jazzguitar.be

Seems like a great site:

http://www.jazzguitar.be/jazzguitar_licks.html

Volatility Smile Lecture Notes

Pretty decent lecture notes on the modelling of volatility by Emanuel Derman:

http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/laughter.html

When it pays not to know your times table

I suspect this is probably apocryphal, but it's a nice little allegory on the role of luck in life:

For almost two centuries, Spain has hosted an enormously popular Christmas lottery. Based on payout, it is the biggest lottery in the world and nearly all Spaniards play. In the mid 1970s, a man sought a ticket with the last two digits ending in 48. He found a ticket, bought it, and then won the lottery. When asked why he was so intent on finding that number, he replied, "I dreamed of the number seven for seven straight nights. And 7 times 7 is 48."

(source here)

Birthday guitar goodies

After the long, tortured wail of "Oh God, Nooooooooooo!" that always accompanies Gekko awaking to find he is yet another year older, this year's birthday afforded a pleasant surprise in the form of a couple of gifts from his better half. Recognizing the recent renaissance in his interest for all things guitar, she had paid a sneaky visit to Billy Hyde and bought him a super-cool D'Addario guitar stool (it swivels!):

She also picked up the Hercules wall hangers that Gekko had ordered a while back. These bad boys allow your guitars to hang by the neck just like in the store and have a cool locking mechanism that holds the guitar place when you set it on. Highly recommended!

The Guitar Diaries #4

In this week's lesson we covered some more chord shapes for dominant
sevenths, ninths, eleventh and thirteenths. The last 3 of these are
constructed by taking a seventh and adding, respectively, the second,
fourth or sixth note of the scale. The addition of these notes adds a
different colour to the sound of the chord. A cool, and practical,
application of these chords is to play the C Mixolydian scale (C-D-E-F-
G-A-Bb-C) where each note is at the top of one of these chords. I was
also shown several combinations of these chords that work well for a
blues-style rhythm.

I've also got another little blues piece to chew on. This one is a
"Mixolydian blues", with a straight sixteenths feel. There's a lot
more notes than the one from last week, so it will probably take a bit
more work to learn.

The Guitar Diaries #1-#3

Have decided to start keeping something of a record of my weekly guitar lessons -- the following is a catch-up from the first three weeks...

Lesson #1

Reviewed basic major scale patterns (I already had these pretty well nailed), picking technique etc (I was encouraged to use a thick pick -- so I've traded the 1mm Jim Dunlop for the smaller, thicker Dunlop Jazz III).

Introduced triad shapes across, and up and down, the fingerboard. Covered major, minor, diminished and augmented. The three inversions (I-III-V, III-V-I, V-I-III) were considered. Moving from one inversion to the next is achieved by raising the lowest note an octave (so that it "leapfrogs" the other two to become the top note) or conversely by lowering the highest note).

Augmented triads are an interesting case because the three inversions are identical, which happens because the three notes are evenly spaced throughout the octave. (As an aside, it's interesting to think of what you get from all such symmetric decompositions of the octave: firstly, the octave interval itself (the most trivial: a note and the same note an octave higher); the tritone interval (two notes six semi-tones apart); the diminshed seventh chord (4 minor third intervals); the augmented triad already mentioned (3 major third intervals); the whole-tone scale (6 notes each a whole tone apart); and finally the chromatic scale (all twelve notes, each a semi-tone apart). Mathematically, this simply reflects the different ways to factorize the number 12: 1x12, 2x6, 3x4, 4x3, 6x2, 12x1.

Lesson #2

Covered basic 4-note shapes for seventh chords: major seventh, dominant seventh, minor seventh, minor seventh (flat 5). Also introduced a fewer other chord shapes: added ninth, open triad voicings.

A good way to practise these shapes is to play them for each note in the major scale, moving up the neck. 

Also learned a nice "bossa nova" rhythm that works well with the V-I-III-VII shapes on the bottom four strings (EADG). The two bass notes are played alternately with the pick, while in between the fingers play the two high notes.

Was given a chord melody arrangement of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to help become familiar with the chord patterns being learned in the contextof an actual song. It would be fun to take other simple tunes and attempt my own chord melody arrangements (Ernie Ball books have some nice ones... -- it could be nursery rhyme heaven/hell!).

