An Open Letter to Miss Carly Rose Sonenclar

 

My God! Young Lady, but weren’t you ripped off!?  The Producers arranged it so that the Popular Music Vote would be split so that the strong Minority Vote of the Southern Block could walk off with the Win with far less than 50% of the Vote.  In any Civilized Venue, you would have deserved a runoff, no?  Head to head Mr. Steven could never have come even close to beating you.

 

Well, anyway, the reality of it would have been that you would have won next to nothing.  The “5 Million dollar Record Deal” would have been the X-factor Producers shoving money from one of their pockets to another one of their pockets; from left hand into right, but behind their back.   They would have consigned you into cutting a cheezy record with low production values, on a tight schedule, and consisting of mostly horrible generic pop originals.  They would have you made you the pop girl of the season, and then, disillusioned and disappointed, your adoring fans would remember only that you had once been good.   

 

As it stands now, you can get your Own Deal, and under much better contractual considerations.  Oh, you are just 13 years old, and so it might be likely you would still be thinking of High School and College… but not necessarily.  You could home school your way through knowing anything a High School student must know to do well on the SAT Tests, and then  you can enter College whenever your career reaches some natural point of relaxation.

 

Now for some advice… from an old man, and so humor me.   Yes, yes, yes, you have a Once in a Generation Voice, but what is the most important thing now, is not your Voice, but your Taste and Discernment.   Essentially it comes down to whether or not you know what a Hit is.  Some people with amazing degrees of musical talent simply throw it all away by making horrible choices regarding what they choose to record.   For instance, Barbara Streisand, an undeniably talented Lady, now takes up nearly all of her time trying to impress a New York Theatrical Elite that doesn’t do good popular music because, well, they don’t need to… they have a huge captive audience – all those New York Gay People, God Bless them,  that have nowhere else to go.  They go to the same theatres to see the same shows, however horrible they are, satisfied to just to preen like birds out in the theatre lobbies during the intermissions.  But Barbara does this ‘Show’ music hoping to make friends or keep them among this tired sick and wasted ‘elite’.  Meanwhile dumpsters nationwide are brim full of Streisand CD’s, or people are warned off of buying them in the first place.    Joan Osborne did a CD of some of her favorite Blues Songs… songs that had been her inspiration.  My God!, but what a yawn fest!  Macy Grey did a tribute to Stevie Wonder, of mostly songs that Stevie couldn’t  even get into the Top 40, and she tore up the few good songs so badly that, well, we are topping off the Nation’s dumpsters again.  Oh, and there are the Generic Pop Songs.   The Record Companies, who knows why, but they blindly and stupidly demand of Artists that they provide so many original recordings on some fixed schedule.  In a World where anybody who really does write three real honest-to-god Hits in their entire lifetime should be recognized as something of a Mortal God, well the Record Companies  want to fill up records year after year, but with what.  It is a huge waste of plastic!  Even the Best singer song writers are reduced to putting out CD’s full of ‘filler’… sometimes ‘filler’ from start to finish.  Aimee Mann… I used to worship her.  But her most recent CD… I listened to it and cried.  Ten songs and nothing there.

 

