DianeB

Congrats, Revster! A worthy reward for retirement. Here's some Brian Setzer to get you started.

@Wim VD Congratulations, Wim, on a major musical accomplishment! You have joined a very exclusive club. I’ve enjoyed listening to your music, and I hope you will continue to share it with us and inspire us. Well played, and well done! ???

I love my Loudbox Mini as well. I'm with Randy, the vocal channel sounds great, too.

Wow, Cap, that is very cool. Great playing, lyrics, and mixing. There's so much going on, it might benefit from thinning out a verse or a chorus to add interest when all the tracks come back in. ?

@zeus7625, I believe that generally we speak of neck width to describe the string-to-string dimension, and neck thickness for the fretboard surface-to-back-of-neck dimension. Fingerboard radius is yet another dimension, one that affects thickness. Greater clarification from Greg Voros and the rest of the community is welcomed.

Happy birthday, Ron! ????

Now you're rocking, Six! That was great! ? How does it feel to be thrown in the deep end of the pool?! ?

Thank you all for your kind words! Most of the credit for this day goes to Rick, our keyboard player and my neighbor. It started three years ago with just the two of us. I was nervous and sloppy but he was endlessly patient with me, like all my band mates. Like you, they’ve pulled me up, settled me down, and given my bottom a bump when it needed one. Today, it was back to the woodshed and another quiet hour with my tutor: scales, position, impossible stretches. I told him about Saturday. “It’s been over two years, now, Jon. Haven’t you had enough of me?” We just smiled at each other.

My band 'Uncommon Ground' opened at a food truck festival Saturday to benefit our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. This was my, and the band's, first time performing in public. We were set up by the front door and surrounded by the food trucks, so people wandered around us and lingered to listen all afternoon. Business in the store was brisk. A brigade of volunteers entertained the kids with games and scavenger hunts. After our first set, another duo, ‘Gypsy Holiday’, took over while we kicked back. Then we closed with a few more songs, signing off with "Heat Wave" as it hit 90 degrees. Lessons learned on the road: (a) Amplifier output is greatly enhanced when there is input. (b) The gain control is your friend. (c) Aiming your vocal mic true south when the boys have aimed the Bose PA true north can produce much screaming and gnashing of teeth. ReStore gave us each a voucher for the food trucks, so technically this could count at my first paid gig. I went for a dish of mango gelato. Some of my guys have a lot of experience with performing, but I just marveled at the scene, the sound, and the feeling. How wonderful to get to do this. Steve, I hope you're reading. If you're not Steve, keep practicing. Keep playing. Keep dreaming. Oh, just one other thing: the event earned 15 seconds on Philadelphia’s 6abc local news that night. The band got about 4 seconds, without audio. Yeah, that's a public debut! Here’s “Black Magic Woman” and “Wagon Wheel” with Ron (no, not our Ron) playing some tasty leads. Pictured, a rare sighting of an Ebmaj7 in the wild, from "Does Anybody Really Know What Key This Is In?"

Welcome back, Mike! You have a plan and you're enjoying yourself. Stick with it!

Welcome back, jumiclads! Take your time and enjoy every step on the the path.

Hi Jess! Welcome to the community. Your story has some familiar notes and you have a good plan. For advice that I found helpful, may I direct you to my Reading List. Enjoy the journey!

Way to go Greg! I hope you got a picture.

A beauty from every angle, Mike! Congratulations, and enjoy!

Taliesin?! Now I'm envious! ?‍♀️

If you would like to download a YouTube video to save the file, a simple free app for this is 4K Video Downloader; available for macOS 10.11+, Windows, or Linux. The default download location on macOS is: ~user/Movies/4K Video Downloader. Thanks, Paul! You are one rocking cameraman! ?‍♀️

That started out as "Amazing Grace". By the seventh pass, it was more like "The Grace from Ipanema". ?

Thanks, Paul! I saw it, I heard it, but it's still hard to believe!

