BOB ASHLEY is a friend I met through the classical guitar newsgroup. A guitarist, poet, entrepreneur, he is a sensitive man with a great sense of humour.

[new UPDATES AT TOP]

Reza,

One of these days you'll really believe me when I say that my computer was
built in Florence, in 1428. Back in the Renaissance, computers were not quite
advanced enough to do sound.

ba-hawb

====================================

Dear Lord:

My technology is pre-Sumerian, the ancient guys.  Macintosh is an very
common Iranian name, isn't it? My hard drive is made out of leather and I
have a slave who chisels pixels on my marble screen. I haven't even invented
chainmail yet, let alone email.

Bahhawb (That's my name in the orginal, classic Arabic)

    =====================================

Just to introduce a thorn. One of the best ways "to forget the audience" is
to treat them as "recipients of a ONE WAY communication". This defines
monologue, which it turn defines the malaise of contemporary conversation.
Nobody listening, cause listening never counts for anything. This
'recipient' image objectifies the audience, metaphorically transforming them
into a passive repository of gape-mouth baby birds. Performer as agent,
audience as patient. 'Recipient' has the scent of hierarchy.

On the other hand, another possible imagining is of the audience as active,
engaged listeners, a collective of unique, autonomous individuals. One
participant can only persuade another participant.

The very word, 'audience', is a first step to forgetting the word
'individual'. It falls into the 'masses' category, words that heap people
into undifferentiated lumps. There is no such thing as the 'masses' only
convenient ideological ways of thinking about people that way. There is no
such thing as an audience. It's a euphemism for 'mob', 'crowd', 'band',
'mass', 'congregation', 'constitutency', 'assembly'. Faceless, nameless,
all. Forgotten.

To remember the audience one must unpack the meaning of that word, make
every individual feel as if the message was especially conceived for this
particular her or that him, second row, third seat.

It's all in the imagination, including infinitude, that pesky speck inside
the three-pound brain.

***
rib

John Wasak wrote:

Rib rote:

>> Hi John. I know you can help me. It has to do with this stuff. Really. I
>> have a Nikon F2 SLR camera, I guess circa 1979 or so. I can't see where it
>> plugs into my Macintosh computer.

John Wasak wrote:

> 1979 ya' say?  Yeah.....   Well, now..... that makes all the difference.
> Let's see.....Ya' got a headphone jack on that computer?  If so, try there.
> Run it from the flash's hot-shoe to the headphone jack.  But that might not
> work 'cause the '79's were real finicky as I recall.... If it was a '82 or
> '83 then I'd be pretty certain, but goshdarn it, those '79's can be real
> trouble.
>
> And then too, this computer bein' a MacIntosh and all.....
>
>
> Well, best of luck to ya', Bawb.

Thanks, John, for coming through for me. Now I can go fish out that roll of
Kodachrome 25 I've had languishing in the camera bag all these years.

I'm gonna buy a wagon, too, maybe one of them sleek Red Flyers. Then, when I
go out to take pictures with the F2 I've got something to haul the Macintosh
computer (and headphones).

Next installment: Why won't my VCR remote fastforward the breadmaking
machine?

We classical guitarists are fortunate, aren't we, escaping as we do this
chaos of technopathological befuddlement/entrapment.

The list of techno-problems we DON'T experience, I should imagine, is
infinite.

Now where did I put that abacus?

***
rib






=================
I used to be popular with the peasants of the 15th-century. Later I gained
favor with Europe's aristocracy, gradually evolving into my present form. Bob Ashley

Reza (www.rezamusic.com) wrote:

> I am listening to a very old track of him playing Bach Bouree in F minor
> instead of E
> minor -- I suspect he's just tuned 1/2 step higher or using a capo -- any
> ideas?

Remove the hamster from your turntable. Put him back him his cage, telling
him firmly, 'No, bad hamster!'. Let him work out on the whirly-wheel
instead.

Oh yeah, be sure you got your TT on 33 and 1/3 rpm. If you had it on 78 rpm.
then Segovia would actually sound like a chipmunk. Hence, why your hamster
answered the rodent's rallying call. Don't put it on 16 rpm. You might
awaken your pet hippo.

***
rib

[UPDATES AT BOTTOM]

> Adolf V. wrote:
>> Hello, my name is Adolf and am 10 years old, I'm much better than my
>> teacher because I can play faster than him. Eg. a piece stated 56 minims
>> per min, I managed to play at 120 minims per min. But my teacher keep
>> saying that my playing isn't smooth and with wrong timing, he ask me to
>> play it MUSICALLY again and again. I don't really bother of all these
>> because I can play it fast!!

John Wasak wrote:
> That's marvelous, Adolf.  If you keep it up you'll probably find that by the
> time you're twenty you'll be able to play so fast that the friction of your
> speedy fingers on the strings will cause your guitar to spontaneously
> combust into a flaming fireball. This should cause you to become quite a
> sensation.  Just think....you could travel the world's stages amazing people
> with your fleet fretting.....no doubt you'll thrill time and again to
> hearing the critics when they say, "That fellow's liked greased lightning,
> he is!"  You'll make the "What's Hot" lists for years to come. You'll be
> able to write method books with titles like " How to play Explosive Guitar",
> "Adolf's Hot Licks", or "Igniting Nylon".
>
> Yes, Adolf, your future is a bright one, indeed!  Be sure to have your
> shades handy.
>
> And your asbestos suit.

You beat me to this savory morsel, John.  Took it right out of my mouth!

Good. With assurance I can relax, knowing somebody with some real level
sense of what's going on, has got things confidently under control.

Just for your information, the particular angle I was thinking of taking on
this fireballer was gastronomic, you know, those Buffalo-style chicken
wings, suicide hot or Kamakazi or whatever the doodad hot you wanna call it.
However, not having launched this finger-licking theme, I have no idea how
it might have ended.

I rarely do, do you?

