The Blog

Hi Everyone, or rather, Everyone Minus All The People Who’ve Left Me For Dead,

Oh! You’re still here! Nice to see you again! Guess where I’ve been for the past five months? Not kidnapped by aliens, I’m afraid. I bought a house in December, and am still trying to figure out where I packed the can opener.

Despite the slow pace of getting my new home set up, I am really enjoying being a home owner. My favorite part is my teaching studio, in the backyard. It’s as if this elegant little bamboo-floored building was built with me in mind: It’s got plenty of space for teaching private lessons, lots of power outlets, and windows that bring in lots of light and through which I can watch squirrels frolic while I wait for my next student to arrive.

The backyard itself is also lovely, and since I’m watching it bloom for the first time, there are new surprises every day. Here are some photos I took after a recent rainstorm: Flowers

Anyway, it’s nice to be back, and I’m looking forward to updating my blog some more, starting with the 100 Dollar Challenge results. Yes, that’s right! The results are in!

What’s that? You forgot all about it? Oh….

Over this past week I’ve given the Notebook a much-needed overhaul. I’ve upgraded the WordPress software to its latest version (2.1), which has allowed me to finally install some comment spam protection. I’d been getting about 40 spams/hour—a veritable deluge of processed pork product—so this has been a long time coming.

The stream of spam has gotten so unmanageable these past few months that I haven’t had time to sift through it all. While I’ve able to pluck out the majority of the comments that were not of the canned meat variety, about 30 legitimate comments slipped past me, and have been stewing in my inbox (with about 9000 spam messages) until tonight. It’s a great relief to have finally set fire to all that spam, but I hope I haven’t permanently damaged my soul in the process. I’m afraid I’m going to be counting free mortgages, pissing ringtones, and cheap trannys instead of sheep all night tonight.

I apologize to those of you whose questions I’ve ignored, and I’ll be responding soon.

Another feature I introduced to the blog is a plugin that facilitates posting articles on social bookmarking sites. If you comment on an article, for example, you’ll see icons for the del.icio.us and StumbleUpon sites. I decided to do this after I started getting all these traffic to my site from people who were using the “Stumble” feature on the StumbleUpon toolbar. If you haven’t stumbled yet, check it out—it’s a lot of fun!

Finally, please let me know if you have any comments or recommendations concerning the recent changes. I want to continue to make this blog, and my site in general, as pleasant a place to visit as I can.

Remember Connor, the 7-year-old whose recording of “Wild Thing” I posted a few months ago? He’s preparing the song for a school talent show next month, and he’ll be standing on the stage (at the altar actually—the show is being held in a church) and singing into a mic, so he needs some practice coordinating playing, singing, and strutting about like Angus Young. I decided to film him so that he could review his mic skills—moving in close during the whispered parts, and backing off when he hollers.

As you can see, he’s a natural. I hope he doesn’t blow out any stained-glass windows…

Wow! What an outpouring of ideas! I’ve received about 30 comments and emails so far, and several of them are pretty inspiring. I look forward to responding to them as soon as I get a chance (I just bought a house, and moving has kept me busy).

What would you do with a website that got 6500 visits a day?

I’ve been asking myself that question recently, wondering how I could translate my website’s traffic into income without compromising the integrity of the site, and have drawn a big fat blank.

So instead, I’ve decided to draw a big fat $100 bill out of my pocket, and offer it to the person with the best idea for improving my site. As an added incentive, I’ll offer 10% of any money I make from the idea in 2007.

Guidelines

1. The Change Must Improve the Site

The two main goals for my website are to help people to learn the guitar, and to advertise my services as a guitar teacher. Whatever I do to the website needs to support those goals.

Also, I don’t allow indiscriminate advertising on my website for ethical and aesthetic reasons. Most advertising is institutionalized lying. If I promote products I don’t believe in or am not familiar with, in a sense I’m lying to my readers. Plus, ads are an eyesore. I’m proud of the uncluttered format of my website, and I want to keep it that way.

However, if you have an amazing guitar- or music-related product you’d like to sell on my site, that’s a different story. Submit away!

2. The Change Must Be Relatively Easy

For example: Maybe when I retire I’ll pay my rent at the Home For Wrinkled Rockers by posting daily video guitar lessons for a monthly subscription, but right now, teaching face-to-face is what I love to do, and I don’t want to cut into that time.

