This about sums it up.

They never tell you the dirty secret of adulthood: You will spend your childhood figuring out who you are and what you want to be, you will spend your adulthood giving that up to be what someone else wants you to be, and you will spend the end of your life regretting it.

The bullshit is deep right now, and I am overwhelmed with my own life. The thought above struck me in a particularly dark moment. I hope I can remember it as I make choices going forward and do my best to spend the rest of my adulthood keeping it from coming true.

Ok. As someone who at least dabbles in music (not that I would ever say I am a ‘musician’), I have an allergic aversion to most top 40 modern pop music. Gaga? No,no. Beiber? Please. Katy Perry? My God, man, NO.

Then the part of me who I keep in the closet – the part that gets cranked on the sound of a real diva, the part whose head starts bobbing and foot start tapping when an amped up bass drum floats out of the speaker at tempo that gets the blood pumping, the part that might be found, arms in the air, jumping under a strobe light in a crowded club with the music going “ump, tsk, ump, tsk” – peaks out every once in a while. I am a closeted house music fan. There I said it. And apparently a closeted Katy Perry fan. That hurts me to say.

Here is how it went down. Yesterday I was enjoying the first relaxing day off I have had in a while (remodels, etc). Les called with an urgent music request: remix the last measure of a song for her Ballet Summer Camp so that it sounded like it was supposed to end where they wanted it to. You hear this kind of recording butchery on commercials all the time – ever wonder how they make your favorite rock song sound like it was written to be 30 seconds long? She and I decided it should end with the woman who sang it saying “Hello!” and no music. I couldn’t easily isolate the vocal so I scoured the interwebs for the acapella version. I found it on a forum site for acapellas, but I had to join and pay a small fee to get to it. I did so and fixed up the song for Les.

After I was done, I poked around and found a ton of great acapellas mostly from common pop stars that are big right now. Maybe I should play around with some beats and redo a song or two, for fun. Hey! Here’s Katy Perry! She sucks – maybe I can fix her.

After about 4 hours of tinkering in logic, I had this. First I bumped the whole thing up to 140 beats per minute from the (death march by comparison) original 120. I ditched all the original music, recasting it as a house music song. I wrote new beats and added in all sorts of effects and synth. Then I threw in some backing vocals from the Empire of the Sun song, Walking on a Dream (a seriously bad-ass duo out of Australia) after moving them to the right key and tempo. “B flat everyone! B flat!”

I like the product, even though it needs some better mixing, and I wouldn’t call polished. The consequences are that now I have Katy Perry in my iPod (albeit with my music), I know most all the words…and worse…I think that chick can really sing! Oh, well… ZEPPELIN RULES!

Lynn and I have been practicing more. Three things are happening which are changing the nature of our practice.

First, we are getting pretty good at our set of tunes we have been playing since the beginning. We kind of just belt them out without much hassle now. And that’s the point of practice, I know…

Second, Lynn is pregnant. Like, REALLY pregnant. She has to hold her guitar off to the side and strum at it. Also, the “we shouldn’t sit and play” thing is a little more lax.

Third, we are picking up one or two new tunes and playing with them each time we practice. Time before last we picked up two songs that are a bit different for us. The first in Niel Young’s The Needle and The Damage Done. The second is Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang.

Yesterday we were playing those tunes and we got a crazy idea. A friend of ours had a pretty unique experience (a scary one) lately. It had to do with drugs (they do not use – it was just a strange set of events around the drug use of others they knew that affected them). Everything turned out alright, but we couldn’t help rewriting the lyrics to Needle as a parody, and recording it, then sending it to them. In order to protect the innocent, I will not be posting that recording here. Suffice to say, it was pretty damn funny. We almost couldn’t get through it.

While we were at it, though, we laid down Bang Bang using GarageBand and her laptop. It was last minute, and I didn’t have all my gear so the quality isn’t what I would like, but it’s still pretty ok. Check it out here.

Lynn literally sang it barefoot and pregnant. Proof!

A while ago, I got myself into a newer Taylor GS8. For the uninitiated, Taylor has been making some REALLY nice acoustic guitars for about 30 years, and I would venture to say they are on par with most Martins (heresy, I know). I had a Taylor 314 that I had been banging on for about 6 years, and loved, but had outgrown. By out grown, I mean, I had played the crap out of it, was tired of the big rectangle dreadnought shape and associated sound, and was just basically ready for something better. I had been eying the GS guitars for a bit and was in love with the deep tone, the crisp sound and the wide bottomed shape. Striking. Les surprised me last June and when I called her to tell her I had found one for about half price (still a chunk of change) at a Guitar Center (= devil, I know) in Berkeley, she said “Go for it!” I traded in my 314 and walked out of the store a VERY happy boy. It had a few nicks, but sounded amazing.

Over the months I have been playing my GS, I have found that it plays way better than my 314. It’s better built, it had better intonation, and the response to my touch was seductive. However, I began to notice that it was work. Fretting barre chords, and even single notes in the middle of the neck, wore me out. Last weekend we had a friend stay with us, as he was doing a few gigs on the west coast. He let me play his old Gibson acoustic, which had been professionally set up and played like silk. The action was super low, and the neck was perfectly set up. It was night and day with my guitar. “This is what my guitar should feel like,” I thought.