***
rib
 
 
 
 

Sorry if there is mix-up about mail. I did get your mail but didn't
realize there was an attachment. Recall that I'm using the same browser
that Christopher Columbus used to negotiate his trip to discover America.
Hence, sometimes the complicated rigging and ropes and sails and winches
and knots get all tangled up.

So, if you are flying a jet fighter browser with heating-seeking missiles,
look down on the water, way down. I'm the guy with a patch on his eye and
a wooden leg steering my ship, the 'Nina', to Nantucket.

The best way to get a message to me is put in a bottle and throw the
bottle in the ocean.

Regards,

Rib

On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Reza The Guitarman wrote:

> Don't forget to practice slurs with metronome.

Reza, I tried this and it didn't work.

Okay, so I pluck the first note with, say, 'm', say open high-E, eh? So,
like then I want to slur to the f-natural on the first place, ya follow?

I plucks the E, takes up the metronome in my right hand and slams the
corner of it down on the first fret. Now, using your methodology, Reza,
one can achieve a reasonably good tone using the metronome, although not
without suspecting a future need for some serious bodywork neck repairs.

My problem, or question rather, deals with what you're supposed to do
after you do the slur with metronome. Do you just put in back on the table
or do you have it tied to a wrist band so its handy for the next slur.
How do you protect the finish? Duct tape? You've left many things
unanswered, Reza.

Also, what about trills? I was practicising this using your method, in the
backyard. Next door the little children started to cry and the parents
threatened to call the police. The kids seemed to have this intuitive,
well-placed terror of anyone who might use a metronome to perform trills.
Do you find that if you introduce children gradually they become less
likey to recoil in mortal fear?

Please respond: It's debilitating to realize that one's guitar playing
makes children cry. Also, do you know of any companies building an
industrial grade metronome? I'm afraid, that after only one session using
your method, Reza, mine would not 'tick' anymore.

My closing hope is that you don't ask me to do scales using my footstool!

Regards,

Rib

> In other words, Reza, you prefer that those listening to you know nothing
> about what they're hearing.  I suppose that this is easier on the nerves,
> but do you actually find it satisfying in the long run?
> Also, I'm wondering how you can tell by just looking at your audience who
> the guitarists are?  And if they're counting the mistakes, surely they're
> listening.

Actually, you are right John. My wife and I heard Reza and although
Marilyn knows nothing of classical guitar, he much preferred her legs to
mine. Several of those in the audience were like me; they knew something.
I could tell because I had brought my Texas Instruments 'Science-pro'
calculator so that I could punch in the errors, do percentages, and
co-tans, and ramp-sins of all Reza's mistakes. I could tell since, I look
around, and and there is bunch of people with mean faces holding
calculators, albeit not all Texas Instruments. Some Canon, some sharp, and
there was this clown with an abacus, clicking the beads with every one of
Reza's 'frrszzzzts'.

I was looking pretty mean myself. I think that rightly Reza would have
rather had had an audience of people with nice legs but with a paltry
knowledge of the guitar. Marilyn didn't count, only coo.

You are right, though. Indeed to listen for mistakes requires listening to
the music, mainly in a pose that readies one to snag the next mistake so
you can punch it into the calculator fast. Plus, did you know it takes
more muscles to look disgusted than it does to coo?

I am happy to report that although by the end of it all my calculator's
batteries were pretty worn out, what with all the punching of keys and
dense number-crunching goin' on, they did still make to the curtain. This
is more than I can say for my wife's pantyhose, of which the left calf
sprung a run in the middle of Asturias.

Still, Reza seemed quite uninterested in my calculations, even as he
offered to repair Marilynn's run with his handy nail polish)

Dire Straits were right: "I shoulda learned to play them drums"

(Note: All the above is fiction; it's a story)

Regards,

Rib

> Don't forget to practice slurs with metronome.

Reza, I tried this and it didn't work.

Okay, so I pluck the first note with, say, 'm', say open high-E, eh? So,
like then I want to slur to the f-natural on the first place, ya follow?

I plucks the E, takes up the metronome in my right hand and slams the
corner of it down on the first fret. Now, using your methodology, Reza,
one can achieve a reasonably good tone using the metronome, although not
without suspecting a future need for some serious bodywork neck repairs.

My problem, or question rather, deals with what you're supposed to do
after you do the slur with metronome. Do you just put in back on the table
or do you have it tied to a wrist band so its handy for the next slur.
How do you protect the finish? Duct tape? You've left many things
unanswered, Reza.

Also, what about trills? I was practicising this using your method, in the
backyard. Next door the little children started to cry and the parents
threatened to call the police. The kids seemed to have this intuitive,
well-placed terror of anyone who might use a metronome to perform trills.
Do you find that if you introduce children gradually they become less
likey to recoil in mortal fear?

Please respond: It's debilitating to realize that one's guitar playing
makes children cry. Also, do you know of any companies building an
industrial grade metronome? I'm afraid, that after only one session using
your method, Reza, mine would not 'tick' anymore.

My closing hope is that you don't ask me to do scales using my footstool!

Regards,

Rib

Thanks for Richard and Bob's funny comments. But kidding aside, the awareness that the thumb has 3 joints was for me exciting and helpful with the guitar.