The best anecdote I have regarding this particular problem, of record companies demanding ‘filler’ songs on the off chance that one might somehow go against all the odds of market logic and creative judgment to become a surprise hit, is all about a once young star,  Jackie De Shannon.  She had made a hit of a Burt Bacharach song, “What the World Needs Now is Love”, and then she got a big break of being able to open for the Beatles on their 1965 American Tour.  Around about then she thought up her own ‘Hit’ song and had the good sense to know it was a ‘hit’. It was “Put a Little Love In Your Heart”.  She was excited for herself and ran off to the Record Company offices and because her demo tape was so sparse, she made all of the horn parts and string parts with her mouth, and accentuated them by waving her hands all about.  The Execs tried to bluff away her optimism but she stood firm – it was a hit – she knew it and they knew it,  and they would have to pay for it!  Well, they did, but the small print in her contract was a B___h.   She would have to follow the Single soon with an album.  She had something like a few weeks to fill the complete album and she knew and everybody knew it was awful… except the American Public who hadn’t been warned and were very disappointed in her ‘rip off’ album and never forgave her for it.  Remember ,this was during the Age of the Beatles where almost every ‘good’ album had well more than three songs that were actually up in the ‘Hit’ caliber and most of the rest fine enough to listen too without rendering offense or absolute boredom.  So the idea of a complete album with just one good song, when everyone already owned it as a Single, well… it was all bitterness and darkness after that.  And so it is that the way she negotiated an honest-to-god ‘hit’ came down to ruining her career.   Her friend at the time was a young songwriter named Carole King, to whom she poured out all her various laments and warnings.  Carole took them to heart and so when she in turn went off to the Record Companies, she had a complete album full of nearly perfect ‘hits’, from start to finish.  Of course, Carole King, except for a few good songs in later years, was never even nearly able to equal the likes of “Tapestry” again… well, in fact, has anybody?  Most Greatest Hits albums aren’t nearly as good as just plain “Tapestry”.

 

So, the point there is to be very careful in assembling your Work, your CD’s.  Now, of course you can’t please everybody – not everybody likes every song, but we are not talking about that.  We are talking about songs that everybody with a modicum of taste knows to be simply a ‘filler’.  Remember, YOU are the talent.  Remember, that when a Record company Exec gives you advice, well, politely nod your head ‘yes, yes, sure, sure’ but then, go off to the company archives and find out how well this particular exec’s judgments have gone.  Had he been responsible for a series of flat and stupid CD’s, and a broken trail of used up and abandoned artists?  Yes!?  Well, guess what he wants to do to you… not out of hate or malice, but simply because he a stupid business man… probably got the job because he’s somebody’s son-in-law, and not because he even pretends to do anything besides go through the motions of being a Record Company Exec.  So trust your own judgment, but that also means trusting a Producer or somebody that actually does have a Stellar record of producing hit after hit after hit, and never leaving a wounded or melancholy Artist behind.  For instance, Stevie Nick’s Greatest Hits  record jacket is really funny, in that it points out time and again how she moaned and complained that songs her producer wanted her to do simply ‘sucked’ but that he wouldn’t budge and when she finally did them that they ended up being Monster Hits for her.  So, you need to have the Discernment to know who to listen to.  You need both good Judgment of Music and Good Judgment of the people you work with.

 

Oh, and now a personal observation.  You have focused on singing. When it comes to dance and moving on stage, well, it is as though your slippers are made of steel and concrete.  My advice here is to learn quickly how to Visually represent music.  The best method for that is one I have seen in the Far East – Korean Girls come out on stage with sticks that have attached to them these very long flowing ribbons that they twirl and bullwhip around in perfect time to the music.  High notes are whipped up into the air, and the low notes beat along the stage floor.  The audience sees a perfect Visual Translation of the music.  Dance is supposed to do the same thing, but the Medium of arms and legs is not nearly was Wonderful as the sticks and ribbons.   But after one ‘gets’ the idea, then one can translate the Music visually with dance.  And once you can dance, then you can control the stage better.  Oh, and as Rod Stewart or Annie Lennox can attest, being able to toss the mike stand up into the air and catch it like a baton, well, audiences wouldn’t be more amazed unless it were by the 2^nd coming of Christ… and if He had good sense, He would learn to toss the mike stand too.   Oh, be careful, and use both hands.    

 

Also, an appreciation for visual motion and dance gives one an idea for the exuberance of some music.  Right now you focus on the Sublimity of Music – those magical moments of a culminating melodic phrase against a background of folded together and consummated harmonies… it does carry one away.  But Music also can have Exuberance and Flight… anywhere from a tickling lightness to an absolute kind of stomp.  Yes, there are thousands of examples of this done badly.  But how often is Musical Sublimity done badly also?   So, yes, you already have the proven ability to take your audience up into the very Stratosphere of musical rapture, but now you need to be able to whip them up into a Frenzy.  You know what they say about Show Business, don’t you?  “Make them Laugh and make them Cry”.  Well, that phrase may apply more so to the Dramatic Arts, but you get the idea.  You need more Range in your Act.  Move them to tears, but also just plain move them.   Get those feet a-tappin.