So, how do I make that happen? As I noodled on it over the next work week (that’s how I roll, I have a problem and I percolate for days before I decide what to do), it became clear that I had to lower the action, and to do that, I had to make the saddle lower. This is not a trivial thing on an acoustic, like it is on some electrics. Most acoustics have a bone or composite saddle – a single piece that holds all 6 strings, and has no “adjustment” built in. This means making irrevocable changes to your guitar and getting rid of some of the material that the saddle is made from. I decided, that is precisely what I am going to do.

First off, I made a flat sanding surface out of some 220 grit sand paper and a board and gaff tape (it’s nice being married to the theater crowd). I also grabbed a flat file, just in case.

Then, I put my baby on the operating table.

Quick check of the neck. Just the slightest amount of bow. Almost imperceptible. Perfect.

Those strings are just too damn high!

After I loosened all the strings (I didn’t remove them from the tuning pegs because I knew that I would be taking them on and off a few times, and it would be a waste to take them off all the way), I laid them to the side, and pulled the saddle out of the bridge.

Interesting note. See that hole on the right side of the long slit where the saddle was? That is for a pickup that goes under the saddle. You can drill it out and install a piezoelectric pickup there. They sound like crap. Ever wonder why acoustic guitars on recordings or live sound all crunchy and weird? That’s why. My guitar has a real coil pickup in the neck (under the fret board) and two ferro fluid pickups under the sound board (a Taylor invention).

Now is the trickiest part. In order to make the saddle lower, and lower the action on the strings, I have to grind material off of the bottom of the saddle piece. But how much? Well, I contemplated some geometric formulations for minute, thinking that I could do this by measuring the action at the twelfth fret with the bridge as is, then press on the string to measure the action that I wanted. Then using some trigonometry, I could calculate the amount of material that had to come off of the saddle. Triangles, man! But I had already taken the bridge out, and was feeling cocky, so I started with 1mm.

While I was using my ruler to mark 1mm on the saddle, it occurred to me that if I didn’t have the ruler, I would have really over estimated what 1mm was. So I started thinking about what everyday items one could use to measure approximate thicknesses with when doing this kind of repair. Coins. A dime is 1.35mm, a penny is 1.55, a quarter is 1.75, a gold dollar is 2mm, and a half dollar is 2.15mm. Good to know.

Next, I filed…and filed…and filed. After about 10 minutes, I had taken the first 1mm off. I remounted the saddle and resat the strings, and tuned up. Action was still to high for my liking. I began to worry, that I had some weird expectations, so I looked up what recommended action settings were for flat top acoustics. About 2mm on the high E string, and about 3.2mm on the low E string is a good starting point. I estimated that before I started this, I was running about 3 and 5. Ouch, now I was just over 2, and 4. Crap.

Off came the strings, and out came the saddle. More filing. All in all, I think I took about 1.75mm off the bottom of the saddle total. When I was done, I used the sand paper to flatten the bottom of the saddle. You have to make sure it’s flat so it has good contact with the wood in the bridge (it’s all about tone). This means you have to hold it really straight when you sand it.

I resat the saddle, and put the strings back on, then tuned up.

Now the action is at just under 2mm on the high E string, and about 2.75 on the low E string. It could stand to go even lower, but I dare not.

Glorious!! It is SO much easier to play now! It’s not as nice as my friends, but it plays really damn well now. No buzzing thanks to a really well setup neck, and easy, easy fretting. Nice.

Yes… It’s been a while since I did much here. I would apologize, but I am not sure anyone is actually looking at this. Doesn’t matter, really.

My buddy, Lynn, came over today for some guitar fun. We set up an impromptu studio in the living room and recorded some stuff.

Here are the tracks. They aren’t perfect by any means – The Long Way Home, mainly because I am singing on it. Lynn tolerates me.

So here you go. If you are so inclined, enjoy. Otherwise, well…don’t.

“Better Together” by Jack Johnson. This is our version. I am on guitar and bass. Lynn on vocals.

“Sunrise” by Norah Jones. Norah is our go to for great songs. Again, me on guitar and bass, and Lynn on vocals. I am “ooo-ing” a bit. But Lynn is amazing.

“Long Way Home” of Tom Waits fame. I love this tune, and love playing guitar on it. Lynn let me sing it a bit, but she really is the one carrying this tune. We are both on guitar in this one. This one was ALMOST done in one take. Almost.

We have lost track. There have been a few days with nothing happening, but in general things have been moving along. The big news is: THE YARD IS INSTALLED!!! They laid all the sod today, and the sprinkler heads and system went in a few days ago. It looks great! They also planted almost all the flowers today, again…looks great! Mr. Lee said he like the choices we made, and Augusto put them in.

I got into the mix a bit today and installed a wooden gate and fence on the side of the house. Mr. Lee seemed annoyed saying, “You’re too busy to do that! Why would you do it? Why not let me?” I told him that I like doing things like that. He laughed at me. Oh, well.

Christian and Caia came by and Caia alternated between sleeping, eating, pooping, and crying. Christian mainly alternated between eating, and holding Caia.

The porch and side yard step are done. The standoff curb around the edge of the house has been poured as well. I think sprinklers, stump removal and grass are next.

The yard overhaul wears on. I don’t know how those TV shows that knock everything out in a day do it. They must have an army of folks doing stuff.

Day 5 was slow because Mr. Lee had to let the concrete set. Days 6 and 7 have been solely focused on the front porch. However, it does look pretty damned awesome.

Apparently the new home for our front door mat is the side of the driveway.