Moving on

I’ve been in a reading frenzy of late, as opposed to a practice frenzy or a write-in-my-blog frenzy (as readers may have noticed). That’s mainly because I’ve been in an incredible, invincible, indecipherable, undefeatable practice rut for the last two months. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the tendinitis in my elbows. Maybe it’s the distraction of yard work. It’s something, but the bottom line is, I just haven’t been practicing the piano like I’m capable of. I felt so sorry for my instructor, after torturing him for two months, I decided to stop lessons for a while. Instead, I picked up a book to hopefully get me out of my practice rut.

I bought Practice-opedia after reading comments by the author in an article in the Wall Street Journal about how to keep kids progressing with their music lessons during the summer. Everything he said made sense, and I thought that a 376 page books of practice strategies and ideas would be the ticket out of the rut. Unfortunately, all it served to do is to make the ocean of practice I’m swimming around in, wider and chopper. It’s hardly a good thing.

Practice makes perfect, making this the perfect book. Maybe.

Of course, some ideas in the book are worth pursuing, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with having a new perspective. But some of the ideas are just aimed too specifically at children learners who shuffle from lesson to lesson, and I think what I really need is something that helps with the big picture. I need a practice book for a musician, not for someone who might ot might not become a musician.

So, I’m reading, I’m studying, I’m practicing (a little), and I’m trying. I’m moving on, on my own. We’ll see how this goes.

Almost finished with another book, so...

I'm getting close to finishing a book about jazz called "Hear me Talkin' to Ya", so I figured I'd better post my review of another jazz book that I finished almost two months ago:

In my early days of learning about the jazz songbook, I was quite clueless about more than a few things. To this day, I’m still not exactly sure when I realized “Nica”, “Pannonica”, and the numerous mentions and variants thereof, referred to one specific person. And of course, I also had no idea why so many musicians dedicated songs to the same woman.

There are better, and many worse, shots that could have been on the cover of this book.

This book was high on my jazz reading list for the longest time, before I connected those dots, and while I expected “Three Wishes” by Pannonica de Koenigswarter, late of the Rothschild family, to answer some of those questions, that’s not really what this book is about. This book is a compilation of Polaroid photos of jazz musicians Pannonica took performing (or smoking, or sleeping, or joking around, or lounging) around her house and the clubs of New York City. For the text, she asked (approximately) 300 jazz musicians what they would ask for if they had three wishes. For the most part, the answers are predictable and mundane, with money, health, success, musical ability, loving family, world peace, and racial equality being the notable top vote getters. Occasionally, one or another musician will flash a bit of insight, promise, or self-deprecation that comes completely unexpected (Miles Davis, for instance, had only one wish: To be white!), but for me, the wishes were secondary to the photos and the overall collection of musicians’ comments. Not all the pictures are really publication worthy, but that they even exist makes them valuable and interesting.

 

Important? Interesting? Historic? Book-worthy? Uhhh...maybe.

For such a thorough documentarian, I found it unusual that some of the subjects of her photos could not be identified. It makes me a little curious about how Pannonica could be so far above board and yet so inscrutable. I guess that is a little bit of what makes the book interesting: the mystery of motive surrounding this gadfly to and patroness of jazz musicians. Anyway, the book does contain enough profundities and behind the scenes looks at a long vanished era of jazz history, that the average reader with an interest in jazz will come away somehow feeling privileged to have been provided a glimpse into the life of some jazz musicians, or at least, happy to have somehow sneaked a glance behind a door that was always kept closed during the early years of jazz.

I highly doubt Pannonica had a clear vision of what she wanted to accomplish in compiling this book, but there is no denying that she accomplished something with a lot of compelling qualities. Is this book a must read for jazz fans and historians? Probably not. Does it entertain while illuminating a few dark corners of jazz in the middle of the 20th century? Most definitely.

Always something

Ignoring my piano and any attempt at practicing or improving my playing, I succeeded (if that is the correct word) at finishing the refurbishing of my 1970’s Silvertone guitar into the one and only “Chitlins Con Carne” guitar.

Chinese pre-everything fret wires, top, with the old fret wires, bottom, and the new strings, right.

I did decide to coat the guitar with polyacrylic. Even at that, the music notes still pulled away from the edges in a couple of places. I just cut away the offending portions. In the 90-degree heat, 90-percent humidity, this was also no small task, but I turned on my powerful fan and just kept the airflow going. In a short time, we were ready to install fret wire.

Fret wires installed without breaking my neck...or the guitar's.