Regards,
Reza -

Bob Ashley wrote in message ...
>
>I've made no comment since you'd not believe it anyway, even though it's
>100% true. I have DOUBLE-JOINTED THUMBS. Yes, they click, they flip, they
>dip, they wiggle and 'a waggle and giggle and a gaggle. I can make them
>look as if severely broken or mangled, a real hit at parties when I'm
>playing the guitar in this mode.
>
>If I knew how, I'd post photographic proof. You'd see. Oh, Gross!
>
> I can do a rest stroke ...backwards! And any women to whom I've delivered
>a 'two-timer, double-reverse thumber massage' wants to marry me, on the
>spot. I've turned down offers from Barnum & Bailey and Ringling Bros. and
>you would've saw me on Ed Sullivan 'cept I got sick the night I was
>supposed to go on..right after Topo Geogio that little Mexican mouse. Hey,
>live TV in those days. No tapings.
>
> Several children have taken me to school for 'show-and-tell', although I
>no longer permit this for children under the age of nine. Several younger
>children were severely traumatized at the sight of the epileptic thumbs,

>figuring them to be alien monsters.  Of the surviving children one is
>still in her iron lung. The other, I fear, is slipping away. Fortunately
>the parents were quite understanding, realizing that I myself could not be
>held responsible for my own hideousness. Now I wear mittens, summer and
>winter, and I wave to all the happy parents and they smile quietly back at
>me, knowing their kids are safe.
>
>So, I'm not anatomist, but if Reza is right about the 4-joint thing, let's
>see, 4 times double is 8. Does that mean I'm some sort lizard or what?
>
>There is a left hand disadvantage. If I squeeze the neck a little too
>hard, the thumb 'collapses' folds in on itself, sort of like the feeling
>you get when someone sneaks up behind you and bumps the front of their
>knees into the backs of your knees. Vertigo.

On 21 Sep 1999, GuitarsWeB wrote:

> Viv, Larry is correct. Trains take 20% the fuel of a truck. An airplane
> used 50 times as much fuel.

And you forgot lawnmowers. They take 5000 times as much fuel as airplanes,
at least on Sundays, they do. That is all added up they do. Not only that,
since the damn things are so hard to start --yank, pull, cuss, yank,
choke, yank, cuss, half-choke, yank, yank, yank--their human operators, in
turn, require 50 times what the lawnmowers do, fuel that is. Plus look at
the blue smoke! What's in that smoke anyway. At least a plane leaves a
nice, clean white streak across the sky, right? If lawnmowers could fly,
well, hello sky of filth.  So, anyway, everybody's pulling and yanking and
cussing and so everybody cutting their lawn are so pooped and hungry they
go get some 50,000,000 Big Macs and the next thing you know...

...there go all the rainforests.

Where will the world perish? Not on the tracks, not the road, not the sky.
No, just look for the big, blue, dying orb bleeding in the drive-thru.
And if not there, look in the backyard, behind the John Deere, or under
it.

Regards,

Rib

On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Michael P Burns wrote:

> Hey Bob,
>
> My wife and my son have those double jointed thumbs.  Sometimes they just
> pop em out together just to gross people out.  My son plays bass.  You can
> imagine the fretboard disasters that thumb thing can cause on a bass.  But
> it makes a nice place to put the cue when you're playing pool.

Coincidently, yes, the pool cue prop, you've reminded me of that! My
parents had a pool table in the basement when I was growing up. Besides
the double-jointed thumb props, I'd deliberately unlevel the table, then
play my friends (enemies?) for money. I knew every dip, hill, left, right,
and whoaaa, center! The stakes? Record albums.

Potato head albums were not even considered legal tender, just funny
money. It was Country Joe and The Fish, Jefferson Airplane, and other
bands on acid. That was real currency.

Playing the classical guitar, all I ever heard was, "How come you don't
sound like the record, like Cream?"

It's been a slow descent from there.

Rib

We used to go fishing, me and my uncle bob. We'd used 'bobs', those red
and white floats that tell you if a fish is biting.

Little waves would make the bob bob and since it was bob's bob bobbing a
little ditty, a wee song came out of it with a riff that went something
like

Ribbity-bibbity-babbity-bawb
A fish is on the line cause
Rob-robbin's bob is a bobbin
Ribbity-bibbity-babbity-bawb

Else, Rib for short. I'm the only guy I know whose knickname is ten times
as long my real name.

Real = Bob (Rob)

Nick = Ribbity-Bibbity-Babbity-Bawb
 

Regards,

Rib

<snip>

> 1.Simple people.. with a complex form of communication
> 2.Complex people with a simple form of communication

John Salvidor wrote:

> Which type do you consider yourself Mr. Ashley?

Well, I guess I'm guilty Your Honor. Put me in Cell #1.

I'm one of your El-Stupidos with the El-Grandioso egos and overblown
logos! A menace who must be contained. No chance for parole, mistrial, or
mercy.

I await my dish, spoon, haircut and stripes.

Regards,

Rib

Yes, good point about 'guitarist'. Try it on for a while and see how it
fits. You might change your mind, but for now, it looks fine. I love the
idea of just having REZA on the front cover. In English, anyway, it's one
of the highly unusual sounding names that recall images from words that
sound like it. "Ebenezer Scrooge' is a timely example. Think of 'screw',
'geezer', 'miser', 'scrapper,' 'dirge', 'wheezer' and you start to get a
feel for the guy's image.

REZA puts my mind to 'racey', 'ZAPPA', 'residual', RASTA, and most
especially, and significantly, 'Rosa'. Yours is an ideal
'entertainment-business' first name. Like 'Cher' or 'Sting', or
'Ringo'...just as good, if not better. In fact, I'd mull over the idea of
forgetting the last name altogether, at least from the business
standpoint; you may strong personal reasons to override this idea,
however.

Which language. If Italian, you shouldn't be talking to me, but my Italian
counterpart, 'Ribino'. Geez, I'd have not a clue how some of the English
idioms we've worked on would translate, how they survive or die in
Italian.

And yes, you are right about the 'clash'. Things are getting too busy.
Somebody would most reasonably wonder, 'Hmmmm, music from Italy and Spain;
oh look! Russian music from Venice? From Madrid? Je ne me get this pas!'

Hey, no I never done see no dagburn snapshot of you since I'm on the
internet using a strictly 'text-based' browser. Hey, I'm 'purer' than you:
100% no advertising, no porn, no banners, no artificial artifices or
orifices or any kind of non-organic cyber slop.

Maybe we could set up a snail-mail connection. As far as a picture? Well,
I look exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but who got shrunk, like a
T-shirt, in the clothes dryer. Also I used to be a midget .

