meghan9436

I've probably mentioned it several times on this blog by now, but life just keeps flying by faster than I can write it down. There is so much to talk about!

I feel more inspired than ever to channel my inner Harriet the Spy, and take everything down in the environment around me. In the digital age where virtually everyone has a camera in their pocket, this seems simultaneously unnecessary and a lost art. You can buy go-pro cameras that you can strap to your chest or your hat. Or you can get one of those fancy 360° cameras that literally records every angle. There's just something so weird and futuristic about finding a 360° video on YouTube, and you will always find something you haven't seen before in that video. On the other hand, it seems excessive, and an information overload. I hope that between managing this blog, and my YouTube channel that I will find a balance between the best of both worlds.

Sunday is well under way, and the weekend is almost over as I write this. Last week as I was preparing Happy Birthday and Last Christmas, Music Travel Love and Dave Moffatt dropped two new Christmas videos: It's Christmas Time (Music Travel Love original ft. Francis Greg, Dave Moffatt, & Anthony Uy) and Last Christmas (Dave Moffatt cover). I mentioned it in the comments already, but the timing was super weird when these dropped. I think I will write a separate post dedicated to talking about these videos specifically, in the interest of keeping this entry on topic.

So I had spent the week around my work schedules to rehearse Happy Birthday and Last Christmas, as I mentioned. In years past I used to groan at Christmas music because of all the years that I spent working in retail. The Christmas music comes on on November 1, as soon as Halloween is over. Years ago, James Rolfe did a rant about Christmas creep (NSFW language), which I think is still relevant today. I recall even seeing some Christmas decorations out before Halloween, but I didn't document the specifics at the time.

But, when I started getting my head around how to play Last Christmas, there was something in my brain that clicked. There was something about playing that song relatively competently that sparked so much joy in my heart. And this experience gave me a new appreciation for Taylor Swift. *Gasp!* I was never a Swiftie. I actually used to get really irritated by her music during her 2008 debut because it was so overplayed in retail!

Realistically, I was unable to learn the full version of Taylor Swift's Last Christmas, but I did learn enough to do a TV size version of just the chorus. Particularly for ESL kids who are learning this song for the first time, I think it worked out anyway. I also didn't have enough time to learn We Wish You a Merry Christmas, but I am confident that I will have enough time to master these in time for all the upcoming Christmas lessons and parties.

During yesterday's demo lesson, I managed to mess up Happy Birthday quite spectacularly, but it was forgiven. I'm not sure how I managed that! I can play If Life is so Short by the Moffatts pretty competently by now, probably after playing it several hundred times over the course of this year. Aha.. ^^;

What the experience of playing Happy Birthday and Last Christmas has taught me was an important reminder about going back to the basics. Music theory is objectively boring, and I will have to start practising scales, triads, and whatnot. But the basics of of music theory are adjacent to colour theory. When I brought this up with a friend the other night, I was immediately asked what they had to do with each other. So, hear me out.

( The parallels of colour theory & music theory and how they go together )

Beyond that, what I took away from yesterday's demo lesson is that I want to get competent enough at music that I can play anything when asked. I think it would be amazing to have a child make a song request, and just be able to play it on the fly with no questions asked or preparation needed. In order to do that, I will have to study a lot of different styles of music, even genres of music or bands that I don't particularly like.

It is after 2:00 am as I write this. I'm exhausted and I should have been in bed hours ago. But I wanted to get these ideas down while they were still fresh in my mind. I still have more to say, and I will update this entry when I'm feeling fresh. In the meantime, I have posted this YouTube short of some pretty sweet Nagoya limited guitar gear.

Update:
It seems that usually no matter how late I go to bed, I still wake up bright and early because of my work schedule.
My body: Doesn't matter if you haven't had enough sleep. You're waking up now!

Anyway, during the week I had my head in the clouds again ruminating about the past again in one of my Discord chats. There was some discussion about new policy to allow refunds for video games that have been opened. Honestly, this should have been implemented decades ago so that if you buy an objectively bad video game that you can return it. In my post chat commentary here, I think that it wasn't needed in the 90s because most people in my social circles rented video games, so it wasn't a problem. If the game was that bad, we just didn't rent it again. However, video rental stores have gone away in the west, and I think video game rentals have always been prohibited in Japan.