Here, I have to applaud Chinese industry and my savvy Amazon shopping ability. To get pre-radiused, pre-cut fitted fret wire individually packed by size in a handy plastic envelope, was nothing short of genius on both sides of the Pacific. I thought they would install very easily, but even the thin coating of polyacrylic prevented the fret wire insertion. I scraped them out again and manage to bang in the fret wires without breaking the neck, even though it was already loose.

The Chitlins Con Carne guitar, complete!

And so, I started stringing the guitar. The very first string I put on, which was the thick one, buzzed against the fret wires. I dealt with the problem by shimming the string holder. Still, when I tuned up the strings, it pulled the string holder over the shim and off the surface of the guitar. I have no good way to solve the problem.

Goddammit! Now what?

I showed my handiwork to Mrs. S and I showed her the problem. She just said. “It looks great and you’re not going to play it. Just leave it.” I intend to do what she suggests. Therefore, the guitar is finished.

Pretty fancy for a Silvertone

Once I got the “Chitlins Con Carne” music applied, the only thing between me and a finished decorative guitar was time. I already had purchased strings and polished most of the parts that I took off the guitar. I bought a complete set of pre-radiused fret wires. I had rounded a couple of mother-of-pearl dots by hand. I even had my stain for the neck picked out. So, remembering the rule of “Google it first, then give it a try”, I was ready to install the mother-of pearl on the fret board. 

Or so I thought.

When I googled the installation of the mother-of-pearl, the video I watched showed a clever way to find the center line of each fret. Although it is quite obvious if you stop and think about it, not only does the width of each fret shrink as they march down the fret board, the neck itself tapers from wide to narrow from the body up. This means you can’t quite find the exact center just using an eyeball measurement and measuring across the neck. Fortunately the video showed a clever way to use a straightedge to apply lines to narrow down the degree of difficulty in finding the center of the target frets, and I soon had these all very neatly marked out on my guitar’s neck.

THAT is a straight line!

Next came opening the holes. I had some idea of using a punch and just pounding the holes open then chiseling them out with my Dremel tool, but I was a little confounded about how I’d smack a punch into the guitar neck without snapping it. I thought about foam pads and dumb luck, until the video came to the rescue again. The answer was: a Forstner drill bit. Unfortunately, not only was I fresh out of Forstner bits, I didn’t even know what one was. A little research, and I had my answer. Home Depot five miles from home had a set (even though I only needed one) for $20. Mrs. S needed some stuff for the yard, so the next day we made a hardware run and I picked up my bits and Mrs. S picked up her pieces.

Pretty straightforward (get it?).

With my centers clearly marked, opening the holes was a breeze, especially since I still had all my painter’s tape applied from when I painted the guitar. I had to work on the dots to get them closer to the right size, but once I got them close, they were easily installed. I stained the guitar neck before applying the dots.

Stain is on.

I didn’t have a big issue getting the dots in, but because they are hand-rounded and the holes were uneven depths, once I had the dots glued in place, they required some sanding down. Of course, I re-taped around the dots while sanding, but I still managed to scratch the neck in a few places. I decided to use some stain touch up for hardwood floor repairs, but this turned out to be a lot darker than my first stain. No problem. I rubbed down the whole neck with the touch up, and ended up with a nicer, warmer finish that accents the guitar without taking away from the motif. Sometimes things just work out. The dots and neck look absolutely great. (To be honest, the dots are not completely flat with the fret board, but this isn’t going to get much playing and given how good they look, Mrs. S encouraged me not to mess with them anymore, and so, I won’t.)

Compared to the whitewash sprayed dots, the mother-of-pearl truly adds some class.

This weekend I will be experimenting with acrylic and polyurethane coatings, fret installation, hardware installation, and stringing. I believe I can finish this weekend, even though everything I have ever believed about refurbishing this guitar, just like my square grand piano, has generally not come true. We shall see.

A plan comes together

The working title of this entry was: Hard things made easy

Original plan given to Mrs. S to do a mock up illustration. She said, "I'm not sure what you mean." 

The guitar project has been languishing of late, due to not being able to determine how I could apply a musical note motif to the front without spending inordinate amounts of time, money, energy, or a combination thereof.  Mrs. S finally steered me to a sign company that does appliques and stickers and such, and I negotiated with them about what I wanted done. After several times back and forth with email, the owner of the shop informed me that I would have to do a clear vinyl sticker, because she just didn’t think it was possible to do all those fine musical note cutouts in the vinyl. I agreed and told them to go ahead and prep the sticker. A day later, they told me to bring in my “axe” for the installation. (I told them it is hardly an “axe”; more of a “bauble”.

The sketch I made for Mrs. S to show her what I meant. She said, "Why don't you just work from that?"

