The Bridge [out of nowhere]

Sorry it’s been so long since I most recently posted here; it’s difficult being in a “life recovery program” and squeezing in all that needs to be done.  When I moved to Nashville from Los Angeles nearly five years ago now, I did so knowing that I was going into uncharted territory for me.  I was diving into an area of “music production” that was unfamiliar to me so far in my life.  It was a challenge for me, from me, to find out if God had fulfilled the meaning of “Music City USA” that had been revealed to me through the years of preparation in California, Colorado, Florida, and other places as well. 

I wasn’t a natural musician; I learned to be as natural as God allowed me.  What I mean by that is that I was never good at memorizing songs or reading music as a child, and my practice time – which existed – was mostly made up of toying around with what different sounds sounded like together.  When I moved to Florida in the mid-1990’s – ostensibly to teach Golf at a Golf School – I started on a new journey.  Music was put center as my communications link with the Creator, and I left Florida, cut out of the Golf business [a month into a “six month trial”], with a search for answers to questions that had been brewing inside me since the early 1980’s when I had started conversing with my musician friends in Los Angeles.  Those friends were introduced to me mainly through the practice of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism in the Soka Gakkai International–USA; I also had a nomadic music curiosity around the then L.A. “pop music” scene.  Then, I was driven into “country music”; by the 1990’s I was entirely country, with passing “pop” awareness.  That centeredness had led me to studying “what is this business”?  I found the road in through computers and the rise of digital equipment.  When I started to link the concepts between personal & network computing and broadcasting & recording, I started to understand a calling.  Part of the lesson I learned in the golf business was that if you really want to TEACH, you need to be able to SHOW.  I went to work, hard, to become a “natural musician”.

I studied as much music theory as I could get my hands upon – in books – and which I could comprehend – in mind.  Music is not a mechanical thing of the mind, it is best as an expression of feeling, but it is a feeling that has rules that allow the freedom of the expression.  It was through the grasping at how we communicate our understanding of God through music and artistic recording and expression that I came to have a mission to understand “where is this business now”?

The “business” side of Los Angeles entertainment is full of all kinds of lessons.  There are really good people, some who are highly competitive and will show you nicely why you aren’t prepared for ‘the business’; and there are egomaniacs and not so good people who just want you out of the way.  Either way, generally, those in the business don’t want new competition.  They go out of their way to “crucify’, in a worldly, fleshly, sense those who would be their next competitor.  In most ways I suppose, this is no different than other competitive businesses where people are competing to feed a family.  The “secrets” of Hollywood are available to be learned, but it is generally a controlled learning process.

Nashville has long been a center of the Christian based publishing industry, but what that industry is has remained somewhat a mystery, just something which occurred and was accepted rather than something that was quantified and qualified.  If “Music City USA” had a difference from Los Angeles in terms of “advantages in the recording industry”, it was that the musicians had a reputation for coming through the publishing arms of the nations Christian thought machines.  If we are a Christian based nation, and art is supposed to represent the leading edges of thought, then it is important to understand the context of Nashville as “Music City USA”, and to incorporate it into the art produced.

While I’ve battled some health issues that slowed me during the past three years, I’ve also been blessed with a learning environment in Nashville.  What I’ve been able to learn is that God is always at work, but that God’s people don’t necessarily understand what God is doing, particularly when it comes to art, communications, and music.  Artistically, we push envelopes and we get into heated areas of debate that expose the size of the egos involved and the desire to be first, to put “me first” “I” first, and the more “Christian” you become by studying, the easier it is to see, as a witness of people who think they are relating to God or being instructed by God.

Over the years, I’ve developed from the perspective that it is best to start from  ideas of “what would you do that is different” ( and/or generally beyond)  what is already being done.  I was fortunate that I learned “tricks” of the golf business which taught me how to listen for God in the simple things that are right before our eyes, the “latent meaning” inside the construction of the art and the science of the task.  When computers and musical arts converged for me, the whole picture production came into view.    It’s simple, and complex. 

