Musical Arrangement, certain values thereof

I just bought an album (Failure - In The Future Your Body Will Be The Furthest Thing From Your Mind) and realized for the first time ever that I had to add it to two playlists.

I have a delightfully anachronistic relationship with iTunes: I still use it in this, The Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty. Not only do I still use it for listening to music, I still use it for syncing things (namely: music) to my phone. That makes more sense now that I'm on an iOS device, but the other big 'benefit' to it was that Google Play Music's Windows app would sync playlists to Play Music, and then also the software does a pretty good job keeping my folders organized and labeled correctly.

All of which is to say that I have a playlist scheme

My primary playlist is another anachronism, called simply 'iPod.' This has always been the playlist I use to sync tracks to my portable music thing, both back when I was using an iPod Mini and its subsequent replacement Nano, when I had an iPod Touch from work, and my more modern work iPad and personal iPhone. Basically, this is a more convenient way to deal with not syncing things than unchecking them form my library. I don't need Short Music for Short People ruining my music app's view, but I do want it to come up on random.

The other playlists started life more recently, I think about 2011 or maybe 2012. They are: 1 - High School, 2 - College, 3 - Adult Life, and 4 - The Cancer Years. I only created 4 about six weeks ago, because I 'forgot' I had had a new life-changing event, and I believe I use life-changing events to categorize my music strata and determine where terranes begin and end. This isn't as simple as year of release; I didn't 'discover' grunge until late 2018, so I can't place it in 1 without being dishonest. To an extent, I also won't count something I listened to on and off in a previous era unless I actually owned the albums. The ex that was super into CAKE when I was still in college did not mean that I got to put their first three albums in 2 - they went into 4, because that's when I bought and incorporated them into my consciousness.

Anyway, I think it's worth documenting somewhere that the signifiers - to use my language from earlier, the faults - that separate my listening are graduating from high school and starting college; graduating from college; and beginning diagnosis and treatment for cancer. To use a slightly different metric, the first CD I remember buying was Oasis' What's The Story, which I would have bought in 1995. Some of the earliest music I had at all were Green Day's first works, the collected 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk, though I'm pretty sure I had a copy of Dookie before Insomniac came out. I started collecting music in 1994, basically. I graduated from high school six years later. Owing to my garbage performance as an academic, I finished college six years later. Owing to random chance, I was asked to go get my neck ultrasound six years later. I'm actually, by the logic of my musical proclivities, two years overdue for a life-changing event. I'm pretty sure nothing meaningful in-the-long-run happened in 2018, but who knows. I'm decidedly still operating within The Cancer Years, so it's not like I have a convenient name to assign to the new stretch. I stopped performing music in 2019, but that would have been seven years anyway... it's not terribly important if there's no answer to this, I just thought it was interesting that there's probably a perceptible shift in my listening tastes for each set of experiences. If I use the right music tool, I can even time travel to whatever the most relevant group of music is. Pour one out for my college years.

So long, decade

 What's the message I'm supposed to take out of the last ten years? So much pain and suffering... personally spent a few ticks north of 80 percent of it fighting cancer, a battle that will, at best, result in a life-long DMZ situation in there.

I'm still here, though. If you're reading this, you are, too.

Positivity analysis: I don't trade paint with heart attacks when I go to the doctor anymore, I've spent another ten years at the helm of stringed instruments and performed semi-professionally for about 18 months (and even got an actual paid gig one of those nights), I made a car last me for over nine years, I'm another ten years down at work, I've been dragging friends with me to the state fair the whole decade, I made new friends toward the end here, I helped old friends tear down and rebuild a fence, I taught my housemate how to change her oil, I taught a bunch of people at work how to use a new computer system, I've gotten better at food and drink, I've donated to charity as part of a collective effort a few times, I've even made efforts to read Real Actual Books (which represents a significant battle of will against whatever my attention problems are).

I don't have an expectation that 2020 will be better. I don't have any expectation that the 2020s will be better. I know I will be, though.

