If you click on this thread you must post on it...

[Set2Stun]

My hippy parents never steered me towards any activities in particular. They just supported whatever I took interest in, like hockey, baseball, mostly just sports stuff tbh. I think maybe the only non-optional activities were camping & fishing, but I already loved outdoorsy things anyway.

I really wish I'd been forced to take piano lessons so I'd have a solid foundation in music theory. But - maybe that would've made me hate it? I had no interest in playing any instrument until I was 16 and started a rock band.

 

[Louanne Learning]

One of my brothers had frustration problems so my mom bought him a set of drums and let him go at it

Lol, that brother used to make our little sister, who was around 3 or 4 at the time, sit beside him and listen while he played. "Don't move!"

 

[Heartlet Happer]

One of my brothers had frustration problems so my mom bought him a set of drums and let him go at it

Lol, that brother used to make our little sister, who was around 3 or 4 at the time, sit beside him and listen while he played. "Don't move!"

I had all sorts of toy drums in childhood. A lot, like four or five metal and skin drums. And the neighbor next door was a complainer about noises. And my grandpa much disliked them. I now realize there was connection of these three facts.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I grew up in a noisy family. And loved it. Love it still.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

To keep him busy when he was preschool age, my mom gave my brother a 2x4 board, a hammer, and a bottle of nails. He galvanized that hunk of wood before he was done.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I find a mother's love so f*cking amazing

 

[CatrionaGrace]

A mother's desparation to get a minute to herself inspires creativity.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

My father worked in the Post Office for 44 years but always had various sidelines that incorporated us, his kids, in some shape or form. While my older brothers got fully invested in the FCA (part-time, amateur army) when he was the local top officer, my only investment was an afternoon in a green boiler suit boosting the numbers in the ranks for a visiting (proper) Army commander. Running the cloakroom at dances, cleaning up after events in the dance hall, preparing the potatoes for chips for which my mother often forgot to seek payment, cleaning up after the bingo nights where one attendee used to shred her book into confetti at the end of the night, making it very difficult to remove from the deep pile carpet the following day and her thick, gobby affront when we asked her to stop doing that.

The only one that left scars that persist to this day was his insistence that I and my two siblings of similar age attend the Ballroom Dancing classes to boost the numbers for the teacher, delivering the classes in his establishment. One two cha cha cha my arse. The horror...

 

[Schism]

I hope all this stuff in Iran inspires some good punk rock at least.

 

[Homer Potvin]

I really wish I'd been forced to take piano lessons so I'd have a solid foundation in music theory

I just started last week at the same school where I take guitar lessons. Not an easier instrument by any means, but the theory part is a lot simpler in the linear fashion of piano keys. But I would say the pattern recognition is probably easier on a guitar because the guitar doesn't care about the keys. If I'm in C and want to move to F# it's a different series of identically patterned frets. But on a piano you have to jump from all white keys to using the 5 black keys, which is why no pianist every wrote anything in F#, I would imagine.

That's the most interesting part of the theory, in my opinion. How music is usually composed in a key that is comfortable to the instrument it was written on. That's why there are almost never open strings in jazz music because most of the songs were originally composed on horns, which like B flat, E flat, A flat and the like.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Happy March to everyone. Though folks back east are sick of the white stuff, this is usually our snowiest month and we are hoping for enough to keep the sagebrush steppe from burning up (literally) this summer.

 

[Schism]

I wanted to write a short story based on my in limbo trilogy protag, title being "Shades of Ethan Morris." But unfortunately, I must delve into the exciting world of excel spreadsheets!!

 

[Kerrin]

I just started last week at the same school where I take guitar lessons. Not an easier instrument by any means, but the theory part is a lot simpler in the linear fashion of piano keys. But I would say the pattern recognition is probably easier on a guitar because the guitar doesn't care about the keys. If I'm in C and want to move to F# it's a different series of identically patterned frets. But on a piano you have to jump from all white keys to using the 5 black keys, which is why no pianist every wrote anything in F#, I would imagine.

That's the most interesting part of the theory, in my opinion. How music is usually composed in a key that is comfortable to the instrument it was written on. That's why there are almost never open strings in jazz music because most of the songs were originally composed on horns, which like B flat, E flat, A flat and the like.

Chopin liked to write in weird keys (including several pieces in F#) because it made the keys conform more closely to the shape of the hand, unlike (e.g.) C major where the notes are all in a straight line even though your fingers... aren't.

 

[Heartlet Happer]

Chopin

Ha ha. On my first days in of English immersion a colleague asked me if I like shopping. I went into long winded excuse how I don't remember any particular Chopin works by title, but like the popular pieces of classical music in general. And I like the Gazebo song too. .. sentimental confusion .. la la

 

[Schism]

Chopin liked to write in weird keys (including several pieces in F#) because it made the keys conform more closely to the shape of the hand, unlike (e.g.) C major where the notes are all in a straight line even though your fingers... aren't.

"Chopin stirs up some dust"-Frank Lundy

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I was made to laugh, so now must post.

It's 1st March today. It's been raining since early January. Enough, already.

 

[Louanne Learning]

We've got some blue skies here today, and by next weekend it's supposed to go up to about 15 C!

 

[Schism]

Thought of those old Zodiac Chillers books. The one I remember most for some reason was "Rage of Aquarius." Been meaning to find some good B grade horror offerings in book form.

 

[JLT]

I took exactly one flamenco lesson. Halfway through the class, my knees said in perfect unison, "Are you freakin' crazy???"

Ah, flamenco. My first concert was seeing Carlos Montoya when I was about sixteen. I had a record of his that I played incessantly, and wondered why the two guys that were playing with him weren't credited. The concert was where I found out that the other two guys didn't exist.

I had all sorts of toy drums in childhood. A lot, like four or five metal and skin drums. And the neighbor next door was a complainer about noises. And my grandpa much disliked them. I now realize there was connection of these three facts.

In the SCA, we had a person who played and taught the doumbek. He did it so well that he got the
Society's highest honor for skill in the arts. But what really endeared him to the rest of us was that he would go around and hand out towels to loud, unskilled drummers. The towels were to be stuffed into the drum to muffle the sound. "You have to get your technique down before you can be loud," he'd tell them.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Just had a couple of deer in my back yard. They did not seem afraid of me at all. They seemed rather curious.

I've got a five-second video of them saved to my phone, but I don't know how to upload it here.

@Homer Potvin - do you know how to get videos from our phone uploaded here?