The hardest part of trying to “produce” this conceptual framework as a working production model has come from the abundance of people who are certain that they know what they are doing is “it” or that they know what it is that I would do.  I can’t say how many musicians I’ve listened to, some who are considered ‘top line professionals’, who really are not producing music even close to the line of the theory that God had in mind when he showed it to me … .  I’ve heard too many people who plug in their electric instruments without giving a second thought to why you would do that; I’ve heard too many songwriters who know the form of the genre format they want to work, but who are actually displaying that they are lucky not good, because there is no substance to the music they make within the theory that is God’s instruction book for music creation.  Yes, they hit some relevant points, but they fade because they are using a formula which is designed to be expanded as a “startup” point not an endpoint.  Sometimes I wonder if they’re even listening to themselves.  Sometimes, they get the formula right and the music is not bad, but ask where is it going, what’s next, and you’ll get a blank stare.  “That’s all there is”!

I realize that it is best to let those musicians go there own way.  I realize that the way that I’ve learned the approach is not the path that others have used.  Still, I can’t help but wish that somewhere – and soon – I’ll connect with even one other musician who wants to write with a God centered program for production of relevant contemporary and longer lived, at least in aim, music.  How egomaniacal is that?  Well, … .  The discussion is grounded in the reality of many of those temporary hits that aren’t actually as good when they’ve been played a few thousand times or when they are played back from the “new perspective series” in a week, a month, a year, or a decade or two. 

Part of humbly seeking the right dialogue includes letting the people who are sure God isn’t opening a door – here – think about the bridge they are crossing … . 

After all, “… he’s a real nowhere man …”!

What Could Become …

The point of trying to create an Education + Production System is built from a type of practicality from my experience.  I have been studying music for years; studying has included intensive playing as well.  One of the problems I've faced along the way is the "what for" of the music. 

I know that there is the "we enjoy hearing the music".  There was an attraction to the question 'what makes this song pull people into it'?  The music fits a type of construction.  Theory sits inside the foundation of the construction.  When I started to understand the theory, I started to look for why does it matter?  There must be something more, right?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  There have been musicians throughout time that didn't think that their music was something more, in fact some of them went out of the way to deny that there was anything other than a sound, an emotional expression.

I came to music late in life compared to my peers -- I floated around it as a child, not in it, and as a young adult I floated with it, not in it.  It wasn't until I started to realize that studying music was opening up the "story" of the peculiarities of my brain, and my brain issues, that I became devoted to trying to understand.  They say that adult learning is difficult.  They say that we tend to lose our ability to learn new things.  When I was younger, I used to think that that outcome was probably built from desire to learn as much as it was from the ability.  I kept teaching my body how to play an instrument -- guitar -- and yet my mind was nearly constantly challenging me to remember what it was I was learning physically.  

Reading music is not natural for me; in fact it is probably worse than learning a foreign language other than English, which is hardly foreign to the America we know today.  I've approached it as a process.  Know the notes and chords intuitively, and without really thinking about it while you are playing, and reading notes will follow.  This is not exactly the same as the immersion that others use, but it is part of the whole process of learning to get to the point where "music city" as I've envisioned it really is "music city".  What is that?  It is the place where a score sheet is all that is necessary for a "band" to play together the "right way" the first time ....

Music education is not just about reading music, except for some.  The limiters are like the musical artists who say that their songs don't have any other purpose or meaning than to express an emotion.  The music educator who knows how to read music and says that music education is "about music" is either hiding the truth for a reason or is just lazy about education.

Music education is about learning, communication, and knowledge.  The beginning of education comes from understanding how music score sheets, the Grand Staff came about.  It is when we start to open 'music city" from that perspective that the world can begin to change, when we can be empowered by the music, music we create & music we listen to ... .  It is when we open the music this way that we can begin to sense what could become.     

