The Crestwood in Aspen, CO…ASSHOLES. Made reservations for a package hotel room/Wilco concert deal a month ago. They just called me and said “we made a mistake and can’t get the tickets, they’re sold out. Would you like us to refund your money?”

Don’t support this business www.thecrestwood.com

Spring is here, so I am excited about bikes…which made me check out the Surly Blog, which is where I found this graphic, which made me laugh, which enticed me to re-post, which marked the 100th post on this blog.

I am not sure exactly where my neighborhood sits, but it’s quite possible we’re one of those red dots in Colorado.  I know for a fact that we only have one grocery store – I also know of a fact that there are 5 bars I can think of, although some of them serve food too – not sure how that effects the graphic.

This might be the funniest HTML joke I?ve ever seen. Of course you know the i tag has been deprecated in XHTML.

repost from http://joeschmitt.tumblr.com/post/391725635/via-blueyesbrunet-this-might-be-the-funniest

Slash evidently has a new album coming out on April 6th called Slash and Friends.  I first heard about this on the Music for Relief site when the initial news about Haiti was trickling in.  Several artists were asked to donate a pre-recorded, but yet to be released song to be included on an album – the proceeds of which went to Haiti relief efforts.  Slash contributed the song Mother Maria - which was recorded during the Slash and Friends sessions but will not make it to the album.  This is an amazing song.

It is true friends, I am running for Board of Trustees in here in Erie, Colorado.  It won’t be long before you’ll see my signs around town etc.  I feel I can do a good job for Erie and its citizens.  Please check out my campaign site. Hank Pantier for Erie Board of Trustees to learn more about this aspect of my life and how I intend to serve Erie.

I had lunch with a friend today and we started talking about mix tapes.  Think back to high school, and tapes – pre-CD, pre-iPod…yeah those ones.  He told me about this site where a fella makes virtual mix tapes to share with his friends.  The we started talking about categories of mix tapes – “Alphabet Blues” (one blues song that starts with each letter of the alphabet, for a 26 track mix tape, etc.  I got inspired so I present you with 8 Colors.  Obviously I did not perform these songs, all I did was mix them…

brown eyed blues: ben harper
red wine success: cold war kids
burnt orange peel: beck
yellowle dbetter: pearl jam
another kind of green: john mayer trio
when the stars go blue: ryan adams
purple haze: jimi hendrix
black: pete yorn
*bonus

apparently it’s now time to get rhythmic in my musical journey – 12 Bar blues is one of the most popular “formulas” for chord progression in modern music.  At its most basic it is simply the I, IV and V chords in a key (1, 4, 5).  For example, in the key of G we have the following notes.

So to play 12 Bar Blues in G, we’ll play G, C, D. The basic pattern would be

Or in our case of playing in the key of G, the notes would be.

I am a computer geek by trade, so I like patterns – they make my brain happy so here’s something else that’s nice about 12 Bar Blues on the guitar.  If you play it in basic barre chords the example above would look like this (in it’s most basic, stripped down format).

|-----------|
|-----------|
|-----------|
|-----------|
|--5-5-5-5--|
|--3-3-3-3--|

|-----------|
|-----------|
|-----------|
|--5-5------|
|--3-3-5-5--|
|------3-3--|

|-----------|
|-----------|
|--7-----7--|
|--5-5---5--|
|----3-5----|
|------3----|

Why is that cool?  Because it’s a movable format.  Find any note on the low E string (nice diagram here) and you can use that as your starting note in the key or your I note.  Keep your finger position the same but move the root note down a string to the A string for the IV note.  Then move your hand position up 2 frets and you’ll find your V note.  Pretty cool, very simple.

I recently rented and watched the documentary video It Might Get Loud featuring The Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White – I don’t have words to convey how amazing I felt the experience was.  If you like the guitar or even just like music – this is an inspiring 90 minutes – do yourself a favor and check it out.

This is less of a lesson – more of a stream of consicousness – it took me a while to wrap my head around this lesson – so you, the reader are made to suffer too… sorry about that.

The basis of most western music is the C major scale (also called the Ionian scale)

C D E F G A B C
1  2  3  4  5 6  7 8

Major scales follow the pattern of
Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step | Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step

Chord formula for Major Chords 1, 3, 5 – so if we take the C scale above and extract the 1, 3 and 5 notes we end up with C E G – the notes that make up a standard C Major chord

A major 7 adds in the 7th note – so for the above example the B is also added bringing the chord to C E G B