( Recollection: Lord of the Rings in theatres (December 2001) & Unlocked memory: customer service experience in wireless sales (2008) )

To flash forward to the present, DreamWidth temporarily went offline when I was updating this. I initially saved my progress
and I continued this train of thought in a TextEdit file, which by the way, feels like such an old school way of keeping records! But I was surprised how quickly they were able to get the site back up and running, and it does serve as a reminder about how it is good practise to keep backups of everything.

Yesterday went relatively smoothly, all things considered. I managed to catch a wrong train, and I ended up having to take a taxi to the demo lesson. Everything else went okay as I mentioned earlier. When I was finished at the school, I spent some time collecting the stamps for the Higashiyama Line/Sakura-Dori Line Group for the Nagoya Subway stamp rally. I took the time to film some of these adventures, so that will be coming up in a future video.

Selfie in front of the gold clock at Nagoya Station.


I got a quick bite to eat and I managed to snag curry and rice for under 600 yen at Yoshi Nova.

I have now had my acoustic guitar for a year, and following that demo lesson I finally decided to get the strings changed. Seasoned guitarists will probably be shaking their heads. You haven't changed your strings in a year?

Yeaaah. I confirmed later when I returned last night that strings are supposed to be changed every 1000 ish hours or every three months, whichever comes first. I also learned that older strings can also leave marks on your fret board. Yikes. Cue to the excuses. I've never changed the strings on my guitar before, and I honestly didn't trust myself to do it without messing it up. At the moment I currently don't have anyone physically with me here to lean, practise, and jam with. It makes it hard.

Because of this, I decided to just suck it up and I went to my local music store to have someone do the maintenance for me. Yeah, I know. The seasoned guitarists are cringing as they read this. I know. I saw YouTube and on r/guitar that you can put electric strings on an acoustic guitar as a way of making it easier on your fingers and extending the practise time. But the staff at the store told me, absolutely not. I think this was a liability issue more than anything else, so I still agreed to their recommended service.

While I was out and about, I browsed an American vintage store on the floor immediately below. There, I found a Canadian patch that I couldn't pass up because Canadian made items or Canadian market items are so hard to come by around here.

( Another memory elicited from what's in front of me in the present day )

After that, I drooled over some vintage jackets from Canada, particularly the ones with a purple and teal combination. They were spendy, and I'm pretty confident that I can find something similar for a lot less at Book-Off. I returned upstairs and paid for the guitar service, and I scrolled through Reddit while I was waiting in the lobby. I'm not sure how long I was waiting, but the turnaround time seemed very quick.

Before I left, I had a good look around the store again. You might have seen from the YouTube Short video that I posted earlier that there was a pop up event called GUITAR LOVERS SHOW 2023. They had some Nagoya limited pedals and accessories decorated with the iconic golden dolphin that this city is known for. It led to a pleasant conversation with one of the staff members. I mentioned that it would be so cool to have those when I eventually return to Canada.

( Reassessing my dream electric guitar and future guitar purchases )

The day's pickups. I got a business card and a free pick from the pop up event.
Next to it is the British Columbia patch that I found in the wild.

I learned a lot from that interaction! I quickly learned that pedal boards are quite a rabbit hole that runs deep. They look like they're a lot of fun. At least for now, I'll want to focus on learning the guitar fundamentals before I spend any money on these toys. But they are definitely something I can keep researching periodically along the way.

Just to express my final thoughts before I close out here is that I am experiencing some buyer's remorse from the new guitar strings. The old ones were cakey and gross. My guitar was also falling out of tune ridiculously quickly. They needed to be replaced. But I absolutely should not have cheaped out on these new strings. I noticed the difference immediately with these strings because they squeak so much, and I can hear every chord change. But it is a lesson learned that you get what you pay for in the guitar world.

This should bring us up to date to the present. I still need to update my blog about my experiences in Mishima and Tokyo, and those will be coming soon. I need a break from writing now as I feel like I did back in my uni days after writing an essay for class.

Notes to self:
* Update the tags on this entry.
* Make a list of recent song recommendations so that I can have them all in one place.