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This is the week that's gonna make NEXT week seem really awesome.

I posted a tongue-in-cheek piece about a year ago questioning what I'd have to do to earn the honor of Senior Member.  Somebody explained that all I had to do was go to my profile and throw in a few keystrokes.  I wish I could remember the exact procedure, but the bottom line is, I'm now a Senior Member.  Best of all, the salary is much higher and I am now exempt from sales taxes in 47 states.

Abridged Musician's Dictionary

AGENT: A character who resents performers getting 90% of his salary.

BANDSTAND: The area furthest away from an electrical outlet

CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME: God's way of telling you that you've practiced too much.

CLASSICAL COMPOSER: A man ahead of his time and behind in the rent.

CLUBDATER: God's way of telling you that you didn't practice enough.

DOWNBEAT: The magazine that would have you believe that all jazz musicians are working.

PERFECT PITCH: The ability to pinpoint any note and still play out of tune.

Wait...I thought the scrunchy is supposed to SUBSTITUTE for a sleeve, not keep it out of the way?

Anyway, I tried it last night and the scrunchy just kept getting caught in the strings.  Perhaps it was the wrong type, with too much loose material.  I think what I need is a sweat band for the wrist.

Hey, we may have laid the foundation for a whole new industry here.  Summertime Muting Scrunchies for guitar players!  Anybody have a good name for this invention??

Paul McCartney

The best drummers ever were the crazy guys who marched into the woods during the American Revolution with snare drums hanging over their knees.  These guys were usually the first to die (duuh...let's try to sneak up on the British while we're banging on these drums!), but not until after they had signaled Patriot soldiers with their encoded rhythmic patterns.

And you think drummers take all the crap TODAY????

Yowza!  Kids like that are part of the reason I got out of the business.  The drum machine era gave birth to a whole new breed of drummer who grew up emulating the super-human drumming of the Linn, DMX, etc, not knowing that humans aren't supposed to be able to play like that.  While I was considered a better-than-average drummer all my life, in my 30s, I started seeing 17-year-old kids - products of the digital drum generation - who could already play circles around me.

Have guitarists noticed the same trend?  I don't really see any young virtuoso guitarists out there  these days.

"Wednesday Morning."  Fitting song, as "Hump Day" always makes me feel a little better thinking about the weekend, getting on my bike, and seeing the grandkids.

As a relatively young grandpa (47) I have an incredible time with my four young grandchildren, who regularly pass up seeing their friends, going to an amusement park, or almost anything else to have a play-date with Papa.  The ukulele is a big part of that.  Those times are the best thing going in my life right now.

I am also very active in my hometown.  I am the town historian and the guy who books entertainment and does live sound mixing for every downtown event.  I also run the Chamber of Commerce website, write semi-weekly columns for a few local papers, and mentor a few young musicians.  These times are good, too.

But when you go from playing music every night of the week (my regular gig from 1991 to 1995 was a five-night-a-week stint at the Marquis Hotel in Times Square) to jet-setting North America every day of the week to sitting in front of the computer thinking about your next snack every day of the week for a year and a half, life gets a little heavy and "old."

I know that music is the answer, as it has always been.  Please keep the song suggestions coming.  I'll find the right one yet!

TM

Thanks, all, for helping me get through this day.

A few years ago, when I made a very tough break from the music business, I was fortunate to immediately fall into a line of work that had me traveling the country almost every day of the week.  The constant activity, interaction with people of all sorts, and exposure to so many different American and Canadian cultures made the transition virtually painless - and somewhat exciting.  This time around, I went from being the busiest guy I know to being a lump on a desk chair, waiting, day-after-day for certain people to fulfill promises they made when the economy was much better.

Having walked away from the drums after so many years, I am truly grateful to have more recently discovered the ukulele and the awesome music I can make with it.  (For those of you who still think Tiny Tim or Don Ho when you hear the word "uke," it ain't that!)  The uke has been my best buddy (when my wife is out earning a living for us) for the past year and a half, sort of the way Billy Joel describes his piano in "Baby Grand."  However, I haven't yet found a song about a guy and his teeny-weeny guitar that can lift me right out of one of these moods.

Anyway, your suggestions and support are much appreciated.  After so many years as a bad-ass investigator among some bad-ass criminals, it's a pleasure to be back among living, breathing, feeling musicians.

My next post won't be such a downer...I promise.

I'm not sure you need to "just relax" ALL the time.

As a lifelong drummer, when I started playing the uke, I quickly learned that the same principals that applied to gripping the sticks a certain way also apply to the way I finger the fretboard or attack the strings.  It all depends on the effect you are trying to achieve. 

Certainly, when I'd sit up perfectly straight, straddle the drum stool, and attack the snare drum with my stick at a 45 degree angle, I would produce a much more forceful, robotic type of feel than when I sat back and let my sticks "dance" on the drums.  On the uke, I find the instrument sounds completely different when I hug it to my chest, dig the finger nails of my left hand into the frets, and use short, firm strokes to produce a rhythm.  This is often a desired effect, as opposed to the sweeter tone and feel created by gently cradling the instrument in my arms and brushing the tops of my finger nails across the strings.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, maybe, keeping a tight grip on your guitar is not a "problem," but an element of your style.  Perhaps, rather than being down on yourself for it, you just need to add "another" style to your bag of tricks!

Is there a reason you guitarists don't like the B chord?  I'm asking because, on the uke, it's a b-tch to play and I'll go WAY out of my way to transpose any song with a B or Bb in it to any other key!