Cranking out 500 miles

Per the Content Vortex standard metholdology, it's been nearly two fiscal months since the last post, and during that time, I haven't had much in the way of shareable thought. We rounded out the semester, my one employee figured out how to overpower unending nausea, the students aged out of 2019, and - hey look at that - it's the end of a decade.

Current mood: I drank four beers to smooth out the 520 mile trip from Columbia to Clyde. I like driving, but I think an 8.5 hour (10:20 to 7:40? we'll call it that) drive is about as long as I feel like going anymore. I made five stops total, though I'd call the initial gas-up the departure point, since it was less than 15 minutes into the trip. I did two legs with stop intervals over two hours, and that felt about right*. I think I covered one and a half episodes of Knowledge Fight, during which point Dan finally lost his mind about Alex's bad-faith arguments, and I also covered the two-part 'history of adoption' episode of Behind the Bastards, in which one of the most evil people in the last 200 years was described at me. It's an interesting contrast with some of the work I end up doing now, on trying to fund stable care for youths who actually need it, versus the outright theft of children that got the modern concept of adoption off the ground starting in the 1920s.

Anyway, I'm not really in as much pain as I'd think, considering. I'm glad I have a more comfortable car than I did two years ago; while I value all 170,000-plus miles I spent in my Sentra, not operating a clutch constantly, combined with more generous factory spring rates and suspension damping for a somewhat heavier chassis makes all the difference in the world for longer trips. The dope sound system in the car helps, too, which doesn't matter much for vocal reproduction as it does the necessary couple hours of music to avoid going insane from just nonstop human voice for an entire day.**

Once arrived, I got a little decompressed, slammed down my Blackstar Fly amp, played about 15 minutes of bass to help recenter, and then cracked open the brews. Western North Carolina has a robust brewing scene, although the beers I drank tonight came from New Belgium, which only has a brewery in Asheville, and from Southern Pines brewing, which is over by Fayetteville. Tomorrow starts the local stuff, but either way, I never really appreciated how a cold one or few helps to just completely lop the edge off a day of sitting still and paying attention.

A quick note on I-81: Sunday before Christmas isn't a bad day to drive. The trucks are off the road, so the clumps that form are moving at, say, 62-65 instead of 57-60. Cruise control at 72 is perfect for pretty much the whole of Virginia, and the brief portion in Tennessee is barely traveled, at least as far as I-26. I-26, however, was where the rain and fog kicked up. While I'm thankful I have the early formative experiences of driving Oregon 42 back and forth in nonstop rain in mid-40s temperatures in cars that handle poorly, it only gets me so far relative to the delights of other people not being comfortable in the conditions, and it does nothing at all to address the fact that western North Carolina must be some kind of big-L Libertarian paradise that doesn't value painting new lines on its state- and county-maintained roads.

*When last my dad and I drove from Phoenix to Sandy, we shot through over 210 miles without stopping, might have been the whole 270 of that fuel interval. My family is 'bad' at car trips.

**This is DECIDEDLY a 'me' problem.

Fretting out, part two

Having let the neck settle overnight and then readjusting for straightness in the bendable part, it's now become clear what exactly that little wink in the fingerboard reflection corresponds to: a low spot from about 10, maybe 10 and a half, up through 18. This manifests itself like rising tongue, as the guitar plays fine up to about the 12th fret position, but I suppose is technically different enough to justify going back and correcting my assessment.

11" radius block is on the way, and I have the rest of my chalk and sandpaper ready to go!

Fretting out on a fretless

One of my basses, an Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray 5, has [edit: what looked like] a problem with rising tongue, which is a kick up at the end of the fretboard, that can't be dealt with by setup alone. By way of measurement, if I have my strings set to say 6/64" at the 12th fret, the height at the end of the neck swings down to 5/64" as the fingerboard ramps up away from the neck joint. I don't know why this has happened, but it's probably been this way since the instrument entered my orbit 15 years ago. Prior to 2017, the action was unreasonably high, as the instrument needed a shim and I didn't know enough about guitar setup to know that's what I needed to put in there. Once the neck was shimmed properly and could be set to human-playable (read: sub 10/64") string heights, the buzz set in.

