Logging Films and Music

Early on in the film High Fidelity, the character Rob says, “…what really matters is what you like, not what you are like.”  I laughed out loud when I first heard this quote because for many of us there’s a grain of truth to it.  How many times has your opinion of someone shifted based on their collection of books, music or sports memorabilia?  Does someone’s comprehensive Bob Dylan collection impress you or turn you off?  Does a person’s room decked out in green and gold as a sort of shrine to the Green Bay Packers repulse you or enthrall you?  Have you ever started to fall in love with someone, only to learn that her favorite books are romance novels?  Or that his are comic books?  Or vice versa?  Sure, judging someone on what they like is shallow, but really, if you were to quickly sum up who I am to a stranger, you could do worse than providing him with a list of my top twenty books, movies and albums.

With this in mind, I was excited to learn about a couple of apps that help nutjobs like me log the art they consume.   I was even more excited after I learned that I’d be more-or-less housebound for three months during the pandemic.  Finding fun ways to kill time has been paramount.

Enter Letterboxd and Discogs.

At their most basic level, these apps allow you to log the films you’ve seen (Letterboxd) and what music you own (Discogs), and that’s essentially the level I’ve chosen to engage in.  If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, there are plenty of opportunities to do so, but for me just logging things was a lot of fun, as it helped me to remember that small 1988 movie starring Joe Mantegna and Don Ameche (Things Change) or that I shouldn’t buy a copy of Pretzel Logic, but rather it’s successor, Katy Lied.  Any app that helps jog my aging memory is a tool worth considering.

First, Letterboxd.  This couldn’t be easier to use, though I’ve found the desktop version superior to the phone app.  You can look up films by director, actor, year, decade, genre, title – you name it – and a click or two will allow you to choose “watched” “like” and “watchlist,” the latter a list of movies that you want to view.  You can also create lists of films, as my kids and I did when we chose the best twenty movies of the 2010s (note: the only film to make all four of our lists was Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World).  Rather than go through the trouble of reviewing or ranking the films I’ve seen, I chose to use the “like” button more as a “love” button.  I only included movies that truly resonated with me a significant way.  Case in point, this month I watched two movies that were both were very good, but only one really got to me.  Molly’s Game didn’t get checked as a “like,” but Doubt did.   As of today I’ve logged 1388 films watched, and I’ve “liked” 260 of them, some probably unwarrantedly so, others probably overlooked.  Love of art can be a finicky thing.

For Discogs, I avoided logging my records for a long time because I felt overwhelmed with the process. For example, when searching for Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, 308 different versions of the album appear, based on format, country, pressing, release date, etc.  It’s enough to make even a devoted logger give up.  I didn’t particularly care about what pressing I owned for each album – only that I owned some version of the album – and I didn’t want to work hard at this endeavor, pandemic or not.  To make things far easier and far more enjoyable, the only three categories I worried about were format (obviously), country and the unlikelihood that I owned an original pressing for most of my records.  When narrowing down the aforementioned Supertramp album using the above filters, I was left with a more manageable 33 versions to choose from, and I simply picked one at random.  Of course, if you’re a very serious collector who’s buying and selling, you may need to go the extra mile, and for that you have my sympathy.

I currently own 823 albums and I’ve compiled a list of another 122 that I’m actively looking for.  Discogs includes a rough estimate of your collection’s worth, averaging the last ten sales of each album you own.  What I’ve learned is this: record collecting is an enjoyable and relatively inexpensive hobby, and that all of my records wouldn’t pay for even two months of my son’s college education.  Oh well.

Of course, all of these records need to be stored somewhere, and this leads me nicely into next week’s blog post, about building functional and attractive record racks for your collection.  Stay tuned, and in the meantime, have some fun with Letterboxd and Discogs.

Delving into the Harpejji (scales and fingering)

It had been in the back of my mind ever since watching Stevie Wonder tear into one during his Songs in the Key of Life tour back in 2015.  The harpejji.  This amazing, awe-inspiring instrument that seemed to be a godsend for keyboardists – a stringed instrument with an enormous expressional palette that’s played much like a keyboard instrument, with hands in a piano-like position.  Being the genius that he is, Wonder appeared to master this relatively new instrument created by Tim Meeks of Marcodi Musical Products in no time flat.  As for me, after finally taking the plunge and purchasing a beautiful G16 harpejji last winter, I found myself floundering after several months.  I’d thought that I could approach the instrument intuitively, eschewing the formality that accompanied my piano instruction decades ago, and to some degree, I succeeded.  But after months if piddling around and coming up with a few nice motifs and learning a few songs, I realized that I had to approach things in a more systematic way. 