 

Now, what do you do?  As I said before, anybody who can even write three hits in a lifetime is a veritable God, so I can’t ask you to be a ‘singer-songwriter’, as it is, well, an impossible trade to maintain for very long.  Even Neil Diamond does covers now.  You could find a good Song Writer.  There is a guy in the U.K. that writes for Amy Belle, a very talented young lady that Rod Stewart ‘discovered’ some years back.  The songwriters name is Lindop.  Rod Stewart had brought her out on stage for a concert that went to DVD, and then everyone waited years, and nothing was heard from her, and when the world was ready to simply shrug and forget her, out comes this precious little CD called, ironically enough, “Lost in the Shortcut”.   All of the best songs are by this Lindop character.  See if you can steal him… well, if he still has anything left.

 

But you can always reach back and do covers.  I know you listen to a lot a music… the note ‘bend’ you do at the end of “Feeling Good”, well, Nina doesn’t do that, but the background singers on Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff”, they do a note bend just like the one you did.  So you listen a lot of music and you don’t hesitate to use what you know.  So go back and get some of these old songs and fix them up… update them.  If you need any ideas, well, I have over 600 ‘favorite’ songs catalogued by Key.  There are some really good songs… songs that had even been ‘hits’… that no one does today.  Yes, and there are probably many good songs out there in Musical History hidden by horrible production choices – good songs made bad.  Oh, James Taylor had first been signed by the Beatle’s Apple Records, and they made “Carolina” sound like a march song, with trombones and tubas.  Oh, and remember how Joe Cocker was able to make the stupid  Ringo Starr song “With a Little Help from my Friends” into a true rock and roll Classic.   You know, nearly all of the ‘Hit’ songs of the Sixties, or well before about 1972 or 74, were done to some awkward time signature… I remember as a juggler having to do everything to a 3 ball pattern, which was not very ‘dancy’, but then songs went ‘even’ somehow and I was able to do 4 ball and the dancing got more fluid .  So I suspect one could go back to the sixties and re-build melodic phrases to a more modern time signature.    

 

Oh, here as an idea, considering your age.  Laura Nero.  Of course you know her, but for my other readers, allow me to elaborate, Laura Nero was, much like our very own Carly Rose, a teenage prodigy.  Some of her songs are almost embarrassingly ‘young’.  “Let’s go down to the River and drink my daddy’s wine, get Blasted”… it’s about a teenager’s first drunk experience.  “Wedding Bell Blues” is a 16 year old girl fantasizing about marriage… almost a child playing ‘house’.  “Stone Soul Picnic”, well… we can guess what that is about.   Barbara Streisand covered Nero.  Oh, and a lady with perhaps the best popular voice of the 20^th Century, though nobody gives her the credit for it, Marilyn Macoo, with her Fifth Dimension group, they made a fortune of covering Laura Nero.  But at your age, Laura Nero should be yours… you should do Laura Nero and simply resonate with all that Teenage Prodigy energy.   Oh, and rock and roll.  Cover The Who… do that song about Teenage Wasteland with the best electric violin solo in rock and roll history.

 

Oh, perhaps we dismissed your writing your own material much too soon.  Do write.  But don’t compose on guitar.  People who compose on guitar do so with the most predictable of chords and it all ends up sounding the same…  yes, perfectly constructed songs, but one simply can’t tell them apart.   It is all like Taylor Swift – the songs all seem okay one by one but when the CD is over, the mind has nothing particular to remember because all the songs merge into one big bland mass of sameness.   So compose on keyboard.  Yes, yes, you already play piano, but I recommend going to electronic keyboard so you can transpose all of your notes down to just the white keys, like you are playing everything in the Key of C.  That way you can keep the same key finger patterns and use the transpose key to change Key to fit your vocal range.  This allows you to put all of your work into finding phrases and less into fighting the mechanics of the traditional piano keyboard – two rows of keys, blacks and white, a certain stumbling block, but we all insist on lugging it about to appease the Gods of Holy Musical Tradition .