Rebecca Ryan plays keyboards …

One of the things that needs to happen this year for me is that I need to make some music with others.  This is not something that is just a want, it is a need.  There comes a point when the music idea is either a total waste of a life -- when it has overtaken your life for decades -- or it becomes something that represents your abilities, insights, and self.  I started "studying" music in the early 1980's; prior to that, I listened to music more than my peers, but I wouldn't say that I had studied music.  As I was introduced to Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, & it fused with my whole view of faith, I started on a path that came to a split in 1997, when the golf "instructor" employment "fell through".  Golf was not even then really me; my heart was still in the music, and when the golf ended, the music path was natural.  It was not easy.  I had to go from being a fan to being a real musician, and because I had spent all those years preparing, I had a clear idea what that entailed.  One of the best lessons I learned while learning about Golf instruction was that being able to show somebody the physical thing you are talking about becomes important when you are talking about raising the level of performance to that of a professional.  I could do that in golf to a greater or lesser extent because I was naturally gifted from childhood, I just wasn't that great a player because I seemed to move too much in the middle of the swing, something which I later figured out as more a spiritual issue in the viewpoint of the swing than something I could have done anything about.  To make a change in my swing that would have been necessary to be a great player -- a successful tour player -- I would have had to make certain changes in my swing that would have put stress on my back in a way for which I was already compensating.  I simply could not generate more rotation without putting more stress on my body.  Eventually, I learned hoe to control the urge to try to over-rotate, but that was after or near the end of the golf experience.  With music, the key is connection between the brain & the fingers.  By switching to that, I was able to open the field.  I already had developed "the ears", as I had spent much of the 1980's in the music production environment around "friends" from the SGI-USA, and my interest in figuring out if what I was hearing was what they were intending or if it was a "latent add on" never stopped growing.  

There was a feeling that came for me when I heard good music.  When I started to play [for real], I started to look for ways to create the sound that I had heard that created the feeling.  I began to study the ways the sound could be applied as an extension of the notes [frequencies] because the emotions that come with "the sound" often come as a result of the links that grow into the music -- particularly if the connections are latent because of the listener's attachments not because of the musicians' intent and design.  I went through about a ten year period when I tried to play about 4 hours (or more) a day.  I was always looking for -- in my ears -- that place of connection between hearing and playing, an improvisation that was naturally part of the flow of the music.  During that period, I went through peaks and valleys of the four stages of learning -- something learned from the golf ventures : unconsciously incompetent (the sound is not meshing, and you don't know the key progression) >> consciously incompetent (the sound has a millisecond separation that is not fused, & you still don't always know the key center or the mode) >> consciously competent (you might or might not be fusing, but you're close enough to the back-beat structure that you can record and hear what you intended, & you recognize the modes when you are playing, even if you might not remember them after the song is over) >> unconsciously competent (you hit enough to not be worried about embarrassment at an improv session & you know the key centers and can think up mode switches naturally).  The real advancement for me in my playing came when I read specifically about the CAGED system; I had seen the chord structure of the CAGED system, & I had learned the modes off of the chord structures, but how those structures were really connected in mastering the guitar had always been presented out of order in some way.  The presentation of extensions is key to whether the caged system is understood or not.  If you "get" the extensions, everything falls into place easily; if you struggle with the extensions, you need to reground in the caged structure, getting back to the basic root-third-fifth with 6ths and 7ths.  

When you are grounded in playing, the "extension" into "shells" becomes much simpler to move into and through.  The feeling I felt was always tied to that "rolling thunder", even when the thunder is one note or silence.  There is a "visual center" in the produced music.  That visual center comes through the rhythm of the parts or notes working together.    This is what I was trying to get to the point of "showing", because there is a feeling involved when the music can reach the audience by being "seen" as it is "heard", and in this I mean in an entirely audio setting, not in the sense of visual media.  This idea of a visual center inside the music performance became clear to me as I went through the years of listening and watching very good (tight) bands play together.  It later grew into questions about engineering focus and practices that had been part of the original involvement I had with music -- music engineering school in the 1980's, which lasted about two weeks because of the speed they were going (& expecting me to master the information, which I'd never had or seen in high school [at least not that I recall .-(  ]).  I'd had what I thought at the time were some "crazy revelations", ideas that fit with the religious theory & the music theory, but which were definitely not part of the specific requirements of the University track.  I understood, through time, that for some instructors, their belief was that the information was "secondary".  The information was either "latent", in which case the student was better off knowing the grounded level of the application of the latent attachment, or it was just not practical to pursue because of the number of sidebars in the allotted teaching time.  The "thunder" comes from the connection of the timing of the visual center motion and the swings in dimensions beyond the two dimensions of mono-stereo music.  The shells and extensions are ways to create full bodied sounds inside motion without having to go through the whole structure of chord construction and placement (voicing); and those shells are also part of the whole greater construction of music motion in the engineering.

