stress job didn't help.
Since then I've kept plugging along, subbing here and there, but in the past month I've applied to seven different places in hopes of landing something different. I've been depressed, with fleeting thoughts of suicide (sorry for the morbid turn, but I gotta be honest). I've felt stuck, like I had nowhere else to go. But with this interview and the potential hiring, for the first time, it's like someone just threw color on my gray world.
So my mom and other folks may think I'm crazy for wanting to take a job in the city, something that's way out of my comfort zone, working on a boat. But I need change. I've been stuck indoors, either in classrooms or in different stores and movie theaters for the last 15 years, and an outdoor job would be awesome. Not to mention the job entails riding a boat on tours of the spectacular San Francisco Bay, including the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, and not just during the day but during sunset as well. Also, while this job I'm in isn't the easiest, it's still the same routine of either disciplining kids with emotional problems or toileting and diaper changing even teenagers and young adults. And to make things worse, everyone's miserable at work.
I know the grass may be greener on the other side, and at some point if I get to work for R&W it might become a bit of a grind. But my impressions so far are the staff seems very cool, and one of the managers that interviewed me said as intense as the job can get from time to time, they do try to keep things as relaxed as possible.
Wish me the best, guys. I'm going to hear from them in a couple of days. Right now it's part-time they're looking at, so I might still keep subbing a couple of days a week, but there's full-time potential if I do well, and if I can get a full-time gig, then NO MORE SUBBING!!
BTW, shout out to these young cats from Hawaii. Wish I knew their names. =) They released this cover of "Walt Grace" around the time the album came out. Enjoy!
So my younger sister has picked up the ukulele and just played her first song last night. Needs to work on the rhythm, but got the notes right at least. =)
But just tonight we were chatting about it, and right off the bat she was like,"I ain't playing no 'Twinkle, Twinkle'".
It got me thinking: all these guitar methods I've been on had me play melodies of lullabies or songs from like the freaking Civil War era, or just strumming chords. While there's nothing wrong with either of those things, right from the bat my sister's like "Why play stuff that's boring? I just want to get to the good stuff."
Why have I subjected myself to playing these exercises that end up with my eyes glazing over because they're so freaking boring? I get that beginners have to start somewhere, but why not just start with stuff you like?
While I still am working on my sight reading, instead of relegating myself to boring tunes, I'll use something like Hal Leonard's Easy Guitar White Pages, where there's all these cool popular songs to start out with. It's a bit challenging, but in order to get better I have to challenge myself anyway.
There's also books and websites with all kinds of riffs and licks I can feast on, too. It's time I started playing what I want for a change.
Where's the humble pie come in? Here I am thinking I've been playing guitar for a couple of years and I was going to walk her through the ukulele, but instead she got me to change my way of approaching the guitar.
It seems like that's how all the greats got their start, anyway. John wanted to play Stevie Ray Vaughan stuff; apparently when he started taking lessons he told his teacher "I want to play this" and then played an SRV tape. Nothing against lullabies, but I don't think Jimmy Page or Joe Satriani got into guitar to play those. =)
So I'm going to get a bite to eat, have a nice little drink and then start finally having some fun! Hopefully I can get around to this in a month or two:
This is more for the guitar and music theory nerds, I'm afraid. =)
My buddy from work (a great guitarist) and I were having a discussion last week about guitar notation, specifically how it tends to be strictly written in the treble clef one octave up. Then the question was brought up: why not the grand staff?
Here's the range of guitar notes on the treble clef alone (typical guitar notation):
Notice the number of ledger lines that must be written above and below: 3 below, and this picture only goes up to the 17th fret of the first string, A; if we kept going up to D for a 22 fret guitar, it would require two more ledger lines. Unless you write 8va, but it would create more confusion, in my opinion.
Here with the grand staff, you would need only one ledger line below (the lowest note is actually E, unless you did Drop C tuning but that's a whole other post), and for a 22 fret guitar you're already set because the D would be in the space right above that 2nd ledger line on top of the treble clef, and for a 24 fret guitar you just need one more ledger line as opposed to six with just the treble clef. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about being an octave up. The tones are the same as on a piano.
Coming from piano, while I have improved my sight reading, I still find it easier to digest the idea of reading using the whole grand staff. On guitar threads I've seen, the most common reasons why guitarists (if they read) use the treble clef alone are space saving and ease.
Maybe this won't be some sweeping movement where all of a sudden more people will use the grand staff. But the late great jazz guitarist Johnny Smith was a huge proponent of the grand staff, and his book from Mel Bay, "The Complete Johnny Smith Approach To Guitar" emphasizes right off the bat why he prefers using the grand staff for guitar notation as opposed to just the treble clef.
This is my next guitar experiment, playing off the grand staff. I'll be transposing some easier pieces, such as those from the Gibson Learn and Master Guitar series, onto grand staff using Musescore (I'm totally doing product placement), and we'll see how it goes. Maybe a month from now I'll go back to being all about the treble. Who knows?
(Disclaimer: I actually loathe Meghan Trainor, but I thought having this title would get me a least a couple more views. LOL)