 

Oh, about musical themes and lyrics.  Well, you are so young.  We are all so used to your Sublimity, that we would be rather disappointed if we only had songs of ‘puppy love’ and passing notes in class.  But if you got too heavy, well, nobody would believe it.  Now, I do not think many people have ever done this, but you are young enough so that we can likely suspect that the Best Literature and Poetry of the English Language is still in front of you.  When High School curriculum requires you to read the Very Best, well, let it ‘kill two birds with one stone, and see if it could perhaps give you some musical or thematic ideas.  And when your interviewers ask about how a 14 year old or a 15 year old can come up with such themes, well, you can plausibly blame it upon Literary Influences.  Oh, and it would prove you are not such a dunce as Taylor Swift.  How can any ‘intelligent’ young lady be exposed to so much fine literature and come out totally unmarked by any of it?

 

Anyway, enough from an Old Man.  If I can be of any further assistance, then, please, just let me know.

Is X Factor a Fixed Southern Fried Fraud?

 

Okay, imagine in what Universe this would be fair, to take 1 Country Act and let it compete against the split vote of two Popular Acts, and then allowing the Country Act to win with a minority of the vote.  This is about what happened – the Cowboy Hat Act got about 42% of the Vote.  Carly Ann Sonenclar got 41% of the vote, but the other Popular Girl Act got 17% of the vote.  Carly Rose would have needed only 2% more of the vote to beat Potato “Tate” Stevens, and if the vote had been only Him against Her then she probably would have won with a better than a 12% margin of victory.  Now that would have been the obviously fair way to conduct the competition, but they didn’t do that, did they.  You know, in many Democracies they never allow a ‘Winner’ with less than 50% of the Vote, or they do a run off Election.  X-factor needs to conform to at least a common sense level of ethics.  Already one of their Judges has resigned – the Black One, no less.  I suppose the remaining Judges are Stupid, or think We are.  

 

Also, I was thinking, that this split the Yankee Vote strategy could only win if the Dixie Cowboy Hat Vote was not also fragmented.   But notice, from the very beginning, there was only 1 Cowboy Hat Act.   Was ‘Tater’ Steven ever any good?  Well, no better or worse than the big fat full voice that can be found in any small town church choir.  But he was the ONLY Cowboy hat to show up, and so he was going to be the Predestined Winner of X-Factor.  That is simply how the Demographic Math goes.   You see, the Yankees, on both the West and East Coasts and in the Upper Mid-West, they will divide their votes fairly for whatever talent they see and hear, Black or White, Rock or Pop.  Whereas the Red States, the Bible and Incest Belt, those States largely suspected of callous and severe bigotry, well, they would vote only for a Cowboy Hat Act, not so much because they particularly like the talent, but that they would do anything to spite the Yankee Vote.   Do you think I am overly cynical?  Well, note the History of the Dixie Chicks, where the South was willing to jeer and harass and chase even its own name-sakes into exile for breaking with some perceived notion of Southern Solidarity against the Yankees.  And, now look how all of those Red States suddenly want to withdraw from the United States of America and become their own little Hateful Republics because a Black Man won the Presidency… again… one time and they can take it as some kind of a historic joke, useful for telling the Minorities of America and the World that American Racism no longer exists and so they need to stop their crying about all the still apparent Institutionalized Racism; but then to let the Blacks win the Presidency twice, well, that is no longer funny or useful and so they apparently find it intolerable against their Family Values, that, well, that the people in power have to be the same color as the rest of their family… and wear Cowboy Hats as a symbol of their Solidarity with the South and their implacable Hatred of Everybody Else.  So Dixie was just voting for the Tater’s Hat, and to spite the rest of the World who was voting for that funny looking little yankee girl with the foreign sounding name.

