Happiness Challenge - Day 9

 

We didn't get the rain we needed, but today was a pretty day. It got a little humid after lunch as some storm clouds rolled through (they dropped no rain), but I thought it was lovely outside.

The garden is producing in abundance, especially tomatoes. It is too bad I cannot eat tomatoes much anymore, and my husband doesn't like cooked tomatoes at all, so it is not worth the effort to can or freeze tomatoes. It is unfortunate that the produce all comes in at the same time, but I guess summer abundance meant not starving in the wintertime in the old days, when that was all one had to eat.

Also, I went over to my father's for a guitar-playing session with him and a friend of his. I like playing my guitar.

The Guitar I Learned to Play On

I started learning the guitar when I was 11 years old. I learned on a small parlor Gibson guitar that belonged to my father.

He still has it, and yesterday when I was visiting him, I asked about the guitar and he brought it out of the closet.

Here it is.

My Beat Up Six-String

This is a guitar I have not ever had on my blog, I don't think. It's been in the back of the closet for about 20 years.

It's a Yamaha FG-150. This guitar was made from 1968 to 1972. My grandfather gave this one to me when I was about 16, around 1979. He brought it with him from California, where he lived, when he and my grandmother drove in to visit.

He'd added a single pickup to it, to amplify the sound. One of the original tuning keys was missing and had been replaced with something that did not match. (It's still on there.)

The thing was beat up all over the back and had a scar across the front.

To further desecrate the instrument, my grandfather wrote my name in tiny little letters near the neck - in ink. The ink has since faded, but the indentation of the pen remains. At the time, I found that incredibly irritating but today I'm glad I have his handwriting on the guitar, however faded it may be.

This is the guitar I played for many years. While most of the scars were already on it - the ones on the back I think came from my grandfather's belt buckle while the one on the front probably came from a watch band - I'm sure I added a few nicks and scratches to it myself.

I bought a Takamine classical guitar around 1990 and put the Yamaha in a case and stowed it in the closet.

I played the Takamine for a long time. By then, my back had become troublesome and holding my heavy electric guitars was problematic, so I'd stopped using those.

After a while, even the Takamine became difficult for me to hold. Since it was a classical guitar, it didn't have a strap on it to help hold it up.

The mini-Taylor is on the left, the
 Takamine is on the right. Note the little
 button on the bottom of the
 mini-Taylor. That's for the strap.

So I started seeking out a different guitar. First I bought a mini-Taylor while we were vacationing in Charleston, SC. It sounded clear and was small. It played well and I could hold it. Then in 2019, I purchased a cheap Epiphone Les Paul Special that was, for an electric guitar, relatively lightweight. 

This is the cheap Epiphone electric.

I played those two guitars for the last several years. In August 2020, I had a bad upper respiratory infection (it was not Covid) that put me to bed for nearly two weeks. I had also stopped seeing my chiropractor because of Covid, unless I was having a real problem, so my back wasn't receiving the attention it needed. (I generally see the chiropractor every two weeks.)

By the time I'd recovered from the upper respiratory infection, I could not pick up my electric guitar and hold it for very long without it causing strain on my back. The mini-Taylor also started bothering me. I began sitting more when I played, but still experienced pain. I tried different positions, but nothing helped.

The straps on these two guitars go from the body area only. There is a peg for a loop for a strap on the bottom and another at the top of the body where the neck connects on both guitars. I strong suspected the weight distribution was a problem, but I didn't know what to do about it except constantly change positions and try to keep things from hurting.

Of course the less I played, the more my fingers hurt when I did play. Playing an instrument is like writing - it's a skill that one must continually nurture. (That's why I write this blog, to nurture that skill.) So I kept picking up the guitar almost daily even if I only played one song. That was frustrating, though, because I couldn't practice or learn anything new. I was just trying to keep the calluses on my fingertips.

About a month ago, I was watching an old tape of Melissa Etheridge and Dolly Parton doing a duet together. I noticed that Dolly Parton was playing a small Martin (they don't make them like that anymore) and her strap did not attach to the body on the left side - it went up to the neck. 

That meant that the weight distribution went more across the top of the shoulders and there was less tension on one set of muscles on the left shoulder.