---------------
> dear Bob
> I am still waiting for your photo - and of the family.........
> thanks.
> i made annoucement on NG

Whoops. Well, I haven't really had a picture taken of me since I was about
nine, so, you might be sensitive to the suggestion that certain changes in
my appearance have begun show. Mostly minor changes, I'll admit.

For instance, I'm about 2-feet taller and about 100 pounds heavier. Aside
from those major changes most else is quite minor, although, added up
together they might be considered equivalent to one more 'major' change.

Other things wouldn't show, though, like the fact that I now shave. That
would be hard to pick up in a photo, wouldn't it.

So, what I must do, and your request hurries me along to do it,
productively, I might add, since I need up-to-date pictures anyway, is to
get my wife to do a little 'photo-shoot' with me as model. Which reminds
me: I was a 'photo-model hired by American Express, the credit card
people'. This is TRUE. Maybe I should try to find this photo.

Now this problem would have been very easy to  solve if I had followed my
dream (and my manliness) to become a porn movie star. Then, when you'd
say, 'Where's those pictures, Bob?" I'd just refer you to my latest movie.

Like "Love in Cutaway Guitar"

       "Romanza de Bobza"

"Hot Barres"

etc. etc.

I fear it's too late now to pursue this goal. But if I had, you'd probably
not be making the request you are making, would you?

Regards,

Rib

Well, no one's ever ready for the sucker punch. But I have no fear of
seeing last Tuesday's post resurrected to contradict last night's. I think
constancy of identity, of belief, is pure myth. We recreate ourselves
every day, out of the splinters of yesterday and the rearrangements are
never exactly the same as yesterday's. Every night is a crucifixion and
every next morning a resurrection. We die from one moment, reborn in the
next. If one feels untransformed, then you have faith. [I'm still drunk]

I feel as if keeping your message of friendship clear, clean, and free
from the added burdens of moralizing and advertising. You can always use
the CD to promote these causes afterwards. I think you run a risk of
cluttering up your CD with too many clashing interests.

Understandably, it's very tempting to want to 'get it all in' there. But
themes are usually best handled with simplicity and clarity. Think of your
theme as a tuxedo. A nice clean black slick look that says 'formal class'.
Not imagine putting political campaign buttons on the lapels "I HATE
SMOKING", "I DON"T EAT MEAT", "I HATE CARS". And then, on the back, a sign
in neon pink and lime green, "EAT AT JOES: BEST OMELETTES IN KANSAS".

Your CD is a tuxedo so far. At least this is my impression. You don't need
the political buttons, don't need the billboards, but you what you do
need, is persistent awareness that what you are wearing is a tuxedo. Can't
let that slip, not for second.

Regards,

Rib
> THIS IS REALLLLLLLLY FUNNY!   (where did you pull off KANSAS from?!)

It floated by on a little cloud in my little mind.

> Weren't days wagging school (ie playing truant) so much more delicious than
> weekends!

Yes, there is a sweet genius found in 'captured' time, which is utterly
bland on the tongue when it is 'alloted' time.

The trouble with aphorisms like ours, of course, is that they are always
more enamoured of their intrinsic wit than of any extrinsic source of
universal wisdom.

Thus renders the big, fat books of quotations nothing but a larder of
recorded standing ovations of egos hailing their own performances.

What we need, then, is a corrective, is a book of 'listenings'. A book of
blank pages that is read quietly every day. Such would be a much wiser
waste of time.

Regards,

Rib

>A wonderful relationship is not based upon time put in lest one cowers
>before the altar of an investment paradigm. Rather, it is based upon
>faith, that belief in the other, that even when the time clocked is
>shallow, the feeling breathes deep. If the fundament of your love for the
>guitar rests upon little but 'built-up' timeblocks, then your architecture
>shall surely sink in it, in time sands. The hourglass symbolizes
>constricture, fallibility, ephermerality, inescapabilty, death,
>ineluctability, the teleological tragic, the foisting upon us of fate's
>final grain. Love, then, is surely not time-sensitive. Sentences are. Of
>the type of sentences measured by time, I leave this open for the
>sensitive reader to decide.
>
>Regards,
>
>Rib
>

> Tips: Do yoga/other body works - you'll release tension and need less
> sleep... keep a vegetarian diet - really take care of the
> body........... you'll also have more time and resource if you don't
> have to worry about feeding a family. You can practice on your lunch
> breaks - or on trains to/from work.... you can do it if you want.
 

Notice 'tips' backwards?

Don't do yoga. You'll gather looseness, need more sleep. Eat Inuit,
blubber, killer-whale fenks. Ignore your body, what does it know?

You'll have less time and resourse if you rejoice about starving a family.
You can ignore lunch when you practice on the bus or play.

You can't do it if you don't want to.

Regards,

Rib

> I might be going to Valencia - and I need a good road guitar - are there any good makers there?
> name/adr would be appreciated..............

Let us muse on causal relations, that is logical relationships. What
perspires here?

Premise 1: If one is going to Valencia, then one needs a good road
guitar.

Premise 2: I am going to Valencia

Conclusion: Therefore I need a good road guitar
 

As expected Reza, [captain of the Iranian diving team] with utmost
syllogisic aplomb, presents an argment which dives from the 10-metere with
a full-gainer, 2.5 twists, in the tuck-position, and enters the water no
splash whatsoever. A knife-edge entry. Judges? 9.8, 9.4, 9.8, 9.9, 9.2,
9.9, 10.0, and oh, no moooooaaaaaaaaaannnn...a 6.3 from the Russian judge,
Konstantin!

But what is wrong here? What doesn't seem quite right? Something fishy is
going on in the philosopher's pool. A cover-up? A fraudulence? This is a
job...for...for

for the Logic Patrol! Get your fedora, get your trenchcoat, get your ID,
and get going!
 

Regards,

Rib

> I might be going to Valencia - and I need a good road guitar - are there any good makers there?
> name/adr would be appreciated..............