Finally, the coda. This morning we met at Columbia Studio A in the heart of Music Row. Lay Lady Lay. Blue Velvet. Six Days on the Road. Be Bop A Lula. You Ain't Woman Enough. Sweet Dreams. The magic happened in these rooms. Patsy stood here? Not quite. Right there. Whoaaaa. This is Sacred Ground. Studio A and the adjacent Quonset Hut that the Bradley brothers built have been renovated and modernized somewhat. They are now used for training audio techs through Belmont University, which leases and curates the property for educational purposes. We performed the Student Showcase there, under the same roof where Peter Frampton and the Stones laid down tracks. What a treat to just be there -- to hear my friends play so wonderfully -- and then to play for them? And for Steve? Whoaaaa. Fittingly, Collin closed it out with a medley. He killed it. Simply gorgeous. Steve said he is waiting for Trevecca to schedule a window for next year, so the dates in 2019 aren't yet set. Then came the snaps and clicks of guitar cases; the handshakes and hugs and goodbyes. We piled into our cars, turned onto Music Circle South, and drove off, individual notes of a great communal song fading out and away.

Supersaturated adj. A physically unstable state in which a solvent contains more dissolved solute than it can normally hold at that temperature and pressure. So ends Day 3. I can't even remember how today started. Oh, yes -- Steve took us through some of the exercises in his major scale workout. That was another good choice because everybody could participate. Then our friend Johnny Hiland shared his advice for learning Chickin' Pickin'. Colorful and charming as ever, Johnny mixed his licks and anecdotes with his big three: "One, have fun. Two, lose your fear. Three, [corrected in edit] melody is number one." The main room was chilly and the cafeteria was even chillier, so after lunch I had ice cream. They say that as hypothermia sets in, the mind starts to go. Back for another round of music theory with Steve. Oh, he was cooking chord substitutions to "Amazing Grace" on the whiteboard "like a Hindemith gone haywire in Harlem", to use Donald Fagan's simile. "Somebody stop him! He's out of control!" came the cry from the back row. "Wait," Steve went on, "what if we used a Dm13 here? How would that work?" He played the progression while I scribbled on staff paper "D + F + x = 13. Solve for x." By the time the major ninths came marching in, the ii minors were sounding righteous. Amen, brother. Ah, a respite: improvisation workshop for all with Steve and Dino Pastin. Let's all play a 12 bar blues in G. That was okay, Steve said, but we want to make these dominant 7ths, it's blues. Off we go. Better still, continues Fearless Leader, we can lead into the IV chord with the V of the IV like we just did in the advanced theory session. Uh, oh, he's got that look in his eyes again. Dino, and not a few others, seem to be wondering, should we unplug his mic? Let's split the measure with the IV to IV and iv minor, no, iv minor seventh, yeah, okay, Dino, one and two and -- all right. It was cool stuff. I kept up until the C# diminished crashed the party. Then it was time for the group photo. One last blast: group blues jam in E, with Steve and Dino keeping the groove as several of us took turns on stage to solo. Yeah, our gang can play. Tomorrow morning, the outro. Tour of Columbia recording studio and student showcase. Then, we fade out.

Imagine watching eight Live Lessons in a row. You now have an idea of what Day 2 was like. When I arrived this morning before the first session, there was already an early bird jam going in the hallway with Dwayne and Pat and a few others. Steve led off with a lesson in upgrading your I-vi-IV-V that had something for everyone. Next up was Joe Robinson, with his compelling story of learning to play as a boy in a hardscrabble situation at home in Australia. You might think someone of his proficiency would practice very differently than we mere mortals, but not so. Just more so. The afternoon was again devoted to a variety of topics and tracks. I attended Steve's music theory lesson on chord construction and managed to hold my own. In the jazz workshop Mel Deal recruited Collin to comp on "All of Me" while he soloed, to the delight of, um, all of us. Then it was an abbreviated Beatles jam for me with George McIntyre and more practice with Nashville Number System charts. Our long time Gathering friend Will McFarlane alternately dazzled us and cracked us up in the final session. He returned tonight with the rest of Blues Counsel and Phil Keaggy to peel the paint off the walls; they were smokin' hot. Excuse the short post but my brain is fried. A technical hiccup is preventing me posting my photos right now. Pics should start appearing here soon.