Truthfully, I've not to this day -as I produce this writing- ever heard a discussion with an engineer who would admit to the level of connection that I had grown to experience, and which had been the draw for me back from golf into the music field.  The whole of object oriented engineering is like a process of extension production on the instrumentation.  This is, when you consider it, natural to the way that God designed the structure of the science.  We hear sound in a certain way; that variance in sound is measured in frequency changes and rhythm changes and volume changes.  As we get into the whole picture (whole frame) production, we start to open the way of understanding the nature of the thought of electricity, at least according to the theory.  When we do that, the natural extension should lead us back to a question about Christ, and what exactly did he mean when he said "I go before you to prepare a place" ....  The reason this is important becomes clear as the discussion evolves through the various stages and points of logic, beliefs, and practice -- theoretical proof, documentary proof, & experiential proof.  Perhaps this will be the year ... 

 

{Oh, and in case you missed "the bullet train point" in the title [Rebecca Ryan?]:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trouble_%28band%29

}

This is music city, right?

Each day I get just a little more amazed by the experience here.  This is “music city”, right?  Well, I was confused before I came here, but not in the way that many people are.  I knew the politics of the music industry, and I knew what the potential was for the political crossing between “Church politics” & “industry politics”.  I knew what the upside potential was, what could be if the industry was deserving of the type of money and cash flow that was being attributed to it, but I didn’t know if they were actually doing the things that seemed obvious to me.  I knew that my musical friends in Los Angeles – where I’d been involved enough in the music & religion mix in the 1980’s to understand what I didn’t know – weren’t going to be interested in changing something because it was the right thing to do, the moral thing to do.  I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just real.  The money in the Los Angeles music scene is driven by the money and the money only, and moral attachments are a question that just aren’t linked, unless they are linked [primarily to income stream], but that might be another question, depending upon whether you have a patent or a valid copyright on that process to make money [in which case, we’re all ears .) ].

Music is viewed as a disposable income business by people outside the industry itself.  This is news to those who are making money in the business, but the distance one is from the music business, the more disposable the product is, particularly when it comes to the question of say eating or paying for housing, or music(?).  “Why gosh, I’m broke with no place to live, I think I’ll spend my last $100 on a new Epiphone guitar”.  The question regarding “why is the music industry worthy of any income stream” is a valid question, except for those who sit in the mid-levels of a protected space in the music industry.  In the beginning, music was worth something because it was worth something – even for those to whom it was just a job that fit into their lifestyle when they didn’t know what they were going to do with their life, [and even more so “to honor God”(?)].  Non Christians generally might miss the “in the beginning” part there, but I’m fairly certain those who have at least read the Bible know that “in the beginning” was a major story told twice … .

Really, what is not a disposable income industry in cities?  People get lost to the idea of how hard it is to feed, cloth and house billions of people on Earth year after year ….  So what good is music?  Sure it’s nice entertainment.  Entertainment is not enough.  The entertainment business has to be something more than just keeping eyes glued to the latest marketing gem or the worst rated network talk show in prime time on cable ….  There is a network, and a product, right?  Only we lose sight of that product the deeper we go into the cities, and the bigger the city is, the harder it is to see out into the rest of the world, where there is simply no interest in that product [name whatever product you want].  Music without music education is just more marketing noise; but that’s what is driving “Music City”, no?

What is music?  It seems like a simple or an idiotic question at first, but like I said, I‘ve not been confused by the same things that others have been.  I thought that music to a lawyer for instance was billable hours …, or for a Surgeon Doctor a long but simple surgery ….  Music for a Church Music Director is apparently entirely involved in the Church Choir, unless you happen to choose a “contemporary worship service” where the music could be on your k-fish station [or possibly your k-frog syndicate, unless cancelled by Marrissa Mayer in her attempt to drown Yahoo in so much debt and confusion that nobody can figure out why the Yahoo pages and services aren’t as good as they used to be].  Launchcast, gone because it isn’t turning a profit?   Music is many things, have a baby, send the baby to a swing set a few years later and see if that doesn’t create some music ….  “Swingtown, Wi-eee!!” [I don’t want a divorce, Susan].  Happy or sad music director at the Church?  I moved to Nashville, “Music City USA” because there is only one place in American Music development where the crossroads between God & Music as Industry cross with the outcome being Music no matter what happens.  Music is the noise that makes you happy while you try to swing over the bar on the swing set.