Mario's RoadEquip Ltd.
1546 Duende Street
Andulucia, Es
454969-3434

Tel- 34893-67656-4-45-234---23-234134-434-5334
e-mail  allroad@music/to/Mac.es

Equipment for any road and every road. If it can go on the road we sell
it! Mastery meets the road...at Marios. (insert jingle -tuba rendition of
Romanza)

We carry

motorcycles,2-door sedans, station wagons, 18-wheelers, step-vans, ATVs,
RVs, jeeps, travel mugs, hearses, float rentals, snowploughs, Shriner
mini-cycles (Shriner not included)

Exclusive Spanish Distributor: Raleigh, Calvin Klein, and Frigidaire

Our specialty - Road guitars. Ask about our Titanium Ramirez T-1 Line!
Sale 15% off women's Cut-Away Aluminum guitars-maximum comfort (sizes
32B-40D). Notice- No returns on women's guitars. We take trade-ins. Free
in-guitar deodorizer with every purchase- If you can't afford cedar you
can at least still smell like you can.

Remember, mastery meets the road, any road, every road...at Mario's.

Regards,

Mario

(Rib, I can't believe you put me up to this!)

> I might be going to Valencia - and I need a good road guitar - are there
> any good makers there?  name/adr would be appreciated..............

Yes, thinking much like mine. I have two bikes--a mountain bike and a road
bike. You may destroy the guitar or trash the bike but you can't erase the
relation. Such are also the relational features between Frankenstein and
the Human Genome Project. The monster is killed by master but now we've
reconjured the relation. Witness cycling, reconjured relations in
guitaring.

I think that on a good road guitar there is usually wider range of gearing
ratios on the tuning machines so that you can more easily handle the hills
and dips while playing on the open road. I go with the standard
triple-chain ring X 6 strings give me 18 gears. Boring, I know, but it
works.

You know, like a good Raleigh touring road bike with those boring
old-fashioned but still comfortable drop handlebars. And likewise a good
road guitar should feel at home on the highway in a drop-D tuning.

Don't forget the White Lightning grease. Slab it everywhere.

Still, my mountain-guitar kicks serious butt, off-road, and I love those
knobby strings. Extreme, with bad, bad paint. Mudmother. 'Romanza da
Roughneck'!

The biggest question, the hardest decision to make, of course, in choosing
a good road-guitar is whether to go Chromoloy, Steel, Titanium, Aluminum,
or if you're a masochist, cast iron. I'd advise getting lugs put on so you
can mount your saddlebags. And good saddle too. Me, I'd forgot the whole
spruce/cedar debate altogether, since either will give you splinters, not
to mention a numb.... Leave that to the parliament of eunuchs. A men's gel
"Liberator" with the cut-out works for me. For doing those long Chaconne-y
type pieces on the road, invest in a 'Camel-back' water-sucking system so
you can still get that 'ade' in you while playing. I know, the accessories
really start to add up.

And for God's sake, Reza, don't be vain--we all know how handsome you
are-- and that you'd like to picture yourself riding free, hunkered down
on your guitar, black hair streaming in giggles behind you! Nymphs too, 14
of them, chasing you, beating their see-thu wings. (insert
Viviennesque moan here)  For once, though, just once, put good-looks and
famous fashion second to safety--WEAR A HELMET!!

Happy touring!
Regards,
Rib

> Thanks for the replies sofar. Fortunately i allready have a good version of
> "Valses Poeticos" for the guitar, and as such it really are the articles on
> arranging/transcribing that i am looking for. These "articles" hopefully
> discuss issues such as to why we should arrange/transcribe piano (or other)
> music, transposition considerations etc. Any help will still be appreciated.
 

Arne, get thee to a library, find _Soundboard_ and 17,000 columns called
'The Transcriber's Art'.

Fall before the scripture as written, by our saint and prophet, Richard
Yates. Drink of its fountains for then shall ye be cleansed.

Slaughter a young lamb and offer it to the altar. It may (or may
not) please the Great One.

Do not skip the 'begats'. It might piss him off.

Don't piss him off. Last time that happened my older brother came down
with a plague and died.

Regards,

Rib

> Yuri Federovich wrote:
> >
> > Dont. To begin with play simple pieces, if you start playing your old
> > repatoire
> > you will simply re-enforce your old mistakes, practising mistakes is a bad
> > idea,
> > you are training yourself every time, you will never establish new
> > techniques.
>
> Very true.  Practicing mistakes is one of the biggest practice
> mistakes students regularly make.

And not to miss taking an opportunity in your wake, we could add that when
a student has taken time to practice mistakes he has surely mistook
mistake-making for practice, and if I'm not missing your take on it, I
take it, you can't get more mistooken than that.

Regards,

Rib

> Bob Ashley, who are you? Are you maybe Don DeLillo in disguise? Are you
> James Merrill ressurrected? Are you a long-lost son of Melville or Eliot? I
> hardly understand a word you say, but I love your poetry!

No, I'm the fat kid on your street with the propeller cap and a jar with a
dead cricket in it, picking his nose in the background of a Gary Larson
cartoon. A jelly-donut sucking fraud, who, if he grows up, could be
dangerous.

Regards,

Rib

> "Bob Ashley" wrote
> > I submit before the NG, exhibit 'A' - Advertising, Journalism. Both hail
> > brevity and both hail memorability. The slogan, the headline.
> > I love a good slogan, a good gnome. What I don't like about them is that
> > many people allow these things to do the thinking for them.

Murray wrote:
> I believe I now understand your point. A gifted orator can manipulate the
> unquestioning mind the same way that music can. Truth becomes irrelevant in
> the presence of beauty.

Yes, and as you've deftly added, this skewing can come from the big
manifesto as easily as from the little gnome.

> However, this discussion reminds me of the debate on gun control;
> "People kill, guns don't" etc.  You appear to be blaming the tool for
> the damage.

Ha,ha, well yes, I can see how you might think so. And not an unreasonable
criticism, either, given the rather one-dimensional argument I've offered.

