NMTTM.*

 * Not much time this morning.

It was great to see Peter in the Nui yesterday.

During the chat I started talking, "I'm not rich but..."

Shelley interrupted to say, "But you are Rich!"

This took the wind out of Peter's sails because that is one of his favourite retorts and Shelley beat him to it. You have to be quick with jokes in the Nui. It was a good learning experience for Peter.

It's good to know that he found his parking space at his new apartment.

I'm off to an 'audition' with a folk group this evening. I'm taking my violin because, even though they wanted me to play bass, I don't feel up to lugging a bass up a steep drive at the moment. If I fail the audition, it's really no big deal. The good thing about the possible gig is that it made me really work on listening for chords. Folkies like to use a capo on their guitar. This means that, even though the chord progressions are pretty simple, you never know what key you'll be facing - it could be C or D or F# or Db. This means that you have to be comfortable with hearing their six main chords in all 12 keys. That's good training for the ears. Though, when you're playing a melodic instrument like the violin, there is always harmonic approximation to fall back on. Harmonic approximation, for those who don't know, is where you take the scale from the key (say, in G, you use the G major scale) and you just waffle around.

For those who don't know, the device behind the 
hand that is going across the strings is called a capo. 
It makes the sound of all the guitar strings
higher in pitch. That chord may look like a C
chord, but it's now really something like Eb,
depending on what fret the capo is placed just behind.

Well, there we go, you got a bit of a music lesson today.

Time to get ready for work.

Ciao tutti.