So, I've set to work on trying to solve this finally. First note: despite my optimism, ordering a 12" radius sanding block does not impact the reality that all modern Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay instruments have an 11" radius. The StingRay Classic and Old Smoothie instruments are 7.5", but no amount of optimism will make the 12" radius gauge match the fingerboard because it's not right. Once I had the 11" block on order from stewmac, it was time to tear the thing apart and set the neck to level to prep for sanding. An interesting question arises: how does one determine whether or not a neck is straight if you know part of the fingerboard is not? Normally, you'd use a straightedge down the whole length of the board, but if I do that, I either get backbow everywhere except fret 2 and 21, or I get too much relief the whole length of the neck. The solution is to use the slotted straightedge from Neck Check, as it's not long enough to touch both ends of the board simultaneously. You don't expect any curvature to happen on the heel, so you wouldn't normally need to check that part of the neck for truss-rod-correctable straightness.

Here's where I had a moment of inspiration.

Question: how do I then know, for sure, what I'm looking for?

Answer: if the neck is straight, and I line up a straight line feature of my house and look at it in reflection down the fingerboard, a straight neck will show me a straight line reflection fading out of focus the closer it got to me. A curved neck would, instead, show me a curved line and then no reflection.

Here's what I see when I look at mine, sort of kind of, as it's hard to line up a phone camera with the centerline of something and hold both still enough for pictures:

filename: "goobered fretboard.jpg"

So that little wink off to the left shows where I need to do my work here. The line is straight from the nut up to that point, and that point to the end is where the fretting-out buzz occurs. I'm excited, after all these years, to have a fretless bass that will play right. I had a fretless Jazz Bass I got in 2001 or 2002 that I took home with me on winter break once; I sold it in 2005 to fund the second in a series of bad decisions I was talked into by friends, and that is a disappointment I occasionally find myself feeling when I realize I'm missing out on a mystic ice blue or ice blue metallic Jazz Bass in my life, but I think having my StingRay in good, playable working order will more or less completely fix that. I'll still find myself wishing I had access to something in ice blue metallic, but I already find myself wishing I had instruments in nearly every color I've ever seen, so at least that wouldn't be anything new. Someday, they'll sell me a blue bass with a matching headstock... or a green Mustang bass with maple fingerboard.

Anyway, that's where I stand right now - I'm going to hit it with grits 220, 320, 400, and 800 and see what the finish looks like at that point, and if it's shiny enough, if the kink is gone. If it needs more, I have 1000, 1500, and 2000 ready to go. Update coming once the block is here and sanding starts!

Oh good, a bass

I brought a bass guitar and amplifier to work today to 'round out' the collection of things that let me pursue an arts while I work for a college of arts (and humanities). The bass I picked is special to me; while I would make the argument that all of my basses have a place in my heart, this one is my brother's, and I helped pick it out for him and would send it back having been well cared for and set up if he ever wanted to pick it back up. It plays well; it's effectively an off-brand precision bass copy, but it happens to have been reasonably well made, with no fret sprout or sharp hardware, with its only real failing being that the wood behind the sunburst finish isn't the world's most interesting piece. In my estimation, its only other weakness is that it's a precision bass, and so the neck is wider than is comfortable for my tiny hands. As I've been spending time with my short-scale StingRay bass, though, the width is a bit less of a challenge than I might otherwise have been willing to tolerate.*

I had about 15 minutes at the end of the day today where I had time for music, and I got the bass set up and played a bit. I can tell you for sure now that I am a bassist and not a guitarist. I love the Mustang guitars; the short scale and small body make them just friendly to play, but I never had much of a taste for melodies due to my early exposure to third-chair clarinet, and easily settled into a better understanding of harmonies (due to same) and bass lines once I moved to bass clarinet (and, later, baritone saxophone). That, combined with the now 19+ years of experience playing bass guitars, and the instrument is just more comfortable in my mind than guitar. I love the fact that I get to have both in my office, but, where bringing in the guitar previously brought me a feeling of relief, having the bass present feels right.