(sung to 'Nowhere Man')

I'm a real cardboard man
Sitting in my cardboard land
Making all my cardboard plans
For carbody

Carboard man, please listen
I don't know what I'm  missin'
Oh Carboard man the wor-hu-hur-ld (world)
Is at my command

Ya, right.

Regards,

Rib

> Rib's comment here sums it up really. Reza's site is good. Rib's scribblings
> are chicken soup for the soul.
 

Scribbled Ribble Soup.

Goooooaallllllllll

or in Canadian, 'He shoots, he scooooooorrrrrrrres!'

Thanks for these noodles of support.

Toodles,

Rib

> Rib: Who's Howard  Heitmeyer?

Have you ever heard of Richard Rightmeir? Yes, Richard Rightmeir is real
and he had a method book for guitar. No kidding. Now I'm serious, real
serious. Ask anyone. Go ahead, ask: Who's Richard Rightmeir? I saw it at
the Salvation Army Thrift Store. On the left was a dented egg-poacher with
a ping-pong ball in it and on the right was a pile of Harlequin love books
with dried up mustard slopped on that smelt like a stale church. And it
was sitting on top of a pair withered up black granny shoes like those
that go on a wicked witch who a house just fell on in Oz.

Now this Richard Rightmeir book half-frightened me, I mean, did you see
the hair on that guy? It's what inspired the invention of plastic
extrusion machines, you know, like buy a 3-piece meal at KFC and get a
free plastic-extruded Kernal (sp?) Saunders piggy bank. Thanks alot
Richard, you and that scary hair. And his guitar looked like US army
issue, kind of greenish tanky thing with bullet-proof pickguards on it and
an rusted exhaust pipe coming out the bum of it. It was put out in the
50s. I dunno maybe they really did use it during the war. This where
(Salvation Army) I got the 'UP-TO-DATE' Laurindo Almeida method book
91957) I was bragging about last week but Laurindo is not who you want to
know about is it. Maybe that's why I saw RR there since an army probably
likes its own stuff, so, hey, like let's get some Richard Rightmeir books.
Ya.

But then if the army likes their own stuff so much, how come they're
always trying to sell it? I guess since they order too much in the first
place so they got a surplus. I mean Richard Rightmeir must've seen them
army suckers with their purchase order books coming a mile away. Sometimes
I think the Army throw in together with the Navy, though, like Huck Finn
and Jim on the raft booming down the Mississippi. But I ain't never heard
of no Salvation Navy. Have you? Or Salvation Air Force.

The other reason I didn't get the Richard Rightmeir book, besides fear of
his hair, was I only had eleven dollars. That's 2 for Laurindo, 3 for
those withered up shoes was worn by the Wicked Witch of the West, 1 for
the stinking love book with mustard, 2 for the egg-poacher (without ball),
and then later 4 for a Cheeseburger (without ketchup) and a diet coke.
Hey, wait, that's $12. I could've got the Richard Rightmeir afterall,
well, 'cept I wouldn't had enough for the diet coke. So what did I do with
that extra dollar...? Hmmm.

Oh, now I remember; I gave it to that panhandlin' wino, Tina Tightmeir.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Rib

> First, I'm curious about the quoted statement.  Is this your own idea your
> quoting or does it derive from another source?

Fourth, if it was his statement, would you say, "Whoa, thanks, now I'm not
curious no more; that was driving me crazy trying to figure it out!"?

Fifth, if it was 'derived', would say, 'Whoa, thanks, now I'm not curious
no more, and this is important, knowing if the source is 'derived' or
'disderived'. Just arrived from elsewhere, that is, from derivational
depot.

Sixth, I'm curious about the curiosity about the quoted statement. Is
this curiosity your own or...?

> Second, about this idea that the best players make it (guitar playing) look
> easy, well, I'll say this: I've seen players make the difficult look easy,
> and I've seen players make the easy look difficult. Then again, I've also
> seen players make the difficult look difficult and the easy look easy.  Much
> depends upon personality, temperament, and an individual performers flair
> for the dramatic.

Seventh, you've seen it all! Hard, easy, easy hard! It all. 'Much depends
upon personality', you say. Would you say that performers curious about
derviations do it hard or easy? And, don't you mean 'flare' as in one of
props of a good stage show with 'flair for the dramactic'. Also, you
didn't mention the light show, like remember Jefferson Airplane where they
had a big screen with tie-die amoeba blobbering around in electric pink,
then, yellow, then...?

Eighth pill makes you larger.

Ninth don't do anything at all.

> Third, if what you're playing is too hard, and you in fact know without a
> doubt that it's too hard for you then, yes, you need to choose an easier
> piece.

Tenth, if what you're playing is too easy, and you in fact know without a
doubt that it's too easy for you then, yes, you need to choose a harder
piece.

Eleventh, time to go to heaventh.

It's on the twelf shelf.

Regards,

Rib

> Dear RIB,
>
> I guess I've joined the RIB fan club.  I'm new to the group and assumed RIB
> was a regular guy.  Well the 'assumed' thing is an obvious one to pick on.
> I'll admit... I'm delighted that RIB is NOT a regular guy.  Far more
> inventive than any regular guy I've ever met.  However...

Thanks. Hey, but wait, I'm regular, regular as you, regular as regular can
be. Inventive? Never had an original thought in my life. All derived,
pilfered, looted, or unconsciously sucked in.

> I have had little luck in communicating with RIB directly through email.  I
> really don't know what has happened.  They just sort of bounce back with
> little = embedded in the text.  I = haven't the slightes = t idea why.  But
> I would like to = thank RI=B for introducing me to == Richard Reitmeyer and
> = his =music.

With = [equal signs?]!?

Well, this should not be so, however, I am connected to the internet via a
slumlord who routes the connection via the vent stack in the tenement I
live in. Maybe the ='s represent the staples the city used to affix the
'Condemned' sign to outer door. Else, the weather, we've had a lot of
snow, and the Canadian Environmental Office may be using the = to show
good skiing conditions.
 