 

Now, why would the X-Factor Producers rig it up so that some no-talent Cowboy Hat would win their big prize – a 5 Million dollar Recording Deal.  Well, what exactly does Ol’ Tater win anyway?  How much of the 5 Million Dollars goes his way?  Probably not much.  What is really going on, I suspect, is that the Producers of the X-factor Show are also financially intertwined with the Record Company that will receive the 5 Million dollars for the “Record Deal”.  In effect, they are paying the money to themselves – the right hand giving the 5 million dollars to their own left hand… but behind the back, so to speak.   They want a Cowboy Hat Act to win, because, well, that is probably the kind of musicians they have under contract, and the kind of Tour Map they are used to.  They probably bave a few Cowboy Song Songwriters under contract who will now set to work tossing together a few generic Country Western Songs – faithful dogs, pickup trucks, and either laments concerning horribly slutty unfaithful girlfriends or wives, or impossibly idealistic love songs to perfectly virtuous female paragons, as though they are making love to their sisters and mothers, and not those real girls that they meet in the real world – the ones that end up being so slutty and unfaithful.  Anyway, Country Music is now hardly very creative, and it is enough to simply do the same old thing over and over again, just barely shuffling the same old words around and a bit of a tempo change between the same old chords.   But, what else is their Audience going to go off and see?  They are a captive audience, just as limited in their choice as the Gays in New York, who have to go see the same old stupid formulaic Broadway Plays that are offered or not see anything at all, but they certainly will never just stay home.  So it is that the country music fans will go and see whatever Cowboy Hat the record companies trot around for that season.   But it is kind of sad for Little Fat Boy Ol’ Tater Stevens.  He is doomed from the start.  He is really nothing but a Wannabee Garth Brooks, in a World where the Real Garth Brooks has been shuffled off as, well, “old hat”, that is, old cowboy hat.  The public has already had it with overweight clean cut family values big full voice church choir tenors.  It is either that, or, Garth Brooks, who epitomizes such a classic type, would be somewhere now making new records and touring his big fat butt off, instead of  being, well, somewhere in the middle of Country Nowhere wishing he had a good Day Job like Tater does.

 

Anyway, no hard feelings, Tater, I’m sure you weren’t smart enough to know you were winning a rigged game… your innocence in this Scandal is probably beyond reproach.   Oh, You do you know what is going to happen, don’t you?    They will take 5 minutes to get you to record about 12 songs – some famous covers,  and a few of those generic original songs by the record company hacks, and whatever was your signature song during the X-Factor extravaganza .  It will be a mix of ballads and up-tempo stuff.  It will come out sounding like Taylor Swift sung by an Old Fat Guy.  Nothing will be great, and the production values will be cheezy.  I don’t think that the 5 Million dollars will be frittered away paying for Studio Time, the Best song writers and the finest studio musicians, no, not if it will take away from the Executive Pay Budget.  Yes, do make it point to see the Accounting Sheets for that 5 Million Dollar Deal, and see what the Producers of X-Factor are cutting themselves in for, and what the Executives and Owners of the Record company cut themselves in for.   Oh, next.  You will go on tour to all the big Country Music Stops, on a Bus – again, all the costs coming out of ‘your’ 5 million dollars.  Cross your fingers that they don’t make you provide and set up your own equipment.  You will be promoted, more or less, as that big Fat X-Factor Cowboy Hat that was able to keep that little Yankee Foreign B__h from winning.  But you already did that, right?  Why should they see you Now?  So, guess what?  The Record Company won’t simply rely on you.  No, you will have an Opening Act, and probably a Second Act, that your Record Company actually has under something of a more permanent contract, and which they actually have some lasting stake in.  Yes, you will eventually be allowed to trot out on stage.  But rest assured that your Record Company already has plans for a third or maybe even a forth act to keep the crowd happy if you turn out to be a big flop.  Oh, and if you do suspect that the Record Company is unhappy, then, well, it sounds paranoid, but begin buying your own food and don’t eat or drink anything they provide.  You see, if you get ‘sick’ then you can probably be replaced on Your own Tour Schedule.  Just look at your Contract

 

Anyway, Tater, don’t burn down any bridges between you and that Day Job.