A big challenge for me was fingering and how to best approach notes quickly and comfortably.  I kept on second guessing myself when viewing tutorials on YouTube, as the techniques they displayed seemed anything but efficient, offering one-octave scales that required sliding into notes and that didn’t allow for multiple octave movements.  Even the newly-added charts on the Marcodi website don’t achieve what I’d like to see.

In the midst of my exploration, I happened upon a blog entry by Matthieu Amiguet of Switzerland through the “harpejji hangout” forum, and this cracked the door open for me.  It confirmed my suspicions about what I’d been viewing online, and it inspired me to really nail down fingering for the most useful scales.  The fingering that Amiguet decided upon for the major scales are exactly what I settled on, and I’ve since (mostly) settled on fingering for minor, harmonic minor, blues and pentatonic scales. For all of the examples below, I’ve written fingering that assumes you’ll continue to go up the scale. You might end up using slightly different fingering once you reach the end of your run.

Here is the fingering for major scales as I originally viewed at Amiguet’s blog.

After some additional exploration, I decided that for natural minor scales I’d use the same fingering as above, but starting on the scale’s 6th note.

For harmonic minor, it’s easy to adjust the right hand to accommodate raising the 7th note.  For the left hand, this isn’t as easy.  I’ve offered two solutions, the first without a sliding note, which would normally be preferred, the second including a slide.  Although the first solution requires a bit of a jump, it actually works pretty well. with a little practice.

For pentatonic scales, the following fingering allows for quicker movements than what you’ll find at some of the online tutorials.  It looks a bit awkward at first, but really works well once you get the hang of it. I’ve also included an alternative right-hand version that may come in handy sometimes.

For a variation of the pentatonic scale – the blues scale – once again the right hand fingering is easily achieved, fast and efficient.  This is a blast to play using only the first three fingers.  For the left hand, the fingering is clunky and hard to manage.  I’ve looked for other possibilities and just can’t find one that I like.  Fortunately, the times when I would rip through a blues scale on the left hand are few and far between.

That’s what I’ve come up with so far, and it’s helped me navigate the harpejji much better than I was able to before.  I’ve still got a long way to go, but thanks to Matthieu Amiguet I’ve been able to at least start cracking the code.

If you’ve got your own preferred fingerings for these scales or others that I haven’t yet address, please consider sharing them with me or adding them on the Harpejji Hangout forum.  And if you’re a harpejji player in the Chicago area, I’d love to meet you and exchange ideas.  Give me a shout.

Music Inspires During the Pandemic

I’ve never had more time to write, but pandemics and social distancing apparently don’t kindle creativity.  Lately my mind works best with logical, choreographed activities like woodworking, crossword puzzles and home improvement projects.  Not exactly awe-inspiring stuff.

But one idea sprung up on social media in time for my family’s roundtrip drive to Lexington, Kentucky and back: the 30 Day Song Challenge.  It’s a simple exercise to get you to think of music that’s inspired you in various ways over the years, to get you to mine some of the songs that maybe you’ve forgotten about, and to share your choices with others.

(by the way, our drive was to move our daughter home from her apartment, so no judging)

My daughter suggested that the four driving companions pick a song from each category, and rather than play one song a day, we’d plow through as many as we could during the six hour drive via a Spotify playlist.  I believe we got through about fifteen rounds on our way to Lexington, so about sixty songs, and it was a enjoyable way to pass the time.  Since our trip we’ve continued to gather together during the evenings to play a few rounds of songs, Zooming in my other daughter who lives in California.  It’s a great way to ensure a little family time instead of going off in separate rooms to pursue our own time-sucking activities. 