Glad to see you want to follow up on Richard Rightmeir and his songs and
method for battle-guitar. I wonder if he's done arrangements of war songs
for classical guitar. Doubtless, such a publication is on MO's 'To-do'
list, but hey, it's been 55 years since the end of WWII, don't you think
it's about time to issue?

I'm think of getting Richard Rightmeir hairstyle, that molded, Dairy
Queen, soft ice cream look. Look out ladies!

> If I knew= a bit = more  about RIB and= his musical= ta=stes I could
> reciprocate.  I did get a physic=al addres=s.

Looks to me like all these = signs are not my slumlord's doings but yours.

Regards,

Rib

> JW is a superb player, I love some of his stuff, but dislike a lot of
> his stuff as well as lacking emotion, feeling, warmth, or simply an
> interpretation to my taste.

I hadn't realized John Wayne, besides his towering stature as a Hollywood
cowboy, was also a classical guitarist. Are there any movies in which he
does a CG stunt? You know, like riding sidesaddle while playing Leyenda at
full gallop. Or maybe wrapping up the Alamo business with a campfire
rendition of Koyunbaba? What a man!

That JW is quite a man probably figures into why you say he seems to lack
emotion, feeling, warmth. But JW wouldn't be JW with being the
strong silent type, aloof, cool. Reza, I think you should revisit your
critique of JW, make some allowances for all the practical (yes,
unfeeling) tasks that need to be done if you're planning not only to be
concert guitarist, but also to win the wild, wild west.

Please advise.

Regards,
Rib

> JW is a superb player, I love some of his stuff, but dislike a lot of his stuff as well as lacking
> emotion, feeling, warmth, or simply an interpretation to my taste.
> Regards
> Reza

You gotta admire John Wasak. I mean, here, right here, he maintains his
cool, his dignity, even while that mean old Reza starts slapping him
around, insulting him, right in front of everybody.

John Wasak has risen above this mean Reza-razor-razzing, rising above it,
not even a glimmer of defense. That's class.

Apparently, it used to be just "Johnny 'K'. When he got sick of
saying,'No, the 'K' don't stand for nuthin'; that's all it is, is just
'K', Johnny K!" But all those people, they wouldn't let us, keeping on
pressing him and pressing.

So he changes his name. Now, being a superb guitar meant that there was
little left in reserve to fuel other talents. He racked the remaining 5%
of his brain trying to come up with a new name, but couldn't do it.
Finally, he just threw up his arms one day, giving up trying to think up a
new name.  But he didn't want to let on to anyone except that to say yes,
he did think up a new name, but that he couldn't tell anyone 'just yet'.
So he comes on that he won't tell anyone, no one, not even his mama what
his new name is, and them not knowing that John never did think one up.

So one day Sally is talking to Craig at the grocery store and there goes
Johnny looking for the dry mustard. Sally, shouts out to John, "Hey
Johnny, what's you're new name." And John, shouts back, "Sally, I ain't
telling you need to know and that is that my name 'was a 'K'!"

Was a K? says Sally?

So Craig turns to Sally and says, So if he won't tell us but that he 'was
a k', why don't we just starting calling him Johnny Was-a-k, maybe Wasak
to shortening up a tad. Ya, Johnny Was a k, Wasak.

Reza, hasn't poor old Johnny Was a K gone through enough, without you
subjecting him to even more punishment? Maybe he 'can't' show his feelings
because there all repressed from the upset to do with the  "K" fiasco.

I wonder in John ever did think of a new last name so he drop the Wasak,
which is not a name at all, really, but rather a clause, a partial
sentence, with verb (to be, past tense) and an attribuand (a K). The only
other people that do this, to my knowledge, are aborginal North Americans,
you know with names like 'Running Hot Water Till the Tank is Empty" or
'Jealous of HIs Horses Legs".

Anyways we should always have respect for people's names and never goof
around with them or take them for granted. Right?

Regards,

Rib

Oh, I get it, the Was-a-K, through a diachrony of phonological shifts, ie.
voicing/devoicing, tense/lax vowels, came under influence of a particular
dialect of English, and the family, rather than resist the change, decided
to roll over and go with it. Well, sorta, anyhoo.

Right? Did the boy who spotted the great emperor in the nakedness of his
new clothes have a 'singular' vision?  I'd say so. And you seem to
be carrying on the family tradition of angst, unsurety, and mistakenness
about the naked truth of your name that but a innocent singularity of
vision can spy. Recall that my emphasis was aimed at the 'coverup' aspect
of your case. Your denial of the fact that being such a superb guitar
player, you had squandered your creative resources and simply had not the
right stuff to think up a good new name. 'Was-a-k' was the best hedge, the
best face-saver for someone so brilliant, so bankrupt.

Perhaps therapy is the answer. You could start by trying to meet your
inner 'Was-a-K', perhaps trying on variants like 'Is-a-K', or
'Kud-be-a-K', or "I'm a 'Special-K". all the while asking yoursef why you
keep calling yourself 'Was-never-a-K', or 'Wont-be-a-K'.

Me, I'd say, get over it, be who you are, that is, BE YOU, Be the K you
are meant to fulfill. 'Be-a-k'

John Beak. (Would happen to have a prow-like proboscis?)

Regards,

Rib

> Can anyone help me out here?  I know my scales and modes on the guitar, but
> for this one audition, I need to know a few Segovia Scales.  How do these
> differ from any other scales?  Where can I find these fabled scales of yore?
>
> Thanks a bazillion
> paully binge

Read Wallace Stevens' "The Bird with the Coppery Keen Claws" for your
answer. It begins:

Above the forest of parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails...

Then consult Dr.Lutemans exhaustive compendium of guitar mythology. I
think 'Segovia Scales', is the entry following 'Saturnalian Slurs'. This
work has been attentively peer-reviewed, or should I rather say,
rear-poo-poo'd. Without exaggeration, what Dr. L has done to the Segovian
Scales is on par with what Copernicus did with Ptolemy's geocentric
universe. We no long reside in Sego-centric world of guitar playing! We
are on the cusp of a new paradigm, a revolution. We know so since, like
Galileo, we are being persecuted for the mere threats posed by our truth
yielding discoveries. Naturally your examiners are part of the old
priesthood, with much conservative tradition to protext and promote.