* - A brief rundown on bass proclivities: my first bass was an Epiphone Rock Bass, from sometime after the batwing headstock debuted. I don't remember its neck profile, but when I bought it, I knew so little about the subject that I tuned it by ear to D-standard because I matched the low string to the lowest note on Rage Against the Machine's self-titled album. Once I figured out that there was a real standard tuning, I quickly determined that the poor instrument's truss rod didn't seem to work... it's possible I was also so convinced by Bass Player Magazine that tweaking the truss rod would break the instrument, though, that I never really tried very hard. Either way, it played like a bow and arrow. I ended up falling in love with a five-string Spector NS-2000 bass the next summer, which was my instrument for something like three and a half years. Even though the scale was longer (35" versus 34"), the narrower string spacing meant that most of the music I wanted to play was easier... fewer runs on single strings, more intervals to cover between strings, so reaching from say C to D# was something my short miserable pinky could actually help with. Since that came so early in my journey, I got used to the tighter spacing such that for a few years, I actually couldn't play a standard Fender Precision neck without getting tired immediately... 1.75" versus the Jazz width of 1.5" was somehow too much of a difference for me. I have two five-string basses, one a StingRay 5 and one a Warwick Corvette. The StingRay sits at fitting 5 strings in 43mm width, the Corvette 5 in 45mm, and a Jazz bass does 4 in 38mm with a Precision at 4 in 43. Both of my fives are more adjacent by a wide margin to the J width, so since I spent the first 14 years of playing with narrow necks, narrow necks will always feel more correct, especially in light of my biological failings. Fortunately, practice can at least sort of help me deal with it.

Booze rumination: sheets

As I get in bed and think to myself, "wow, I love getting into a bed with cool sheets, it feels great," I also find myself wondering at what point it crosses from cool to cold... During the winter months, cold sheets are the greatest torture of getting into bed, one alleviated only by time and contact, unmitigated by the softest and fluffiest of blankets atop the icy torture. I could just sleep in blankets, I suppose, but I think that would be too warm. Maybe it's worth trying; Target can sell me a second Warm Fluffy Blanket*, but whatever.

Pictured: the Author, from wikipedia, via a CC 3.0 attribution to Samuel Blanc

I run warm. Traditionally, it's been my strongest asset: not most important, as I think I'm better at listening than being warm, and I'm pretty sure I'm better at playing bass guitar than surviving a snowstorm. Once fall strikes and evenings in the low 40s become the norm, though, my sleep definitely gets better as I'm no longer fighting the disruptive sensation of airflow on my shoulders or feet. Ever since I got my ferritin levels under control, though, I've had a little less tolerance for cold. As a result, I have a little bit of fear that this winter will represent a significant challenge in sliding into bed... I won't have the sensation that I will warm up quickly, and feeling the cold sheets will be more of a psychological burden than in years past. I guess keep an eye on this space to see how things go, but I'm worried I may be slated for incorporating an electric blanket into my daily routine, in the same way that I had to bring in a humidifier for the dry January and February air, and a small fan for the July and August heat.

This is also probably due to the fact that I grew up in coastal Oregon, where the warmest we ever expected it to get in the summer might have been 75 (average high 65.4), and the coldest it'd get in the winter was maybe 37 (average about 40). We had between 10 and 15 degrees of spread between average high and low, too, so it was just kind of "chilly" from October through March or April.

* - I can't remember if the blanket was actually called Warm Fluffy Blanket or Warm Fuzzy Blanket. It's possible it wasn't either, but if that's the case, the name was definitely almost as ridiculous.