J. S. Beatles

I tune my guitar down two half-steps, from E to D, A to G, D to C, and B to A.  Recently, I found out this was the tuning McCartney used when writing Yesterday.

And I like the way Lennon started out strumming only three-string chords in the band.  I often like to strum or pluck three note chords, though for different reasons.  I like the minimal effect, a near cello form of only two strings max at a time.  And because I process simultaneous notes not only as harmonic but as progression variations from the previous notes (as I improvise or compose).  Kind of an inverse corollary of what is said of Bach, that he thought of melody as horizontal chords (i.e. arpeggios), which of course he did.

Speaking of Bach and The Beatles, they quoted him, I believe it was, three times on their records.  I don't think Bach ever quoted them, but certainly would have, if time permitted (to use the cliche' in a novel expression).

A number of people are put forth as the fifth Beatle.  I'm adding  J. S. Bach to the list.

There is always more to be working on in music.  This year, it seems, I will be drawn to working more on the piano and guitar.  Which instruments I work most on changes year by year.

On the guitar, I have been working on inner voices, (progressions of not only the top note melody and the bass line but a third counterpoint between the two).  And I have been surprised how nice it it to write and play just at-below the fret and make use of quarter tones in my pieces.

The Right Place at the Right Magical Time

Sometimes I feel that I am in the wrong place, that I must be doing the wrong things, that I am on a road I should have not taken at all.  I want to be elsewhere, where life feels magical, in a place
as beautiful as a Japanese screen.  How about you?

Yet when this happens, sometimes I get nudged that maybe I am where I should be.  Let me explain.  Last month, when I felt this way, I found answers to two specific questions I had been wondering about for 3 decades.

One, on what the green line down the middle of the temple in Jerusalem referred to.  I found clues in an old, illustrated manuscript from the Oxford Bodleian Library.  I just happened to see a notice about the show it was in, at The Jewish Museum, the day before it closed.

The other related to the traditional, non-magical use of angelic names in meditation.  This changed and deepened my understanding of so many things.  (Both answers were so obvious and simple, though it took me 30 years to figure them out.)

And last fall, at a moment when I was feeling out of place and anxious, waiting at a busy intersection at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, a Monarch butterfly came and landed on the the book I had in my hand, as if to tell me that maybe I was where I should be right now.

What I'm trying to convey is that just because you feel things aren't working as they should, doesn't mean they aren't.

When this happens, you just need to hone your personal disciplines and non-judgement.  Then you will draw great things into your life.  A teacher of mine called it "Raising your energy vibration."