Where to find these 'fabled scales of yore'?

Try 'Ye Olde Pette Shoppe'. Look in the manure management aisle. Budgie
paper is filed just before 'Bullsh-t', alphabetical-like.
 

Regards,

Rib

> My son, Colin, was playing classical guitar at age eleven.  When he
> turned thirteen, he fell to the dark side and got into Metillica.  He
> went off to run track for Univ. Or Oregon at ninteen and came back from
> Eugene a year later a Bob Dylan lover. Now he's in the Air Force and
> wants me to find him an electric classical cut-away.  So, maybe there's
> hope. Oh, I was a Mr. Mom from the time he was thirteen..Dr. Laura would
> like that.

I wonder what the question will be. Maybe, being in the airforce he's got
the acoustico-dynamics the guitar mixed up with the aerodynamics of the
fighter jet, maybe figuring that the cut-away presents a superior airfoil,
a leading edge to west-bound, prevailing G-chords?

Maybe he doesn't feel safe with the olden-times full-bodied guitar. I
mean, let's say your son Collin showed you a plane, a 'tri-plane', you
know, one of those old jalopies with six wings made out of rice paper,
that you see in them olden-times newsreels? Down the side of the hill she
comes, in flecky, jerky black and white, trips on pebble, and all six
wings collapse, careen, and clunk into something that looks like a riot of
ironing boards.

Then you say to him, "Find me one of them planes where they 'cut-away'
four of those ironing-board wings! I ain't dying, I say, I ain't flying,
in one on those tri-planes. Gimme me a 'cut-away' plane or I remaing
earthbound.

He returns to the base, confiding in his buddies about Dad, Mr. Mom: "It's
hopeless".

Is that the question? A question of safety and phobias?

Regards,

Rib

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Ashley <ax386@chebucto.ns.ca>
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical.guitar
Date: Sunday, March 26, 2000 9:22 PM
Subject: Re: Koyunbaba, camels, oliveoil, MO :-)
 

>On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Reza Ganjavi wrote:
>
>> Mo Mo Mo, I guess I've been too influenced by good old Rib! I'm trying
>> to say things sort of indirectly and with some humor. This sentence was
>> certainly not about anything you had said neither about cigars, camels,
>> nor olive oil. It was just a confession.
>
>
>Now you're getting me into trouble too! Especially moreso since I'm
>always, mostly, trying to sort of say things like kinda direct like? And
>most certainly, well, you know, doing my best seriousnessicularity at all,
>mostly, sometimes, all when if I remember like, remember two years ago, I
>remembered to be absolutely straight about mainly being direct if it
>happened and the sun and Jovian moons aligned most solemn, most, solemn.
>
>So if you are going to blame me, at least don't go around delaying the
>true, absolutely sometime fact of time to time directness and habitual
>memories of days of ye relatively olde knitted-brow-seriosity.
>
>
>With perfectly partial seriosniciosity, (say that one fast and cirius!)
>
>Rib
>

Well, Reza, back when I was John Wayne ( John Was-a-Wayne), you might
remember I starred in the movie Flying Leathernecks.  To be really
convincing in the role I decided I needed a real leathery neck.  Now how do
you think I got that leatherneck?  I'll tell ya' , I sure didn't use no
Coppertone or any of that stuff.  No sir-ee!  I just went down to the
Arizona desert and leaned up against a cactus from high noon to sunset for
about a week. Talk about a sunburned quality!  Achieved that leathery,
weathered looking neck in no time.  Really helped to develop my true grit
too.

JW

2000
Reza,

Hope things are going well. I did return your message, that something
about you having a 'mobile US number' whatever the heck that is. Being
mobile, I suppose, means it only stays itself for a little while then
changes (mobilizes) into a new sort of number which waits a little, then
changes, then waits, then changes. I must have caught it between a wait
and a change or a change and a wait.

Matters might be simplified if you had a number that was 'immobile'. Then
I could hit it while it's standing still, say, with a shovel or even
p-i-m-a.

I hope you're not doing that traveling around the US by train trying to
pick up girls in the club car. You'll get yourself killed...or worse,
married!
 

   Bob
   Ashley
******************************

On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, ganjavi wrote:

> Dear Bob:
> Thanks for a cheerful mail - I missed your posts.....please send me your
> classic posts that you may put on the NG from time to time. I dont read the
> NG anymore due to time pressure.......

When you wake up from the stranglehold of this 'time pressure', you will
be 50! Thus, in the now, you are older than I am. 'Classic posts'? I see
them as the half-eaten piece of toast someone left on the restaurant
table. As yet, I know of no such thing as a Museum of Used Toast.

Classic Toasts, not Posts.

Regards,

Bob
-------------------
Dear Bob:
Thanks for a cheerful mail - I missed your posts.....please send me your
classic posts that you may put on the NG from time to time. I dont read the
NG anymore due to time pressure.......

You called my mobile the day I cancelled it - it was a temp - long story - I
have it on my want-to-list to call you when I get back to the US - in Swiss
train now - and yest, still, unmarried!

I wish I could respond to your mail in the same good spirit as you but will
catch up with you later.
Take care bro
Reza

The only reason Reza's not proud, folks, is that in the portrait of Reza
selected for the cover, he has three hairs on his head out of place. And
this is crucially important for Reza is to hair performance as John Williams
to guitar performance--only rarely do things get mussed up. Notice below,
that while he extends thanks to me for the editing he did not do likewise
for his hairdresser.

> Our very own Bob Ashley was a great help in editing the booklet......

Tell them what you threatened to do to me and my family and my hair if I
didn't surrender!

***
rib
-----------
In fact I regreted not thanking my hairdresser :-))
You were the cheif-editor Bob, it's your fault ! :-)
www.rezamusic.com