I keep hearing the haunting echoes of the last few weeks of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson – and that would be either the Johnny Carson who worked beside Mr. Ed McMahon, or the son of the father of a child born while John F. Kennedy was President – and I know that something is missing.  I loved the education I received from “Johnny Carson”, all the way down to the night he brought the silver anniversary show to Burbank, and considered announcing his retirement live on the air as a surprise gift for NBC ….  And then there was the chance to do it again, “just for Hollywood”.  I know, I was there, I saw the light.  “Here comes that rainy day”?

So what stopped Johnny Carson from stopping the show right then?  I thought they’d know when we found the Nashville Rescue Mission, but apparently, well, there you go again [local]:

“People Of Earth” … ….

 

 

 

 

 

       

      

   

Thinking Backwards–Music From the passion play [golf ball included]– [does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?]

Since it was announced that President George W. Bush will be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 11/19/[13], I began wondering, as I often do, about the intentionality of “art” and “broadcasting”.  Is former President Bush making a statement, that “there was one 9-11, and it was bad luck”?  Perhaps it’s a coincidence.  Perhaps it is “God”, also a “United Methodist” at work, or at least an artistic social secretary for either the President’s club – “we’ll give you three days warning Mr. Kennedy” – or simply a Tonight Show booker who knows the irony of it all in the aftermath is just too much for some people to understand.  Maybe God makes it all different when he does his annual review?  That is a concept that makes the release of the 2nd volume of the Beatles Live at the BBC – with its “new material” – such a treat to ponder in the music and broadcast business.  How do you get to the English Garden anyway?  Take the Broadcast Syndicate [TBS?]  “People of Earth, NBC has made me so filthy rich that I don’t care if there is another network show that interrupts my life with my wife or not, but I cannot say that Tonight, at least not without consulting with Late Night host Jimmy Fallon ….  Jimmy sent me an email [suspicious domain] that said”:

Sitting in an english garden waiting for the sun.
If the sun don't come, you get a tan
From standing in the english rain.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob.
Expert textpert choking smokers,
Don't you think the joker laughs at you?

And then it all went “Live from …” ?  Music is odd when it comes from the real place, or the studio where Milk & Honey merges with the best dulcimer player we can find on the streets of New York, today, right now, before the sun sets. 

People of Earth, you are current ….

Thus I Heard; Music Linguistics and the Small C catholic church

I’ve been part of the dialogue about music now for well over thirty years – the dialogue on the professional level, the part that includes advanced music theory on “faith” and “belief”.  There is one core element that many musicians seem to find hard to get past initially when they are taking part in the discussion about this specific area of music theory: “God”.  The Buddhism of The Lotus Sutra & the great teacher T’ien-T’ai, and the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin all lead the musician involved with certain specific advanced music theory concepts to the questions, “is there God” & “do Christians recognize the living God” [the transcendental].  The whole discussion will [I hope] be opening up soon, as I am personally in need of a “real job”, or should I make a better cause and say “real employment”[?], but here below is a part of a piece that I hope will be “part of a straw that stirs the drink”:

 

Music Linguist as conduit for Church Participation

The idea of a music linguist is somewhat hidden in latent structure of the foundation of music. The equal temperament “Western tuning” standard is thousands of years old. The base structure of “the Church Modes” is standard across music theory as the core foundation of the dialogue that occurs inside the music vein of living. The “Circle of Fifths & Fourths” is a standard that exists across all forms of music genres that fall within standardized Western music – “Eastern music” generally uses Western forms, but can also add dynamic elements to tuning which complicate the theory [One explanation of "1 cycle [resolution]" tone differences  {Michigan Technical} ] [ Another explanation of tuning {Wiki-pedia} ], but return into “the fold” at certain levels of advanced dialect upon the theory. There are three basic levels of “linguist orientation”:

1. Object oriented whole process – the 1-7 chord function and theory at whole octave state.

2. Note Function process – the theoretical language of the notes of music [in music state].

3. Note object function – the “language” of the notes in their relative object state [music function, language function, relative object function].

