Never the twain shall meet

You don't hear about a lot of guitarists who love spending time in the water. Maybe that's just because guitarists who are famous have no time for swimming or snorkeling, or maybe it's because musicians are lazy bastards who don't like working out. Or maybe it's because time in the water means that your calluses will peel off like mad. I had an extra-long swimming lesson last night (learned the butterfly) and I have no calluses this morning. Good times.

More instruments I can't play

You have to check out this video of a kid playing Pachelbel's canon on two gayageums. A gayageum is a Korean zither or plucked harp of twelve strings. More like a harp in that there's no fretting, as there is with the zither, an instrument in which I have no interest, but like the zither in shape and orientation (rectangle laid flat on table or stand).

The kid is amazing. It starts slowly, but trust me, it gets seriously impressive.

It's also similar to the Japanese koto or Chinese guzheng, but not the same as the taisho-koto I eyed in a Tokyo flea market. That is a pianolin, which hasn't existed in the West since the Renaissance as far as I know (long rectangular box across the lap, press keys that do the fretting for you with the left, pluck with the right, only five strings).

I am pondering a purchase. If I go to Korea next summer, as I am also pondering, I might be able to get one then, though good luck to me getting it back.

A crimp in things

Literally. Namely, that while the circuit-building aspects of pedal making do not daunt me at all, there are two aspects that do. 1) hooking it up to something, and 2) doing all the crap that makes it hook up to something. By the time I got done reading Circuit Building for Dummies' section on how to crimp a cable connection onto the amplifier I would hypothetically build -- which by the way, is housed in a box I've presumably built or bought as well -- with a crimping tool I don't own and have never used, and incidentally I barely even know what kinds of connections and power supplies I'd need, well, I closed the book and pondered deeply while continuing to cycle. (At the gym.)

I don't actually think I'd kill myself or anyone else. I'd probably blow a few fuses (also something I've never had to wire into a circuit, never having used a power supply that could kill something bigger than a spider), but it doesn't look terribly difficult. On the other hand, there's clearly a lot to learn about the outer parts as well as the innards, and many tools to buy. I'm not sure which is a bigger problem at the moment.

Popes in a popemobile

How many rabbits can you fit in a guitar case?

At least one.


The rabbit I'm fostering (named Elenor Rigby, complete with typo, after the Beatles song) had a good time exploring.

Finding the one

Oh, no, THIS will be my first build.

Click and you'll see why.