Lesson #3

Looked at the inversions of seventh chords up/down the neck. This is quite interesting, because on the guitar you can't generally play "closed" seventh chords (i.e. I-III-V-VII), since the fingerings would be, well, unfingerable. So instead you play something like I-V-VII-III, where the III is one octave higher. Now, you can move this up the neck through a sequence of inversions, by moving each note to the next higher one. Thus, you get the following inversions:

    I-V-VII-III -> III-VII-I-V -> V-I-III-VII -> VII-III-V-I

Some of the resulting patterns are familiar as fragments of barre chord shapes, a couple less so. The III-VII-I-V shape on the ADGB strings is a bit of stretch (particularly for the major seventh), but sounds quite nice.

One thing that I noticed sounds cool is when you take a major seventh voicing, C let's say, and move the root note down to the seventh. You get a melancholy-sounding E minor chord. Then change the note that was the seventh in the original chord up to the root, and your back to the major seventh sound.

We also did a simple 12 bar blues piece called "Model T Ford Blues" by, you guessed it, Robben Ford (it's from the GIT course notes -- I think he used to teach there). I had a lot fun practicing this one -- it has a really bluesy sound and you get to pour as much "feel" into each note as you can (I was imagining myself Ralph Macchio in Crossroads -- complete with gormless slack-jawed facial expression :-). It's basically in the B flat blues scale, though a couple of times the major sixth note (G) is played, which has an interesting sound. I'm not sure what the harmonic significance of that note is -- but it sounds cool.

paranoid transpotter

choose a career.

choose building your personal brand. be the ceo of me.com. leverage your contacts. grow your network. be a team player. just do it. onwards and upwards. if you can dream it you can become it. short/long/medium term goals.

shall we do coffee? stick something in my calendar. 

choose working smarter not harder. have you got much going on? don't reinvent the wheel. low-hanging fruit. the squeaky wheel gets the grease. don't be a hero. be pro-active. take the credit. who's quarter-backing this one? LET'S PUT THAT ONE ON THE BACKBURNER.

squeaking greaseballs.

choose connectivity. slowly scrolling through inbox on blackberry in elevator. powerpoint presentation. netbook on the train. put it in an email. did you copy me on that? what's your ETA? can you re-send that report pls --- thx. your mailbox has reached its 100MB limit. looping in. circling back. going forward.

going nowhere fast.

choose managing expectations. Q3 key deliverables. WE PROBABLY DON'T WANT TO GO DOWN THAT PATH.

choose looking busy. appearances matter. late night email; cc the MD. slowly scrolling through inbox on blackberry in elevator. i think he's a partner. face time. extra spreadsheet masking open web browser. never leave before the boss. working longer not smarter for now: eyes on the prize. 

we should definitely catch up for that coffee. does 2mw am work for you? 

choose networking. clear throat with authority. a good, firm handshake. eye contact. body language. small talk; polite but assertive. a people person.

choose relationship business: client-facing. build the franchise; synergize. KYC: know your client. light-touch regulator. wall-crossed. in-house. managing conflicts when they arise. putting out fires. damage control. LET'S PUT THAT ONE TO BED.

choose performance-related. value-added. annual review. comp day. what are your numbers? dancing in the cubicle; going places. high five. weeping in the stalls. head-hunters; jumping ship. survival of the fittest: darwinian; sun tzu.

choose work-life balance. pret-a-manger. lunch at your desk. leaving now -- home by 10pm. too tired to make it/too tired to fight about it -- ha ha. fitness first backpack. burger king/mackey d's. vending machine. holborn station, northern line. armpits soaking, trousers chafing. extraordinary market conditions: annual leave cancelled. 

choose frequent flyer. business class upgrade. express shuttle; 15 pounds/15 minutes. time is money: you're worth it. plasma, blu ray, 3DTV. sky tv, pay-per-view. premier league, corporate box. user pays. HD content.

choose exceeding expectations. well-positioned for broad-based growth. outperformance; incentivized. 2/20. best-in-class. 

monkeys on a typewriter. darts at a newspaper. lemmings over a cliff.

choose taking a view. thanks for the market colour. risk-adjusted outperformance. stress tested. ten sigma event. too big to fail. global downturn. leading indicators. green shoots; v-shaped or double dip? the recovery story. lagging indicators. 

mine's a decaf skinny soy latte. grande, please.

the global growth story. burgeoning middle class. first-world living standards. sweat shop. multinational. organic growth. commodity-driven rally. consumer culture. growth by acquisition. there's an app for that. climate-gate. tea party. small government. atlas shrugged. where do you want to go today? hell in a hand-cart. 

that being said. it is what is. go with the flow.

choose a career.

Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in 5 Minutes

I just stumbled upon this essay on the global warming "debate". It's refreshing and cogently argued --- all the more so because it's written an investment manager, Jeremy Grantham (who seems like one of the few smart-and-decent guys in the business). I've shamelessly cut and pasted the bulk of it below -- the better to spread the message! (You can find the original here; If you enjoy getting angry, also check out some of the posts that this article stirred up from irate red-neck tea-baggers...)

1) The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, after at least several thousand years of being quite constant, started to rise with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It has increased by 40% and is rising each year. This is certain and straightforward.

2) One of the properties of CO2 is that it creates a greenhouse effect and, other things being equal, causes the temperature to rise. This is just physics.

3) Several other factors, like changes in solar output, have major influences on climate over millennia, but these effects are known, are observable, and have been allowed for in current models. Critically, there have been no important changes in these other factors over the last 100 years.

4) The doubts arise when it comes to the interaction of CO2 with other variables in a complicated system, especially water vapor. It is impossible to be sure whether the temperature will rise slowly or rapidly. But, the past can be measured. The temperature has indeed steadily risen and is well within the boundaries predicted for the man-made effect. But the forecasts still range very widely, from a harmless negligible rise to a potentially disastrous +6 degrees Fahrenheit or higher within this century. The main danger of the CO2 interaction with water vapor is the high probability that it will cause a great increase in severe precipitation episodes.

5) Skeptics argue that this wide range of uncertainty lowers the need to act: "Why spend money when you're not certain?" But since the penalties rise hyperbolically at the tail, a wider range implies a greater risk (and a greater expected value of the costs). This is logically and mathematically rigorous and yet is still argued.

6) Pascal asks the question: What is the expected value of a very small chance of an infnite loss? And, he answers, "Infnite." In this example, what is the cost of lowering CO2 output and having the long-term effect of increasing CO 2 turn out to be nominal? The cost appears to be equal to foregoing, once in your life, six months' to one year's global growth – 2% to 4%, or less. The benefits, even with no warming, include: energy independence from the Middle East; more jobs, since wind and solar power and increased efficiency are more labor-intensive than another coal-fired power plant; less pollution of streams and air; and an early leadership role for the U.S. in industries that will inevitably become important. Conversely, what are the costs of not acting on prevention when the results turn out to be serious: costs that may dwarf those for prevention; and probable political destabilization from droughts, famine, mass migrations, and even war. And, to Pascal's real point, what might be the cost at the very extreme end of the distribution: defnitely life changing, possibly life threatening.

7) The biggest cost of all from global warming is likely to be the accumulated loss of biodiversity. This features nowhere in economic cost-benefit analysis because, not surprisingly, it is hard to put a price on that which is priceless.

8) A special word on the right-leaning think tanks: As libertarians, they abhor the need for government spending or even governmental leadership, which in their opinion is best left to private enterprise. In general, this may be an excellent idea. But global warming is a classic tragedy of the commons – seeking your own individual advantage, for once, does not lead to the common good, and the problem desperately needs government leadership and regulation. Sensing this, these think tanks have allowed their drive for desirable policy to trump science. Not a good idea.

9) Also, I should make a brief note to my own group – die-hard contrarians. Dear fellow contrarians, I know the majority is usually wrong in the behavioral jungle of the stock market. And heaven knows I have seen the soft scientists who lead finance theory attempt to bully their way to a uniform acceptance of the bankrupt theory of rational expectations and market efficiency. But climate warming involves hard science. The two most prestigious bastions of hard science are the National Academy in the U.S. and the Royal Society in the U.K., to which Isaac Newton and the rest of that huge 18th century cohort of brilliant scientists belonged. The presidents of both societies wrote a note recently, emphasizing the seriousness of the climate problem and that it was man- made. Both societies have also made full reports on behalf of their membership stating the same. Do we believe the whole elite of science is in a conspiracy? At some point in the development of a scientific truth, contrarians risk becoming flat earthers.

10) Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs, and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? Most hard scientists hate themselves or their colleagues for being in the news. Being a climate scientist spokesman has already become a hindrance to an academic career, including tenure. I have a much simpler but plausible "conspiracy theory": that fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results.

11) Why are we arguing the issue? Challenging vested interests as powerful as the oil and coal lobbies was never going to be easy. Scientists are not naturally aggressive defenders of arguments. In short, they are conservatives by training: never, ever risk overstating your ideas. The skeptics are far, far more determined and expert propagandists to boot. They are also well-funded. That smoking caused cancer was obfuscated deliberately and effectively for 20 years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of extra deaths. We know that for certain now, yet those who caused this fatal delay have never been held accountable. The profits of the oil and coal industry make tobacco's resources look like a rounding error. In one notable case, the obfuscators of global warming actually use one MIT professor who also defended tobacco! The obfuscators' simple and direct motivation – making money in the near term, which anyone can relate to – combined with their resources and, as it turns out, propaganda talents, have meant that we are arguing the science long after it has been nailed down. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: "Have they no grandchildren?"

12) Almost no one wants to change. The long-established status quo is very comfortable, and we are used to its deficiencies. But for this problem we must change. This is never easy.

13) Almost everyone wants to hear good news. They want to believe that dangerous global warming is a hoax. They, therefore, desperately want to

believe the skeptics. This is a problem for all of us.

I also found Grantham's take on the GFC particularly interesting and, again, right on the money (from his Wikipedia site):

"I ask myself, 'Why is it that several dozen people saw this crisis coming for years?' I described it as being like watching a train wreck in very slow motion. It seemed so inevitable and so merciless, and yet the bosses of Merrill Lynch and Citi and even [U.S. Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson and [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke — none of them seemed to see it coming.

I have a theory that people who find themselves running major-league companies are real organization-management types who focus on what they are doing this quarter or this annual budget. They are somewhat impatient, and focused on the present. Seeing these things requires more people with a historical perspective who are more thoughtful and more right-brained — but we end up with an army of left-brained immediate doers.

So it's more or less guaranteed that every time we get an outlying, obscure event that has never happened before in history, they are always going to miss it. And the three or four-dozen-odd characters screaming about it are always going to be ignored. . . .

So we kept putting organization people — people who can influence and persuade and cajole — into top jobs that once-in-a-blue-moon take great creativity and historical insight. But they don't have those skills."

The Frank Zappa Guitar Book

Just stumbled on an online copy of this out-of-print songbook:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3265734/frank-zappa-the-frank-zappa-guitar-book-v6

 It's now the stuff of legend (among guitar fanboys at least) how Steve Vai was hired out of Berklee by Frank Zappa, and given the job of "transcribing" his guitar music. Perusing pages of the above book, you'll get a feel for what a super-human feat of musicality this was on the part of the young Vai. Check out the freakish rhythmic groupings (with ratios like 7:4, 6:5 all over the place). He even transcribes the feedback notes for goodness' sake! And there's not a hint of guitar tablature -- just traditional notation.

It's a feat that seems all the more hardcore -- and therefore cool, in a way -- because it is presumably so pointless: there are probably a handful of guitarists in the world, if any, who would have the ability, much less the inclination, to attempt to perform these songs based on the sheet music. Surely it would be easier to just listen to the original recording to work out the phrasing -- and to hell with trying to parse all those hemi-demi-semi-quavers!

I read on Vai's wikipedia site that during some early live performances with Zappa he would challenge the audience to produce sheet music for him to sight-read on the spot; scrolling through the above book it's hard to imagine that anyone would have been able to stump him.

World Cup Wrap: The best team won, but...

Okay, I'll say it up front: Spain deserved to win against an ugly Dutch team playing ugly, thuggish football. And given that they had previously defeated Germany -- the only other serious contender of the final four (with apologies to the gallant Uruguay, but it's true) --- it's hard to argue that they aren't worthy world champions.

¡muy bien!

