I didn't get to tell you about Thursday night. Upon my ukulele teacher's request, I took my amp in so that he could check it out. I have a little Orange Crush 20 watt amp. I've had it since I bought my Pono electric ukulele. I never really used it all that much though. I figured I would have to get all kinds of pedals and what nots to get some aggressive sounds out of it. I was wrong. My teacher showed my exactly how to use it, and what did what. We plugged Penelope into it, and he made it come to life. It was able to get a really cool crunchy distortion and loud sound with a few tweaks and a tiny bit of volume on the knob. When I say a tiny bit, I mean a tiny bit. We only had it at 1 on the dial. It goes up to 10. I was impressed.
Now to get any kind of echo effect or anything along those lines, I will need to get pedals, but for the time being, I got exactly what I want. He also started teaching me how to properly bend notes. It seems easy, and it is in theory, but to do it right, there is a definite skill to it. One the I don't have right now, but with practice it will come. I learned quite a lot that night, and I'm putting it to use in my practice sessions now. He gave me a couple of riffs to work on that had those bended notes in them. I'm not there yet, but I'm approaching the area. I'd have to say that I'm in the time zone now. When he showed it to me on Thursday, I was on the entire other side of the world from it. It really is a great feeling to learn something, take what you learned and apply it, and then keep applying it as you get better and better at it. This is exactly why I always say to learn something new every day.
I finally broke down and bought an Echo Dot from Amazon. I'm sure you know what that is, but if not, it's the thing that you say,"Alexa" and then ask it a question. It's kind of like Siri for your house. The Echo Dot is the smaller of the units. The original Echo is about 10 inches tall I believe. where as the Echo Dot is only about an inch and a half. I got it in the mail today, so this evening is my entire play time with it. It works really well. Once it is connected, it has the capability to turn your lights on (provided that you have the right "smart appliances"), it will answer just about any question you have, it can order things for you from Amazon, it will tell you the weather, time, date, sports scores, any number of things. Form reading some of the stuff in the title booklet and in the app (yes, you have to download an app on your phone to connected it to your wifi source) you can even get it to tell you jokes. It plays music for you, if you are a Prime member. It can read audio books from your Audible account, and yes it listened in to whatever you are saying like a good little spy. Although I think there is a way to shut that full time feature off.
I'll keep playing around with it, and let you know how things progress in the next few weeks or so. I've always like Siri on my phone, so I'm sure that I'm going to like Alexa as well.
It's that time again. Favorite Song of the Week. I've been sitting on this one since it came out two weeks ago. I had already committed to finishing the Baby Driver edition of FSOTW, so I had to wait to post this one. This one comes from one of my favorite bands. This artist is one of those ones that I put in the genius category. He created a sound that was strictly his own, and people have tried to copy it since his first album. They have had limited success with doing that, but he has stood the test of time, and I go back and listen to that first album quite frequently. I'm talking about none other than Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. He took the Industrial sound into the stratosphere, Until that time, it had been relegated to dirty clubs and kids wearing a lot of black clothing. I was one of those kids, in those dirty clubs, dancing to that strange techno beat, heavy guitar, darkly emotional songs. I loved it and still do, but Trent Reznor and NIN took it into the light, which is were none of us wanted to go, but we went, and it turns out, the light wasn't all that bad. This is a new song by NIN and it harkens back to that first album. This could easily have played on Pretty Hate Machine and you wouldn't know it was thirty years still in the future. I had no idea that Trent was working on new NIN stuff. He has been doing scores for movies lately, and he's been doing a rather good job at it, winning a couple of Oscars in the process. This was a pleasant surprise when I heard it for the first time on the day of it's release. Her is Nine Inch Nails with "Less Than".
I've been listening to this song just as much as the Baby Driver soundtrack, maybe even more. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I do.
I've narrowed down the next ATS ride to two weekends right now. I haven't chosen the exact date yet, but I do know the location now. This is going to be a good one, and one, like the song above, that will take me back in time. This is the first time I will be going to a place, that I visited as a child, and it's going to be real fun. I'm going to try to get more video at the location as opposed to the ride itself, so that you can see what I see while I'm there. I think you are really going to enjoy this one. Until then, peace in and goodnight.
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