Dolly Parton's strap was more like a rope while Melissa Etheridge's strap was thick and went down the front.

The only guitar I had that allowed for a strap from the neck to the back of the guitar body was my old Yamaha.

So I dug it out of the closet, dusted it off, and put new strings on it.

However, even after cleaning it, the guitar smelled musty. You know, like your grandma's attic. The odor came from the sound hole in the guitar, and because I am so environmentally sensitive to everything, I couldn't ignore it. In fact, I developed another sinus infection that I suspect was a combination of trying to play this guitar and pollen.

I couldn't even play it long enough to see if the change in strap position would make much difference.

Ridding something old of that musty smell is a challenge. I put a dryer sheet in the hole. I placed cotton balls swabbed with Ozium in the hole (it smells sort of lemony). However, the musty smell remained and I was frustrated.

Then I watched an old Fleetwood Mac concert on TV. Lindsay Buckingham was playing a Rick Turner electric guitar (would love to have one of those, but it's a $15,000 guitar, so no). I noticed that on all of his guitars, though, he had the sound hole covered.

Sound hole covers are generally used to keep guitars from "feeding back" or squealing through the amplifier.

They aren't very expensive. I bought one online and it arrived yesterday. It didn't fit exactly because of my grandfather's modifications to the guitar, but my husband was able to trim it up. I slipped the sound hole cover over the sound hole and guess what! I can't smell the musty smell. It's trapped in the guitar (along with a sheet of Bounce).

Now to see if I can get my fingers back to playing without my back feeling like it might break!

(As a plus, I was surprised to find that the Yamaha is lighter than the mini-Taylor, even though the Taylor is a smaller guitar. It must be made of a heavier wood.)

Wish me luck.

And lots of practice time.

Playing for Mosquitos

I play guitar. I do not claim to play well. I do decent enough for my personal amusement; I seldom play for other people and I am a nervous wreck when I do.

However, this seclusion has led to lack of playing and enthusiasm for doing so.

Music, apparently, needs an audience. Or at least a little encouragement.

When I first learned to play, I was around 11 years old. I'd had a few years of piano and my piano teacher and I were at an impasse: she was insisting I play only classical music and I wanted to learn what I was hearing on the radio. By that time, I'd discovered pop music and wasn't listening to the country music of my earlier years.

I was into the Adult Top 40 music that Casey Kasem counted down on his show every Sunday. Mrs. Arrington was having none of that. I remember how she banged on the piano one day in total frustration when I brought in a piece of pop music and said I wanted to learn that.

My piano lessons ended that afternoon, I think. Ah well.

I also played flute in the band. My father played the guitar and had several around the house. One was a small parlor Gibson. He did not play it but it was there and I picked it up. I purchased a Hal Leonard book on how to play the guitar and sat about learning how to play chords and pick out a few little tunes.

Once I had the hang of it, the guitar was my instrument. My parents bought me an electric guitar, which I still have although it has a short in it and doesn't work right now, and I played in a disco band throughout high school. While other kids asked, "Do you want fries with that?" I went out on Friday and Saturday nights with four other kids who were into music. We earned about $200 a gig. It kept me in gas money, anyway.

My mother enjoyed hearing me play and was encouraging. She was much more encouraging with my music than with my writing. She would ask me to play for her frequently, and I did because I liked to practice.

I paid for my own lessons for a time after I could drive, and again after I married.

It was marriage that stopped the music, I'm afraid.

My husband seldom if ever asked me to play the guitar. I'm afraid I don't recall a single instance of him saying, "Honey, would you sit and play for me?" He plays no instrument nor can he sing. Maybe I sound really terrible to him, I don't know. He sometimes listens if I am playing, but he also doesn't hesitate to turn on the TV even if I am playing. There is nothing more irritating than being in the middle of Leaving on a Jet Plane and having your husband come in and flip the TV on to Andy Griffith.

So I focused on my job, my school, and my writing, which eventually became my work and something that I'm fairly good at. I am not clever at it, and I daresay I will never be known much beyond the borders of Botetourt, but I'm ok with being on the B shift as far as writers go.

The guitar is still something I love. As I have aged, I've switched out instruments, trading in an Ovation guitar and a 12-string guitar for a Takamini classical. I played that a long time - about 20 years - but I put it down for a while, and when I returned to it, it simply didn't fit me anymore.