These functional design objects are really much simpler than they sound at first. When reaching out to a base audience, and particularly for the purpose of outreach and education, the objects are things like genre, emotional theme, and rhythmic function orientation. While the first and most basic level is “simple”, the complex levels are more deeply involved in the application of advanced music “theory”, recognizing that the motivation for this specific path of education outreach is specifically for the purpose of broadening and deepening active faith based participation in music as a link between [cultural] arts & [cultural] science. If we are not teaching how to “see” the science in the art, we lose some if not all of the relevance of the art. The art itself is an aural communion, part of the science of the teachings of God, who is “heard”.  At least, “thus I heard” ….

‘Tuning Sharp’ Is Like Jamming ‘In Tune’

Perhaps there is a secret; I’ve often wondered why I see other musicians “retuning” their instruments – and here I am talking mainly about guitar – when there was nothing in particular that would have changed the tuning.  I think we sometimes hear the harmonics in motion, but I have no proof of it, although, that is kind of one of the points of ‘sound in motion’ & “controlling it”.  We want to hear so specifically when we are playing the stringed instruments that we start hearing the reverberations more than the whole tones, and our tuning sense starts to grow “sharp”.  The natural tendency when this happens is to tune the instrument “up” a little, like disciplining, like tightening a belt to hold the pants closer to the hip. 

In some senses, there is little importance to “being in tune” with the whole tone frequencies, the pure sound of the Western Scale [equal temperament] that we know and base so much of our music upon.  The guitar is tuned “relatively”; as long as the strings are in the right relationship, the sound can be made decent.  If it is a band, and they tune relative to each other and in the same relationship, there can be an additive element to being “out of tune” together.  Still, there is the natural artist guitarist/musician living within; it is hard to believe that the sound is right when it is not “classically tuned”. 

There was a time in my life when I used to wonder which way the frequencies were going to go; I had to think, if that sound is “below” this sound, I need to tighten/loosen the string to find the right relationship.  I used to be amazed when I was often wrong even though I thought I understood tuning the instrument.  What I found out over time was that my ear developed toward a few cents sharp, and when I was tuning, I often wanted to tune to the next harmonic sharper, even when loosening the grip was really what was needed.

I think tuning sharp is a somewhat natural thing for tightly wound musical artists, but I don’t know for certain because I have had so few opportunities in my long pursuit of professional level music to actually sit and discuss experiences and theory with other players, particularly opportunity where there isn’t a fight going on over what is right or wrong, just a discussion of what “your experience” is.  I’ve heard countless players in my days in Los Angeles, Denver, & Nashville with whom I’d love to talk about their playing, because I think I almost hear something, but I know from hearing them talk, from hearing them present their playing [& writing] that there is a strong likelihood that as soon as we started to talk about my experience questions, the barriers would go up as they try to protect the ways they justify to themselves the ways they have adapted to cover their pursuits as they are, not as they could be in music.  There is a wall, a decision barrier which protects them from having to break down their thinking so that they can open up their feeling and become more conscious of their “sharp” playing.  Tuning sharp is like jamming out in tune.

I began to think about all this pretty seriously this past month [after I was recovering from some surgery, and perhaps a small dose of fever/cold which was influencing my hearing?] when I finally “broke” the neck of a favorite guitar.  I was doing a little cause and effect investigation – I was playing in a different tuning environment than normal [a different room with different acoustic properties] – and I was still using a tuning fork as my guide, but I noticed after the neck broke, first, the guitar, which I had been using for well over a decade, had always been at risk for a neck break because the grain of the wood at the tension point was wrong for high tension tuning; second, I noticed that when I have “a cold/flu season ear”, I tend to ramp up even sharper ….  I know this is something that I’ll have to protect against in the future to diminish tension on instruments [and budget].  I had known from the start that I was stressing the strength construction of this guitar, but it had been years since the wood in the guitar had fought back by saying “I’m not that strong”.  I hadn’t even broken any strings in so long that I couldn’t recall the last time I had done that, although when I first had the instrument, that was an issue as I “wound tight”.  Part of the reason there had been no broken strings was because I’d learned the limits of the instrument and the amount of tension that the instrument could take.  In this case, the strings didn’t break, the grain of the wood gave way and the neck broke at the headstock.  It could be repaired, but there are issues, obviously.

Still, I am left wondering, do the frequencies play with us  -- “the spirit world” – or do we play with them?  It is a wondrous thing tuning sharp …