But I refuse to embrace this result --- as football fans around the globe seem only too keen to do --- as a victory for the "beautiful game". Typifying the band-wagon jumping narrative that has already developed is this, from a hack in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Spain, as always, had the bulk of possession. But this time they struggled to do anything with it."

Ahem (cue my best Ricky Gervais, head tilted, hand to my ear): you wot? This time they struggled? Big bones? Yeah, big bones covered in meat and gravy!

Seriously, though exactly when in this tournament have they not "struggled"? Let's take a look, shall we? 

Firstly, the group stages: the Rojas limped into the tournament with a 1-0 loss against a stubborn but mediocre Swiss side. They turned this around with a 2-0 win against central-american minnows Honduras and a 2-1 win against Chile (a solid but hardly top class team -- as evidenced by their subsequent 3-0 drubbing against an uninspired Brazilian side in the last 16). This left them winners -- by goal difference -- of arguably the softest group in the competition.

Spain's path through the remainder of the tournament can, remarkably, be summed up by one scoreline: 1-0. Against Portugal, Paraguay, Germany and, finally, The Netherlands. That must be some kind of record in itself -- it's the kind of parsimonious efficiency that would make the Italians envious. But it's hardly the stuff of football romance.

By constrast, look at the scorelines produced by the less-lauded Dutch and German brands of football: 4-1 (Germany-England), 4-0 (Germany-Argentina), 2-1 (Holland-Slovakia), 2-1 (Holland-Brazil), 3-2 (Holland-Uruguay). I managed to catch most of these games, and can attest that the scorelines reflect the exciting, drama-filled contests that they were.

In contrast, for me at least, the Spain matches were every bit as dull as their scorelines suggested. Probably the biggest excitement was the flurry of missed penalties against Paraguay -- a farce that, let's be honest, could easily seen them eliminated had Paraguay converted their penalty in the first place.

I know, I know: it's all about their "passing game". Yeah, I get that. They certainly do a good job of dominating possession, but watching them stroke the ball around with seemingly no desire to carve out a clear-cut chance just isn't that interesting. It's like the football equivalent of a pathetic Romeo who wines and dines his date at all the fanciest bars and restaurants, then at the end of the night makes a polite excuse and leaves just when it's time to go upstairs for coffee.

Ultimately, my take on why Spain won is more prosaic: they won because they were so damn hard to score against. And part of the reason for this is due to what they did when they didn't have the ball: namely, that they harried and closed down their opponents and prevented them playing their game. Come to think about it, maybe this is the only reason why Spain won at all: for a team that can only manage one goal in a match, even when they are enjoying 90% of the possession, the only way to win is to defend very well. And get a little lucky (but no, let's not go there...).

For my money, the most enjoyable teams in this tournament (excluding the entertainment value of England's hapless showing) were Germany and Argentina. Germany, because they play a dynamic, attacking kind of football and are refreshingly clear of big-name prima donnas. Argentina, because Messi is one of the few superstars that seems like a humble, likeable character, and because they were passionate in competition but ultimately gracious in defeat.

Anyway, that's it for another 4 years. Bring on Brazil 2014, and bring on a more mature German team that by then may just be the perfekt football machine. Vorsprung durch Technik.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Just watched this Greek mythology-themed action epic, a shameless remake of a film by the same name from the early 80s. It stars Russell Crowe II (aka Sam Worthington) as the heroic demi-god Perseus who goes on a quest to kill the fearsome Kraken (pronounced with that epic-sounding long "a" -- like hearken) -- a feat which, somewhat inconveniently, can only be accomplished by first heading down to Hades and retrieving the head of the Medusa and then using that to turn the Kraken to stone. Of course, I'm just outlining the broad strokes here -- along the way there is much fighting to be done against such nasties as giant scorpions.

Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes ham it up delightfully as deity brothers Zeus and Hades, and recent Bond-girl Gemma Arterton provides some top-shelf eye-candy as the demi-goddess Io.

I haven't seen the original, but it seems a safe bet that the special effects in this one are an awful lot better. Indeed, the special effects are very impressive and, for me, that alone justifies the exercise of remaking the film. We've reached the stage where the most far-fetched nonsense dreamed up by classical Greek imaginations can be rendered vividly and realistically on the big screen.