Each of us have our own proclivities, and the exercise has forced us to open up our minds to different genres and time periods.  My wife isn’t a music aficionado, but she’s come up with a bunch of songs that the rest of us never would have considered.  Case in point, and an example of one of the most egregious affronts to all that’s holy: Donny Osmond’s “Puppy Love,” my wife’s choice for “A Song You Remember From Childhood.”  Awful, awful stuff, but she’s also dug up some great songs, and my kids have introduced me to a bunch of newer tracks, including many in the hip-hop genre that I don’t normally gravitate toward.  In short, it’s been eye-opening and fun.  To make the exercise even more fun and challenging, many of us have opted to have no repeat artists, which is a feat after fifty rounds!

Some of the 30 day categories are a little lame, so we’ve created a bunch of our own. The possibilities are limitless. Rather than share all of our specific choices, I thought I’d list the other categories that we’ve come up.  Including the original 30 Day Challenge, we’ve now done 50 categories and have a bunch more in the works.  Here are the ones we’ve added so far and the songs I personally chose for each category:

Song that’s acoustic (Hometown – live version, Joe Jackson)
Song that expresses satisfying anger (Hard to Laugh, The Pursuit of Happiness)
Song that reminds you of a specific person (Code of Silence, Billy Joel)
Song that’s creepy (Paranoid Android, Radiohead)
Song whose musicianship amazes you (Rosanna, Toto)
Song with stupid lyrics that you still love (Everybody Have Fun Tonight, Wang Chung)
Song that pumps you up (If You Want It You Got It, Bryan Adams)
Song about friendship or support (Trouble Me, 10,000 Maniacs)
Song that’s funny but isn’t a parody or gag song (Her First Mistake, Lyle Lovett)
Song about societal problems (Oh Jungleland, Simple Minds)
Song that gives you the chills (We Belong Together, Rickie Lee Jones)
Song that tells a great story (I Hung My Head, Sting)
Song that celebrates a breakup (Salt In My Tears, Martin Briley)
Song that laments a breakup (I Miss You, Randy Newman)
Song that fills you with awe (And You And I, Yes)
Song that’s under three minutes (Dear Madam Barnum, XTC)
Song that’s a guilty pleasure (The Name of the Game, ABBA)
First song you heard by a particular artist (I Remember Me, Innocence Mission)
A great song from an otherwise bad album (Breathe, Melissa Etheridge)
Song that blew you away the first time you heard it (Here With Me, Dido)

One note: for the category of great story songs, my son and I actually chose the same tune – “I Hung My Head” – by Sting.  One of the best.  When I learned that we’d doubled up, I switched to another Sting song, “Ghost Story,” and could have easily chosen another of his tracks, “Seven Days.”  The guy can write a good story!

Here are the original 30 and my choices:

Song with a color in the title (Red Rain, Peter Gabriel)
Song with a number in the title (Driver Eight, REM)
Song that reminds you of summertime (One of these Days, Adrian Belew)
Song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget (Change of Heart, Tom Petty)
Song that needs to be played loud (No More, No More, Aerosmith)
Song that makes you want to dance (Escapade, Janet Jackson)
Song to drive to (Spirit of Radio, Rush)
Song about drugs or alcohol (Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd) - NOTE: my son picked the same song, so I switched to Alcohol by Barenaked Ladies)
Song you never get tired of (New Sensation, INXS)
Song from your preteen years (Stay in Time, Off Broadway)
Song from the 70s (Logical Song, Supertramp)
Song to be played at your wedding (Sweet Potato Pie, James Taylor)
Cover song (Stop Your Sobbing, The Pretenders)
Classic favorite (Sir Duke, Stevie Wonder)
Duet You’d Sing for Karaoke (Common People, William Shatner)
Song from the year you were born (Hung Up on a Dream, The Zombies)
Song that makes you think about life (Fast Forward, Joe Jackson)
Song that has many meanings (Love and Hard Times, Paul Simon)
Song with a person’s name in the title (Alex Chilton, The Replacements)
Song that moves you forward (Chasing the Sun, Sara Bareilles)
Song everybody should hear (Tripping Through Time, Sunshine Boys)
Song by a band you wish was still together (Oscar Wilde, Company of Thieves)
Song by an artist no longer living (TVC15, David Bowie)
Song that makes you want to fall in love (Wink and a Smile, Harry Connick, Jr.)
Song that breaks your hears (Traveling Star - live version, James Taylor)
Song by an artist whose voice you love (Sweet Surrender, Sarah McLachlan)
Song you remember from childhood (Band on the Run, Paul McCartney and Wings)
Song that reminds you of yourself (Grounded, Paul Heinz)

So there you are! Music, as usual, finds a way to soothe the soul during challenging times.  Make sure you’re getting your daily dose, and maybe use some of the above prompts for inspiration.