3. The Change Can’t Awaken the Great Music Publisher’s Association

Like a fly in a dragon’s den, my little website has quietly distributed chords and tabs of copyrighted material under the nose of the music industry and its army of lawyers. I’d like to keep it that way. That means I won’t do things like make my chord charts into a book and sell it (unless some copyright genius knew how to make it legit). Another idea that won’t work: Becoming an affiliate of iTunes and linking each chord chart to its corresponding .mp3 in iTunes’ music store.

That’s it! Here’s how the contest will work:

There are two ways to submit an idea. One is to just post a comment on this blog entry (make sure you leave your email address). However, if you come up with an idea that you’d like to keep private until the contest is over, you can also email me at [email protected].

Each idea will be reviewed by me. I’ll give feedback for ideas that show promise but need tweaking, so that you can resubmit your idea. Finalists will be reviewed by both me and Brady, the bass teacher for Heartwood Guitar Instruction. Brady’s three-year-old daughter Lena will be the tiebreaker, if necessary.

The contest ends on January 31st. Even if we don’t get any ideas good enough to implement, the person with the best idea will get the Ben Franklin.

Time smooths out a harsh wine, warms up a jangly guitar, and softens heartbreak. As I’ve gotten older (This old hoss is almost a grizzled 34 now), I’ve worried that my capacity for ecstatic experiences has mellowed, too. I’ve felt music most powerfully during difficult times of my life, and as my life has become more stable, music continues to delight and amaze me, but it doesn’t overwhelm me the way it used to—I mean completely overwhelm me, so that I’m leaning back in my chair, arms crossed tight, toes clenched, barely able to stand it.

In my 20’s, there were many albums that hit me like that. Automatic for the People by REM, Swamp Ophilia by the Indigo Girls, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, Rufus Wainwright’s self-titled album during those neither-here-nor-there years after college, and Bjork’s Vespertine after an especially hard breakup.

I returned to Vespertine tonight after a busy week of work, with such little time to myself that by 5pm today I felt like I needed to do something to remind me of who I was.

So after I said goodbye to my last student, I poured myself a glass of wine, put on my headphones, and spent an hour letting Bjork’s otherworldly voice and insect-like rhythms wash over me. It’s been incredibly moving, and a little scary, to hear this album again. I remember listening to it on my CD player (this was pre-iPod’s—holy cow!) flying to my parent’s home in California for Christmas, knowing that my Ex was visiting her family just a few miles west of me (we grew up in the same town), hearing in every word of Bjork’s songs the call of my own heart.

Listening to Vespertine again brings back such vivid emotions. It’s something like the feelings I get from hearing Christmas carols, but mixed with a deep sadness. Not that I still miss my Ex, but I can still feel the pain I was going through after the breakup, and it saddens me that I was hurting so bad.

You can go for years without remembering a period of your life, and then you hear music that served as a soundtrack for that period, and it all comes raining back on you.

In the seventh grade, I won second place in my class’ air guitar championship by freaking out to Van Halen’s “Panama.” I can’t remember how many contestants there were, but I’m pretty sure there weren’t more than two.

If only I’d had this shirt…

While we’re on the subject of music and child development, here’s a recording of “Wild Thing” performed by Connor Wartelle, seven years old. Connor came to his first lesson in May with a 1/2-sized Stratocaster with two strings on it. The others had been shredded by hours and hours of frenetic strumming, the guitar sitting flat on his lap, extra-heavy gauge pick clamped between his fingers, smoke rising from the pick guard.

At first, Connor’s strumming just sounded like noise making. But then I noticed he was coming up with really cool rhythms. I decided I had to get this kid playing power chords as soon as possible, and I thought “Wild Thing” would be a fun first song.

When we recorded the song, Connor wasn’t playing it in rhythm yet, so I just recorded him playing for a while, then I found the best parts and looped them in my recording software. Now he can play the whole song (and sing) in rhythm. He’ll be performing “Wild Thing” and an original called “You’re Done For” (!) at my Coffee Shop Jam on October 29th.

He’s on bass and guitar, and I play the guitar solo.

Hold on to your socks… Wild Thing by Connor Wartelle