All in all it's a fairly enjoyable romp through well-trodden fantasy action-epic terrain. As you'd expect, there are a few cringeable bits of Hollywood dialogue (Perseus' "just don't look at that bitch" when he's warning his men about the Medusa was a good example), but it's not as bad on that front as I might have expected.

My one major gripe (other than Sam Worthington's wooden Australian-tinged accent) is with the title of the film: the "Titans" in question have supposedly been defeated by the "Kraaaaaaaaaaken" long before the events in the film and, as far as I could tell, have basically not much to do with anything. I feel obliged to flag this by way of a warning to any purists of Greek mythology: if you go into this one expecting to see Titans clashing, you'll be disappointed. Still, it is a good title, and in any case the fault resides with the makers of the original version.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

I recently read -- and can heartily recommend -- this nineteenth century American masterpiece. It's the book on African-American slavery in the southern United States; when published, it actually helped to precipitate the events that led to the Civil War and, ultimately, to the abolition of slavery.

One particular character that I found intriguing was the "slave trader". These rough-and-ready individuals plied their trade by buying slaves at auction -- and in the process, often tearing mother from child or husband from wife -- then selling them on at a profit, sometimes transporting them interstate to do so.

These traders were ruthless, calculating characters. As portrayed in the story, they had no particular feelings about the whole slavery enterprise -- they were just in it for the money. I was eerily reminded of their modern-day counterparts in the financial markets.

There does seem to be something universal about the niche of the trader: the quantities being traded change over the centuries, but the essential characteristics remain. With only a modicum of imagination, you could easily take the following quote as describing sub-prime mortgage brokers pre-GFC:

But who, sir, makes the trader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened, cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the public sentiment that calls for the trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?

The book also provide us with the origins of the expression "to be sold down the river": often, slaves would be bought and taken from a relatively comfortable existence in a state such as Kentucky, and sold "down the river" to plantations in, say, Louisiana. There they would often be worked essentially to death under barbaric conditions.

It's grim, sobering stuff, and one of the more powerful books I can remember reading.

Gekko gets his geek on

With his better half away at work these past few Saturdays, Gekko has found himself with a newly rediscovered freedom to explore his inner geek. Here's just some of what he's been up to:

DEVASTATOR

Having clung tenaciously to many of my childhood toys, I recently had the idea that some of these might make pretty decent ornaments.

The pride and joy of my quite large Transformers collection was the complete set of Constructicons -- the six Decepticons that combine to form the gestalt super-villain called Devastator.

Twenty years in cardboard box limbo has left many of the moving parts loose and prone to flopping all over the shop, so some judicious use of modelling cement was called for to keep everything in place. Also, his right elbow joint had been severed, so I decided to carry out some reconstructive surgery using modelling putty, which was touched up with purple paint.

The end result is quite cool:

For those who may care, the Constructicon team is made up of Scrapper (the captain; right leg), Mixmaster (left leg), Scavenger (right arm), Bonecrusher (left arm), Long Haul (torso), and Hook (head/shoulders).

Bonecrusher actually belonged to Big Brother initially, and was once torn in half by an angry young Gekko during some dispute (I've forgotten the details, but I seem to recall that this act had been pre-empted by some scrunching/tearing up of paper). Scavenger was the second acquisition (both of these were while we still lived in St Mary's in Sydney's outer west). The remainder of the set came on Christmas 1986 (by that time, we had moved up to Gosford on the NSW central coast) -- one of those classic childhood Christmases where your eyes just pop out of their sockets when you see the presents arrayed under the tree (I also got Galvatron and Metroplex -- so it was quite a harvest that year).

It's amusing to reflect that Devastator now resides roughly halfway between these two original points of purchase -- having travelled to the other side of the planet and back again in the meantime...

PRACTISE RIG

With the recent revival of my guitar playing, I've taken the trouble to set up my practise environment to be as convenient as possible. Here it is:

You'll recognize the good ol' Ibanez RT650, still going strong. For amplification I'm using a 15 Watt Marshall MG Series together with a Zoom G2 effects pedal.

Notice the curly guitar lead (by Bullet Cables) --- it was a little pricey, but it's so much neater than regular cables and very low noise. You wouldn't think it, but it stretches out to something like 9 metres.