Two Passover Lessons during the Pandemic

My family’s Passover Seder last week was certainly like none I’d attended before, but even with people joining us remotely via Zoom while hunkered down in their various apartments, the essential elements of our Seder remained the same, and a few particularly poignant lessons were elevated even further given humanity’s present plight.

Over the past few decades my family has used its own Haggadah, one originally created by our brother-in-law but then gradually transformed to grow along with our growing children.  We’d purchased half a dozen Haggadot over the years, and while all of them had their strengths, none of them did everything well, so rather than use a document that we weren’t happy with, we cherry picked those elements that spoke to us and inserted them into our own family Haggadah.  It’s since evolved into a somewhat permanent book now that our children are adults.

Passover has many themes, but there are two that especially speak to me each year, and in the midst of the global pandemic, their lessons ring even louder:  1) gratitude; and 2) how we may not be slaves, but we are often still enslaved.

GRATITUDE

I’ve written about his topic before, but Passover does such a good job of addressing one of humanity’s most precious gifts that I’d like to touch on it once more.  One Hebrew word that’s in every Haggadah is dayenu, which means roughly “It would have been enough for us.”  In the Seder we recite that many things God did to free the Israelites from Egypt, and after each one we say (or sing) “Dayenu.”  Sheila Peltz Weinberg offers a wonderful commentary on how dayenu can be applied to our lives today, and I’d like to share it here.  I believe this comes from New American Haggadah, a hugely flawed book that includes some absolutely wonderful writings by various contributors.  Weinberg writes:

Dayenu signifies deep acceptance and gratitude.  We acknowledge the present moment.  This acceptance allows us to move to the next moment and receive the waiting gift.  When we greet each moment with conditions, judgements and expectations – “well, this isn’t quite where we need to be” or “wait a second, this is not what we were promised” or “Hey, what’s coming next?” – out expectations keep us tense.  We are not free.  We are not available to receive the next moment.  Our fantasies about the past and our desire to control the future cut us off from the wonders of this moment.  They shut us in a prison of disappointment and suffering.  Dayenu is a great liberator.  It is a jot into the presence of awe, compassion, attentions, and freedom.

I love this commentary.  It addresses the state of being human so succinctly.  When we take stock in our blessings, we are happier and freer, and we can properly live in the moment. 

ENSLAVEMENT

The story of Passover is one of liberation from slavery, but even if we aren’t currently slaves, we humans find various ways to enslave ourselves, failing to live fully in the moment.  I believe I borrowed the following quote from a Haggadah and then substantially expanded it to include many additional ways that we create stress and conflict in our lives.  It speaks to me every time I read it:

We may no longer be slaves to Pharaoh, but are we slaves to other aspects of our lives? 

Are we slaves to our careers?  Slaves to addiction?  To anxiety?  To judging ourselves or others?  To self-indulgence or low self-esteem?  To comparing ourselves to our neighbors, friends and family?  Are we slaves to the past, refusing to let go of the times we’ve been wronged?  Slaves to fear?  Are we slaves to the latest gadget, the biggest, the fastest?  What about jealousy, fashion, sports, TV, computers or consumerism?  To our wardrobes?  Slaves to our lawns?  Home remodeling?  Social media?  Slaves to pride?  To self-pity?  Slaves to constantly striving for perfection?  Slaves to always having to be right or having to get the last word?  Slaves to making excuses for not doing what we know we should do?

Let us all strives to be slaves to nothing except gratitude, love, acceptance, contentment, kindness, justice, beauty, truth and tikkun olam, repairing the world one action at a time.

In the midst of sheltering in place for the past couple of weeks, I’ve observed families, and I like what I see.  I see people taking stock of their blessings, enjoying each other’s company, taking a breath, being kind to each other, slowing down and reaching out for those in need.  What’s happening worldwide is scary and – for many – debilitating, both financially and with terrible hospitalizations and deaths.  But for those of us who are lucky enough to remain healthy and have shelter and food, there is definitely a silver lining to our current situation. 