Morgan Monroe Electric Coil Pickup Mandolin

I saw this old Dixie Chick DVD where the violin/mandolin playin ‘Chick’ had an electric mandolin – no, not some ancient old acoustic thing with piezo or microphonic pickups , but a true little wildass electric mandolin, like some crazy little ‘fender’ something or another.  Well, I hadn’t even known such things existed!

 

Well, I just had to have one.  Searches on line revealed Amuse in the U.K., and while their gallery showed some absolutely gorgeous electric mandolins, they all seemed to be sold.  It seems one has to order an Almuse Mandolin against some time in the Future.  But I was a bit more eager.

 

I went to Amazon and there were some nice-looking electric mandolins, buried in the multitudes of piezo-pickup’d acoustics… looking like something in Grandpa’s closet next to the box of Playboys from the Sixties.  Particularly note-worthy was the Eastwood Mandocaster – looking like a little Fender Telecaster.  But I would get all the way through the process of purchasing the darn thing, when I would be alerted that they DON’T SHIP.  Now why in blue blazes does Amazon work with companies that DON’T SHIP.  Is there something that Amazon has forgotten about their original Business Plan?  So may all Eastwood Mandocasters be tossed into the Eternal Flames.  But I had to keep on looking to find something.

 

The apply named Mandolin Store came to my rescue with the Morgan Monroe electric Mandolin, which looks a lot like the Eastwood Mandocaster, though its Sun Burst design seems a bit lighter in color.  It was less than $400 and they, god bless them, would SHIP.  The emails from the Mandolin Store were kind, courteous and thoughtful, and I received the Mandolin in not much more than just a few days – very quickly considering where I am.   And, no, I did not have to clear the Jungle for a Parachute drop.

Yes, there are some quality issues with the Morgan Monroe Electric Coil Pickup Mandolin. 

 

I had ordered extra D’Addario flat wound strings, because, being so used to violin and the steel flats that come with electric violin, that using round wounds would certainly have been extremely uncomfortable.  While changing out the strings, I noticed that the bridge height adjuster for the fattest string had collapsed on one side, but I was able to screw it back up, so I did not think it was much of a problem.   On a subsequent change of strings, going from loop-end strings to ball-end strings, the bridge thing collapsed again.  Hmmm?  Was it vibration unscrewing it slowly or were the threads slipping when the tension was removed?  But, anyway, once under tension, the threads seem to hold.  If the problem creeps back, I might have to use epoxy to hold the screw in place.

 

Remember, this is a very inexpensive entry level electric instrument.  We can’t expect much.  It IS very handsome, though.  It looks great!  It needs to be checked for tune almost between every song, but one figures that out very quickly as since the mandolin is tuned in four pairs, it is obvious when any of the strings begin to walk away from tune with one another – first there will be warbling in the tone and then an OUCH of obvious dischord.  But tuning back with an electric tuner is easy as PI, but remember to be gentle and pick each string of a string pair separately.  It is the final test of the string tune that is easy… each string pair should ring together brilliantly… the slowest warble of phase difference being acceptable, because, well, it is one of those things that make the electric mandolin a real ‘Screamer”. 


EDIT, NOTE ON TUNE STABILITY:  When I went from 'loop' end strings to 'ball' end strings, I remembered to tightend up the tuning mechanism nuts, which were all rather loose.  Anyway, either because of the tightened nuts or the new ball end strings being more stable than loop end strings, the mandolin is far more stable in its tuning now.  I no longe have to worry about falling seriously out of tune during one song, though it may still be good to give a close listen at about every 3 or 4 songs.  
 

Oh, the frets!  The sharp edges of the frets stick out from the side of the neck… a friend of mine yelled “Fish Hooks!” when he felt that.  I don’t know what could be done about that.  Just sanding would take down the wood before working off much of the metal.  I guess one would have to use a jeweler’s file to take down each fret edge separately, and that would be very timely indeed.   My solution is to watch where I slide my thumb and fingers, that is, it is one of those things you can learn to live with.