So I bought a Taylor GS Mini. It is smaller and closer to the size of the Gibson I learned to play on. I fooled around with that for about two years, and then this September I found a cheap Epiphone electric guitar.

It weighs about as much as a regular-sized dreadnaught Gibson, I suppose. It definitely doesn't weigh as much as a regular electric guitar. So I bought it, and now I am playing it fairly regularly, almost every other day, even though I can tell it's a cheap guitar.

And that doesn't matter, because there's no one to hear. Just the bugs in the walls, or the squirrels that are too close the house.

I make music to the sound of silence, and the sounds I do make bounce around and echo until they find their way out a crack. My guitar could be playing the happiest tune in the world, and there's no one to hear but me.

Or it could be crying as sadly as a whippoorwill that lost its mate.

And not a soul would know it.

Meet Mrs. Plain Jane

In last week's photos about our trip to Cherry Grove, SC, I noted we went to the guitar store and hinted at a new arrival at the house.

May I introduce to you my newest guitar, Mrs. Plain Jane:

Mrs. Plain Jane is an Epiphone Les Paul Special 1. It's a limited edition electric guitar that I bought simply because it is very lightweight.

I have other electric guitars but I can barely pick them up. This weighs about as much as a regular-sized acoustic guitar.

It was also only $150, which means it's a very cheap throw-away guitar that I can beat on. No bells and whistles, just pickups for sound.

I had forgotten how nice it is to play an electric guitar. The fretboard on this is no "real" Les Paul (those are made by Gibson and cost loads of money and aren't made in China), but it is sufficient for a rockin' rendition of China Grove.

An A is an A is an A

Yesterday I visited my father, and we played a little music after dinner.

We do not have similar tastes in music and we don't play together much. Actually I don't play with anyone often, something that shows in my timing. Lately I've taken to playing with the songs as they come over my Alexa so I can get my timing back in sync with the world instead of the beat that rests inside of me.

While my father was trying to let me lead the music, he was having trouble watching my fingers as they changed chords. For one thing, I've always been very quick to change chords on the guitar. I remember him complaining about that when we played together when I was 12 years old. So that is nothing new.

I was playing Peaceful, Easy Feeling by the Eagles - it's a relatively easy song, in the key of E, with chord changes of A, F#m, and B. Nothing too hard.

He couldn't figure out my A, though. I play it in the second fret, first, fifth strings open, 6th string untouched, a finger each on the second, third, and fourth strings. Like this:

But my father makes an A chord by barring the second, third, and fourth strings, and stretching his little finger out to the fifth fret to turn the lower E string into an A. (I actually cannot find an example of that on the Internet. I think it's an old-school A. Still an A, just not the most obvious one.)

There are so many ways to make a single chord on a guitar that there is no "right" way to do it. Dad wanted to tell me that I wasn't making an "A" chord until his own chord chart showed the above.

Here is A in the fifth fret, using a barre chord:

It's basically an "E" chord moved down five frets on the guitar fret board. You can do that with any position. You can use the D position and move it down to the 9th fret and you'd have an A (you wouldn't play the 4th, 5th, and 6th strings, though, unless you barred the chord).

This is all basically guitar theory, and once I grasped it when I first started playing I didn't have much trouble moving over the fretboard. I am not a lead guitar player - I prefer simply strumming and singing, with an occasional lick thrown in but not often. I also like to finger style and not use a pick, which makes the guitar hard to hear sometimes. I don't need to move all over the fretboard but I like to if I can.

Anyway, we had a nice time playing. He had a new guitar, a Guild, which was a smaller body than most of his dreadnought guitars and I could play that better. He uses a heavier gauge string than I do - I prefer light gauge strings -  so my fingers tired a little more quickly than they do when I'm playing on my little Taylor, but it was a good reminder that I need to keep those callouses forming on the ends of my fingers on my left hand.

Tommy Emannuel at The Harvester

Friday night my husband and I went to see Tommy Emmanuel perform at The Harvester Performance Center in Rocky Mount. He is a guitar player.