I feel like the lessons of Passover are more important than ever.  If we can express gratitude, live in the moment, and help those in need, we may find ourselves a happier society when we reach the other side of the pandemic. Hang in there, everbody!

Of Pandemics, Performing and Toilet Paper

Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed
most peculiar, Mama
-        John Lennon, from “Nobody Told Me.”

The lyrics of this Lennon tune keep running through my head.  It seems almost quaint that a mere three weeks ago I was writing about the upcoming baseball season and how my Brewers were in jeopardy of laying a big old egg.  I would take the egg at this point, as even bad baseball is preferable to no baseball, and with the MLB pulling the plug on the start of the season – wisely so – humanity is left to squander away its evening hours without the benefit of America’s Pastime. 

So what to do?  Be productive, I guess, or at least spend time with things that make you feel good.  So far I’ve managed to stay sufficiently busy during the social distancing phase of the Global Pandemic, but I recognize many factors are in my favor.  There are many people who are suffering either from illness, anxiety, loneliness, or sundry other ailments that afflict mankind without the added misery of a pandemic.  It’s important to keep that in mind and spend a moment each day giving thanks.  I am thankful for the following:

1)    I live in a safe neighborhood that allows me to go outside regularly.
2)    I have enough money to buy food, pay for utilities, keep up to date on my mortgage, etc.
3)    Neither I nor anyone in my family is sick.
4)    I live with two other people and have an additional two visitors, so I have plenty of social interaction.
5)    My neighbors are out and about and I’m able to enjoy conversations with people outside my family.
6)    My wife still has her job.
7)    My religious institution is doing a wonderful job of having a virtual gathering each day to learn or converse.

Add to these blessings that we all live in the age when connectivity allows for so many time-sucking pursuits – some of them even moderately noble – that many of us have no excuse not to use our time wisely. A pandemic thirty years ago would have been much more challenging with fewer opportunity to kill time, though I’ve somehow managed to accomplish a number of goals in an old-fashioned manner.  I’ve almost completed gutting my basement, I built a wooden record rack with one or two more planned, I finished recording demos for my next album, and I performed for my neighborhood block with an impromptu duo, to wit, The Highland Avenue Coronavirus Band.

Unfortunately, haters love to hate, and a very sanctimonious and unobservant woman took it upon herself to record a video (while driving her car!) and share it on our neighborhood Facebook page in an attempt to publicly shame us for failing to pay heed to the seriousness of society’s current predicament. I think it’s important to note that social distancing does NOT mean no socializing.  It means socializing at a distance.  When my neighbor Dean and I performed for an hour yesterday in front of maybe three dozen people, families sat in clusters because they’re…um…families, but then sat at least six feet apart from each other, as per Governor Pritzker’s orders for our fine state of Illinois.  The poster of the condemning video apparently doesn’t understand this. Fortunately she received a number of negative comments online and promptly removed the video. Chalk one up for humanity.  And good neighbors.  And music.

Even the toilet paper shortage – a shortage of our own making, mind you – hasn’t gotten me down.  I arrived at a Target store last week right at the opening bell but still too late to grab a package of Charmin, and as I walked out empty-handed, a woman hoisting two large toilet paper packages – one in each hand – offered to share some of her lot with me.  Really, it was the least she could do, as she shouldn’t have grabbed two packages to begin with, but so often humanity fails to do the least it can do, and in this instance she met my low expectations. I told her no thank you and felt a warm fuzzy feeling that maybe, just maybe, we’re all in this crazy pandemic together. 

All this is to say that I hope you’re all doing okay.  If you’re able to volunteer at a food pantry or call on an elderly neighbor, please do so (if you’re healthy).  Keep in touch with friends and neighbors – at a distance – and take some time to do a crossword puzzle, read a book, play with your kids or cook a nice meal.  Hang in there, and pray that come June or July we can once again spend our evenings enjoying nine innings of baseball.

Speaking of which, I may need to amend my predictions for this year’s Milwaukee Brewers.  I’m on it.  Now if only the Milwaukee Bucks would do right and return the money I spent for three tickets to this Friday’s game!