Saturday, April 12, 2014

Share This with a Bass Player You Love

Precocious Daughter wants to learn to play guitar.

Because she hasn't yet mastered
all the ways of being a badass.
Of course, in theory I have nothing against this. Guitar rocks (and jazzes, and blueses...). But I just bought her a very expensive clarinet five months ago. And it's not as if I happen to have a left-handed guitar laying around.

Oh, wait. I do.

So I told her to knock herself out, as long as she didn't literally bash herself with the guitar. Because I don't want any harm to come to my precious vintage left-handed Yamaha acoustic.

Or, you know, PDaughter.

But the guitar and I go back much further.


Anyway, she hooked herself up with some online instructional videos, and in pretty short order could actually strum very serviceable G and D chords. Amid many squashed notes and much complaining about sore fingers and how much easier wind instruments are. And then she came up with this gem:

PD: Ugh, I can't get the fifth string to sound right. Can't I just use a four-stringed guitar?

Me: That would be a bass.

PD: A bass only has four strings?

Me: Yep.

PD: And I guess there are no chords.

Me: Nope, it's all fingering, just like a clarinet.

PD: Maybe I should play the bass instead.

Me: Maybe so.

PD: Of course, you'd have to buy me a bass.

Me: OK.

PD: Really?

Me: Sure, why not, if you decide you're serious about it.

PD: On second thought, nah. Nobody cares about the bass player.

So there you have it, on the highest authority: Nobody cares about the bass player.

You have to know your scales.
Get it? Scales? I'm here all week.

Sorry, Geddy, Sting, Krist, Sir Paul, Flea, Jack...the 14-year-old has spoken.

(She's young...she'll learn.)

7 comments:

  1. So - what kind of eggs was your guitar laying around? Around what? Itself? Post pictures of the guitar laying its eggs. I'm interested in guitar reproduction.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ok, now, seriously, I need your help, or rather my old friend "Katy Anders" from Lesbians In My Soup does.

    This is what she has to ask:

    " I don't know whether anyone here pays for their blogger domain name or not. I do, and it appears I'm about to lose it because I can't figure out how to pay. 

    I have been struggling with this for 5 hours now and cannot even find a real email address to send a question to Google.

    It seems that Google will not let me pay for my page via this account - it wants me to sign in through a new account to be set up through Google Administrator, which costs additional money.

    My payment is already overdue, and it is likely I will be losing 3 years worth of blogs very soon if I don't figure this out.

    Help!"

    As far as I recall you pay for your site. Could you tell me or her how to go about it? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had this exact problem! It was so frustrating. The key is to figure out what the actual login is for your friend's Blogger account - which I can almost guarantee is not the same as the login she typically uses. I don't know why that is, but it is. If she has her original welcome email from Google, it probably contains it. If not, she should try her first initial last name at google.com, or at her blog name.com. It will be one of those, even if she swears she's never used that user name. I swore the same thing, and it worked. I wish her much luck!

      Delete
  3. Thanks so much. I passed your reply on to her here.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Bill - I don't know if your friend was able to get in to her billing page, but this should help - have her go to https://www.google.com/a/[domain name].com and try to log in as her magical correct user name. It should take her where she needs to be.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I guess I'm the only person in the world who thinks bass players are really cool, and seriously underappreciated. I mean, come on, rock would be nothing without...um...well...okay, I should be able to think of at least one bass player other than Derek Smalls.

    ReplyDelete
  6. OK, I'm taking up the bass now so this really cracked me up. Also, I'm stealing the fish photo for my blog post about bass playing

    ReplyDelete

You're thinking it, you may as well type it. The only comments you'll regret are the ones you don't leave. Also, replies to threads make puppies grow big and strong.