The Harvester

The Harvester Performed Center is about an hour and 15 minute drive for us if the traffic is light. This was the first time we had been to a show there. The Harvester seats 460 people - Tommy Emmanuel had a sold-out show. Some performances offer "gold seats," which basically means you get to sit anywhere you want in the first 10 rows. We had those and it was worth the extra money.

The chairs are very comfortable; however, the sides are not slanted toward the stage and the best seats therefore are in the middle of the venue. There are only a few poles to block views and the aisles were comfortably wide.

You can buy beer and wine inside ("adult beverages"), along with bottled water and a few things to eat. There was some kind of food truck parked outside for the early arrivals.

Parking, however, is not readily available and I saw no handicapped parking spots whatsoever. We found something close because we arrived at 6:20 and the doors opened at 7:00 p.m.; even then, there was already a line at the door. Most of the parking is on-street or perhaps a bank parking lot; there is a note on the venue's website that notes a few places will have your car towed if you park there.

The sound was great; the acoustics were good even though we were sitting to one side of the stage.

The Harvester stage prior to the show.

Tommy Emmanuel

I have been watching youtube videos of this guy for a while now. He is a fingerstyle guitarist who bills himself as a one-man band. He beats on his guitar for the drums, place the base notes on the upper two strings with his thumb, and managed to do the rhythm and melody lines all at the same time.

I have never seen anyone play guitar like he does. Here is a video of his version of Classical Gas, which seems to be his signature song. The crowd broke into applause and cheers as soon as he started it.




Emmanuel has been a soloist for a long time, but in the 1970s and 80s, he was a "sessions" guitarist (played on records of multiple bands/singers) and he toured at one time with Tina Turner.

Because I am still on the media/release lists, I had earlier received a press release request from Mr. Emmanuel's publicist. She sent me these stats:

•         He is arguably the greatest living acoustic guitarist. Known for his unique fingerstyle playing, he frequently threads three different parts simultaneously into his material, operating as a one-man band who handles the  melody, the supporting chords and the bass all at once.

•         Has been nominated for two GRAMMY Awards, and two ARIA Awards from the Australian Recording Industry Association

•         One of only 5 guitarists in the world who was named a Certified Guitar Player by guitar legend Chet Atkins

•         Has averaged over 300 shows per year all over the world, including sold out shows in North America, Australia, Europe, South America, and Asia, including recent tours in Russia and China 

•         Voted “Favorite Acoustic Guitarist” in both Guitar Player Magazine and Acoustic Guitar Magazine reader polls

•         YouTube channel has over 31,000,000 views and 192,000+ subscribers      

We were not supposed to take photos but I had my Nikon Coolpix 3200S with me. (I have never been very good at following the rules, I'm afraid.) I hid the lighting from the back viewer on the camera with a piece of paper so I am lucky I managed to get any pictures at all, since I was basically guessing at the shot since I couldn't see what I was aiming at, but I did take a few that turned out OK.

Getting ready to head into Classical Gas (I think).

Doing a little singing. He also told jokes.

The only quibble I had with the show was near the end, when he took out a drum brush and was showing how he used the microphone and guitar as percussion instruments. During this time, the lighting switched off and on to each beat, and I knew as soon as he began to speed up that this was not something I could watch. Lighting like that sets off migraines (and epileptic seizures in some people) so I shut my eyes and eventually had to take off my glasses and cover them completely with my hands because I could still see the lights going off and on through my closed eyelids. It is frustrating to run into things like this because people either are not aware of sensitivities like that or don't care. I was glad I realized what was happening before I ended up with a major headache.

He played for about two hours, doing a wide range of songs, including the first time I'd ever heard The Entertainer by Scott Joplin played on guitar instead of piano. Many of the tunes were his own arrangements.


Joe Robinson

Joe Robinson is a young man that Tommy Emmanuel is mentoring. He opened the show. 

Here's a video of him playing and singing:



He was an excellent guitar player, too, though I had a hard time understanding the words to his songs. I don't know if that was because of where I was sitting or because I have slow southern ears.

He liked to do tricks, like play two guitars at a time:

Joe Robinson playing acoustic and electric guitars
simultaneously.
 

He could lose the hat, I think.

All in all, an enjoyable evening. Will I ever play like that? I doubt it. I'm 53 years old and have let too much time slip through my fingers, literally. But maybe I can get a little better . . . if I practice.