 

The intonation adjustments worked, and I was able to get the same note from Open down to Double Dot, an octave different of course.   Oh, the fretting does get a bit sharp and flat here and there as the distances between frets probably was not calculated and machined absolutely perfectly… another instance of China still doing its best to get things right, but not quite yet.  But, it is all Close Enough.

 

Oh, the pickups!  If only they had wound the second pickup opposite to the first, then you could select both pickups and put them at equal volume, and the AC Line Hum would have cancelled out in Mirror Image Phase Equality.  But both pickups were wired in the same direction and so there is a good deal of AC Line Hum, more or less depending on how you face or turn away from the fluorescent lights.  And the Pickups have so much microphonics… that is what happens when you simply wind the magnets but don’t seal them up in a thick blob of epoxy or resin… they become like little microphones.  I thought they were piezo pickups at first, the way they would respond from simply knocking on the wood.  A good sealed coil pickup should not “clunk clunk clunk”  from knocking on the body of the instrument.

 

But, all that aside, despite all the little difficulties and criticisms, this thing IS an electric coil mandolin.  Wow!  What rock and roll potential!  The paired strings Whale… of is it spelled Wail, or Wale?  Anyway it is a Whale of a sound for such a small thing.   One would think it a terrible High Registered instrument, but it’s not.  Remember that many lead guitar players do much of their work way down on the neck.  So this is the same territory where the Mandolin earns all of its bread and butter.  Oh, but I did tune my mandolin down a bit.  Mandolins are traditionally tuned to G  D  A  E, just like violins – seven frets between each string, where guitars are tuned to five frets between strings.  And while I was able to get that tuning, it did however feel very tight, and the strings were hard to push down, and I had not the slightest degree of ‘slinkiness’, and so I went from G to F, lowering my tune two frets down across the board.  My Musical Friends say this is one ‘Step’, but I argue with them endlessly.  For instance, why is it one STEP from G to F, when there is a F# in between, accounting for two full FRETS, but it is also one STEP between F and E, but with no sharp or flat in between, there is only just the difference of one FRET.   So One STEP can mean One or Two Frets depending on whether one has a sharp or flat to ignore that comes in between (oh, just to prove I am not entirely ignorant of Musical Theory, there are only two pairs of notes that have no sharp or flat coming betwixt, and they are B and C, and E and F).   Anyway, don’t say STEP.  Say FRET, and then everyone should be able to understand… even those without Degrees.    So, anyway, to make it easier for myself, my mandolin is tuned a bit lower.  If you get a mandolin and think it a bit on the high side, and wonder why I thought it was just fine, well, then, do what I do and tune to F  C  G  D  (Food Can Go Down) instead of the traditional G  D  A  E (God Does Allthings Everywhere).

 

Oh, a friend of mine said you do not need to order special mandolin strings.  Look at a pack of mandolin strings – particularly the string diameter info, and then look at a pack of guitar strings.  Hmmmm.  Some of the strings are very close, no?  This Morgan Monroe mandolin can take loop ends, threading the ‘needle’ through the bridge hole, or you can use ball ends which I think is easier and give a surer tune from the start, as loop ends take a while for the loop to pull all the way up.  If you use guitar strings, as I do, you can use the 10, the 14, and then skip a string, go to the 28 and the 38.  D’Addario is great for strings and you can go over their size and tension charts and come up with almost a perfect string for any application, given a bit of trial and error.

Anyway, for the money I paid, the Morgan Monroe is absolutely amazing.  In just a few weeks, I have put about 50 hours of practice on it, and I have yet to find any limits on its rock and roll voice.   Playing my guitars afterward, well, they sound a bit ‘thin’ by comparison.

 

But, yes, I already have an order in with Almuse, in the U.K., for a custom built mandolin (and a mandola that can tune a string size lower… the same as from violin to viola).  I’ll be getting Humbucker Pickups and quality that promises much better detail all around.  But until it, or they, arrive, you know I am going to be playing the livin-bejezus out of my little Morgan Monroe, and have a great deal of fun doing it!   And thank you to the nice people at the Mandolin Store.