Also, note the customized powerboard: I added a little switch so that with a single touch I can turn the whole setup on/off. This is particularly useful because otherwise the pedal transformer would continue to draw power even when the pedal is switched off.

Douglas Adams: the "biscuits at the train station" story

À propos de rien, here is an excerpt from an article that appeared in The Times written by Terry Jones (whom I know as the "Bishop" from the Monty Python sketch). It recalls a classic anecdote from Adams, which for me sums up a lot about the English nature:

I remember him telling me once of something that, he said, had just happened to him at the railway station. He was early for a train, so he bought The Guardian, a cup of coffee and a packet of biscuits, and sat down at a table, putting the folded newspaper down so he could do the crossword. The packet of biscuits was in the middle of the table.

There was another man already sitting at the table and this man now leant calmly across, tore open the packet of biscuits and ate one. Douglas said he went into a sort of state of shock, but — determined not to show any reaction — he equally calmly leant forward and took the second biscuit. A few minutes later, the man took the third and ate it. Douglas then took the fourth and tried his best not to glare at the man.

The man then stood up and wandered off as if nothing had happened, at which point Douglas’s train was announced. So he hurriedly finished his coffee and picked up his belongings, only to find his packet of biscuits under the newspaper.

It’s actually a profoundly philosophical story. With one slight adjustment of the furniture, the victim becomes the aggressor and the aggressor the victim, and one is left with the untold story of the true victim hanging in the air. It’s exactly the sort of shift in perspective that fascinated Douglas — as a way of not just telling stories but also of looking at ideas.

He told me the same story many times, and it eventually ended up, much embellished, in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.

It was this ability to make us see things from a totally unexpected perspective that is the most characteristic feature of Douglas’s writing, and the one which elevates it above most other writing in the genre.

Channelling it

Memorable quote from my guitar teacher Steve during last night's lesson:

This isn't my idea, this is stuff that's been passed down, passed on to me by my teachers --- guys like Joe Pass, Pat Martino... I'm just channelling it, you know?

This earnest, impassioned confession was probably prompted by the way my jaw was flapping around the floor like some over-stretched roller blind in the wake of a particularly impressive piece of chord melody improvisation around the theme of "What a Wonderful World".

He was demonstrating this to show the application of the triad chord shapes he has been getting me to learn. I have actually come across much of this stuff before here and there, but this is the first time I'm seriously trying to learn the patterns by heart and be able to move between them fluently. I'm having a lot of fun doing it, but I think it will take a long time to really master.

It certainly helps to see how these chords can be used --- once you have the kind of fretboard knowledge that allows you to move effortlessly from one chord to another without resorting to simply shifting the standard "root 6" and "root 5" barre chords up and down the neck (Steve, a seemingly diehard jazz player, expresses a particular disdain for these). It's the concept of voice leading -- where each note moves in a harmonious way when you move from one chord to the next.

One of the slightly surprising things watching Steve playing little improvised ditties is that it's not all perfection. There are plenty of little glitches -- moments where he fingers the wrong chord (and quickly corrects it), or temporarily draws a blank when looking for the nearest Bmin7b5 fingering or something. But somehow these mistakes are themselves impressive: you get an insight into how much thought goes into each chord change or substitution --- how much is going on behind the scenes. And in many cases, I doubt I would even detect the "mistake" if he didn't mention it.

It's quite interesting -- and one more benefit of learning from a human teacher rather than books...

Vaulting it

To facilitate a newfound, and probably fleeting, hankering to upload files for public dissemination, Gekko has created The Vault:

http://sites.google.com/site/gekkosvault/

For now, all you'll find there are a few pdfs of guitar fretboard diagrams and musical staves, but ambitious plans are afoot to provide more exciting offerings!

 

As a side note, the creation of yet another Gekko-esque site was necessary because, somewhat surprisingly, blog sites don't generally allow for file hosting. An alternative option would have been one of the many file-hosting sites, but it seemed like setting up a website might have other uses in the future. It also offers the eerie comfort of staying under the google umbrella.

sheet music for the practising musician

Cool site which lets you create your own customized blank sheet music pages:

http://www.blanksheetmusic.net/