Of course, when I get to the print shop, neither of the people I’d been dealing with was there. This turned out to be a good thing, because the guy who was there looked at the guitar then asked what I was trying to accomplish. As we were talking about the project, he goes, “Why don’t you do a cut vinyl instead of a sticker.” I said, because your boss doesn’t think it’s possible. He says, sure it is. I say, if you can do it, then let’s do it. So he went back into the corner and printed out my two bars of “Chitlins Con Carne” in black cut vinyl. He let me play with it, and I got it to where I figured I wanted it, and he proceeded to apply it.

Music application completed. Ready for more stuff.

About then the owner comes in, and of course, she knows who I am and what we are doing. She’s watching the guy applying the cut vinyl and goes, “Yeah, it’s good you’re doing a sticker. That’d be impossible with cut vinyl.” I say, it is cut vinyl. She says, no it’s not. I say, sure it is, and the guy says, yep. He pulled off the backing paper and voila! Music in the first degree. The owner goes, Wow, I would never have been able to do that. I say, I lucked out then. The guy did a little Exacto knife cutting around the edges, and we were finished. I’m going to do my damnedest to finish the thing this weekend. A little more paint, install the mother of pearl and frets, string it up, then up on the wall. I think I can do it in two days, if things go smoothly

Cuba calling

Sometimes, I am easily influenced. The Chitlins Con Carne guitar is a good example. I didn't really have a good reason to buy a guitar, other than there was one that was available cheap, I have a vague unstated hobby of collecting musical instruments, and I thought I could turn it into a nice decoration for the music room. So I became a guitar owner.

My latest idea due to being easily influenced came on in a similar, surreptitious fashion, yet quickly became a lucid, 100% feasible notion, all in less than a week.

Which is why I’m pretty sure I will be traveling to Cuba before the year is out. Let me explain.

Mrs. S and I have been talking about a trip, almost continually since we got back from New Orleans in December. We've been talking for years about going someplace we've never been, and Costa Rica has been our front runner, but we always get sidetracked: What about Guatemala? Or Argentina? Or Brazil? Or Panama, Puerto Rico, Peru, Chile, Dominican Republic, etc. Part of the problem is, even though we've each been to over 50 countries, there are too many places we haven’t been. We just can’t decide. And last Saturday, as I’m reading the Wall Street Journal, there’s a long article about traveling to Cuba.

 

The first Latin-tinged CD I ever owned, and still one of my favorites.

Now Mrs. S, being Japanese, can go to Cuba anytime she wants. As a green card holder, she might not be welcomed back very warmly, but, if she came back, say, through Canada, I doubt they would give her a hard time. As for me, an American, I need to have a cultural purpose to travel to Cuba. Just being a tourist isn't enough to get you in and out. In fact, the WSJ article detailed some of the work of Horns for Havana is doing, and I started to get a notion of donating musical equipment so I can make the trip.

A couple of days later, the WSJ had an article about Arturo O’Farrill and it got my blood flowing for Cuba again. So I went back and read the article about Cuba again. And then I did the math. (It’s not cheap.) And I still want to go.

So, I’m going to try to go to Cuba, with me, my wife, and a bunch of clarinets and reeds and valves and whatnot. Maybe, I can make it happen. 

Wrong way, right way, two days

To be honest, deciding to buy a guitar was not a good idea. Deciding to buy a guitar to become an art project was a horrible idea. Deciding that the art project would be okay if I just used a little spray paint was downright stupid.

Ready to paint. Note the piece of tape at the top of the neck covering the Silvertone logo.

Yet here I am.

My vision for the guitar from the very start was more or less clear. And already, even though it isn’t finished, I’m quite proud of the way the paint job turned out. As a matter of fact, my very first attempt at my image came out damn near perfect.

Almost.

Getting ready for that sunburst effect to turn blue. Note the tape covering the model number at the top center.

The problem was paint drips. Laying the guitar on the floor and painting over it worked, it just wasn’t clean. I decided it had to be redone, which meant I had to sand it down again and, I had to figure out a way to keep from having drips on it. In my sleep, I came up with the idea of hanging the guitar up to limit the paint drips. It would also allow me to paint both sides of the guitar, and the edges, and the neck all at once. That was the ticket. In this humidity (it’s rained every day for a week here in north Alabama), I don’t know how long the guitar will continue to be sticky, but it’s painted, hanging in the garage and looking good.

Second time around. The burst is bursting and, no drips.

Next thing is to add the music to the front. Then I have to stain the neck and decide if I’m going to insert mother of pearl or not. Then, I’ll probably have to coat it with something so you can actually handle it. Then I have to remount the hardware. Then restring it.

First time around. Nailed it. 

Jeez. I wish I’d never seen the thing. I sure hope I can love my attention sucking child when it is all over.