Annie Lennox Christmas Cornucopia, Beyond Great!

This has got to be one of the greatest triumphs ever in Popular Music. Annie Lennox was not just aiming at Christmas Mode Music, no, she was obviously going after ringing up humanity's most sublime feelings and emotions, ranging from pathos through exuberance to rapture and then even transcendent ecstasy. Christmas, in the conception of Annie Lennox's Christmas Cornucopia, is not only not just the big secular holiday it has become for most of us, and it is not even simply a Christian Religious Holiday, but goes on to become a monumental Universal Event and a pivotal and central Experience for All Mankind. It depicts God as Pure Innocence coming into the World through Suffering in order to relieve Suffering and to auger in a New Pure World where everything is right and we all finally agree to make all things Fair. The songs are riddled with these messages, along with Angelic Choirs, and blaring crescendos of Messianic Promise. We have songs about frozen moments of Satori Experience. We have songs of Christmas, the Divine Birth in the Present Tense, Songs of Christmas as prophecy of some fabulous future event. There is not much looking back, as the Christmas Cornucopia is looking more at Christmas as a huge Existential Now. A final song penned by Annie Lennox goes so far as to introduce a New Conception of God and Theology - that God is as much slowed down and encumbered by the Material World as we all are, but with all of our Active Help, with the Wind and Current of God's Purpose at our backs pushing us forward to reach our own highest levels of voluntary Goodness, Divinity in all of its Perfection can finally be made to Shine Through and uplift our World, fulfilling that Ancient Messianic Christmas Promise.

Be careful playing this CD in your car. This is not just foot-tapping music. You may be taken up well beyond the concern for Red and Green lights, and it may be difficult to see the traffic flow through the fog of your tears of wonder.

This CD came out a few years back in 2010, and I had played it last year, for more than a month. This year I was almost afraid to dig it out of the CD pile. What if the Magic I remembered had worn off? But, no. if anything, it was more intense than ever. I knew where all the ecstatic triggers were and was ready to respond.

Oh, you may think I am very suggestible and am simply a sucker for Christmas Music. Well, don't you think I thought the same thing myself ? So I got everybodies' Christmas CDs. Well, most were not bad, well, except for Aimee Mann's "Just Another Drifter in the Snow", so cynical and bitter that one fears that Ms. Mann has come to thoroughly believe all her own Market-niche balderdash - that disgusted, disgruntled, sarcastic and sardonic People would simply love to have their own taste in Christmas Music, making it an odd curio for what must be a new low for our collapsing Civilization. She has obviously given up on any `Rescue'. Oh, don't get me wrong! I love Aimee Mann... or I guess I used to. It is true her other CDs are beginning to pile up dust - since the horrible taste of her Christmas Album hasn't really gotten out of my mouth yet, I really haven't had the hankering to play any of her other `stuff'. Well, enough about Ms. Mann, and on to the better Christmas Records. Well, not even the better Christmas CD's were getting even close to tossing me up into the Sky as Annie Lennox's Christmas Cornucopia had been doing. So, no, it is not just Christmas, it is Annie Lennox's Artistic Vision of Christmas, and her willingness and ability to take on that Mystical and Enraptured Persona that could effectively drive it all Home. Oh, and there is in a number of songs the appearance of the South African Children's Choir, or as many of them as she could fly to London for the recording sessions - wonderfully talented and obviously very well disciplined, as the material given to these kids could not have possibly been wrapped up in one `take' and more and more must have been demanded of them, and they marched on like little troupers and delivered the absolute best.

As far as Annie Lennox goes, after they completed this Project, I simply do not understand how she could possibly NOT have exploded into a Flash of Absolute White Light that would have certainly Illuminated the entire Planet to bring us all to our better senses. But maybe it just needs a bit more time. Anyway it will probably help to buy one for yourself, and then get one for a friend. Perhaps we all have to first Hear the Vision before we can See the Vision.