Tiny Flowers

Weed, California, Saturday May 10, 2008: Usually around mid-day, the dogs and I like to take a little walk around the house and the very large vacant lot next door. It's mostly an open field, with some tall and graceful trees at the far end.

If we have walked to the end, and walked around one or more of the trees ... well, we know we've been somewhere.

Today, the air was cool, but the sun was warm on us, and I plodded along after Charlie the dashing young boy, and I was lost in thought, watching my feet, for the now fast-growing grasses can hide gopher holes.

And I saw ...

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I Say it's Spring

Weed, California, May Day, 2008: I find myself waking earlier, for the sun bangs upon the blinds, and the dogs grow restive.

Yawning, I stumble outside, following the dogs. There is white frost on the newly-long grasses, and I blink in the light. The mountain is wreathed in clouds upon its shoulders, but rises above, up into a clear pale blue sky, and bright sunlight startles me in the crisp air.

Dogs dart here and there, in a world of fantastic scents hidden in the chill. As we make our way around the house, the frozen grasses crunch beneath our feet.

Suddenly I'm startled by the little tree near the road. I'd been told it was a cherry tree, but now I know.

Upon its twisted branches, pink cherry blossoms.

Yearning has Faded

San Francisco, Spring 1982: In the house on Tenth Avenue that I shared with Quinlan the photographer, I had a dream one night, that I saw Carolyn my high-school sweetheart. I'd like to say she came to me and that she cared for me, but she just passed nearby with a glance. And I was filled to overflowing with yearning. I awoke, and the dream left me with the yearning, as if it had been yesterday.

Last night, I had another dream ...

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Best Friends

Kanab, Utah, April 22, 2008 -- Adrienne has gone to the dogs, and it's just great for her. Over the last several years, she took on volunteer work. First she found a 'shelter' for dogs which was actually kind of a collector's nightmare, with scores of dogs kept in small pens, all day, every day. There were ups and downs, but in the end the place was shut down and Adrienne placed 96 of the dogs in homes and in other shelters. A better life for all those jailed puppies.

She's been studying the Secret, and she made a vision board. She was living in a little apartment in Mount Shasta, and not really finding work that touched her heart, and then one day she woke up, and she thought ...

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The Amazing Fork Trick

Weed, California, April 14, 2008: This weekend my brother David and his new wife Annie came to visit me. My little brother is now 48 and is working on a larger project in Silicon Valley that involves General Dynamics and the gubbamint. So they kindly drove up to the mountains to say howdy, and I discover that I'm awfully proud of the fine man my brother has become and Annie is just a delightful woman, whose company I enjoyed.

We mostly just talked about happenings in our lives (moves and kinfolks), what we're studying (Tolle, the Secret), and we ate delicious meals and drove around to scenic vistas.

And they showed me the Amazing Fork Trick.

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This Newfangled Daylight-Savings Time

Dallas, Texas, Spring 1966: Living in Dunia Bean's apartment on Gillespie street, I worked at the Cabana Hotel. The Cabana is a clone of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, complete with oversized statues of Venus, David, and the rest of the crew. Inside, a vast two-story lobby with greenish marble floor and a round sunken area with sofas enough for a football team.

Overlooking this magnificance, our front desk where I worked with Dick and Earl, dignified alcoholics. Dick taught me how to get big tips at crowded times, and Earl as a young actor fought swords with Errol Flynn in the movie Captain Blood. That was a while back.

But this was in the spring, and for the first time since the war, Texas was going to have Daylight Savings Time. We were all abuzz.

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The Canyon

Henrietta, Texas, 1952-1957. To the northwest of town, the homes came to a sudden stop, at the Canyon. We boys called it the Canyon, but our town being built on Texas rolling hills, it wasn't exceptionally magnificent. Except to us, of course.

A stream or creek emerged from the rock, and fell twenty feet into a small pool, in which lived a legendary large fish. From the pool, when there was rain, the outbound creek trickled and cut through a wide and expanding sandy basin.

To either side, the long arms of rocky shelf stretched, reaching down to meet the plain, and beyond, a hazard of tumbled woods, open plains, and a great and empty distance.

For us boys, this was Heaven.

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A Cottage in East Grinstead

East Grinstead, Sussex. 1968. When I went to study in England, I wore my warm railroad clothing, because I feared to pack my oily boots inside my suitcase. Lucky, as it turned out, because my suitcase went on a two-week vacation to Madagascar, and England was very cold.

With a roommate I had a front room, looking onto the sleepy village lane. My roommate maintained a running battle with the early birds. In the early morning dark, an invisible milkman left bottles on the step. The quick little birds then swooped down to peck holes in the tin-foil caps, and they siphoned off the cream with their narrow beaks. Each morning, the roommate swore at the holes in the milk caps.

That and the heater.

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New Mobius Megatar Digs in Weed, California

Weed, California, January 27, 2008 -- In November the Bloggard moved into new property in the historic logging town of Weed, California, and we began moving the Mobius Megatar company into the new shop building.

After setting up the spraybooth, we tested and got it working, then got the place painted, and moved the office and essential computers. All OK?

OK.

In December, disassembling the computer-controlled cutting machinery -- 800 pounds! -- this was a good opportunity to upgrade some electronics -- and the two hired guys flaked out on moving day, so Patrick (shop foreman) and Bloggard moved it ... very, very carefully. After reassembly, with the upgraded electronics it runs faster and better. [Make Tim Allen Tool Time ape noises here.]

In January, we hired a truck and two burly fellows, and 'Everything Must Go!' by golly! Everything moved. Now all the essential systems are re-assembled, and Weed, California is the world headquarters for Mobius Megatar.

Whew!
---

Before the move --



After the move --


[Parts Store A]


[The Bloggard makes tuning adjustments]


[Patrick the shop foreman works on a fretboard]


[Computer-controlled cutting machinery carves Megatars from wood]


[New-cut instruments on the right; finished and assembled on the left]


[Shipping station, and two boxed Megatars on the right head for Cleveland and the UK]

If you'd like to see the entire photo essay of the building of the new factory shop, just go to the Mobius Megatar News section and click on "Open the Mobius MegaBlog."

And now, with all the moving done ... we're happy to be here!

A Matter of Credibility

A poor man visited the well-to-do Judge and Mayor of their village, and asked to borrow the Mayor's donkey. The Mayor frowned.

"I'm so sorry," said the Mayor. "I've loaned my donkey to my nephew Thomas."

Just then the donkey, out behind the house, brayed loudly, and the poor man looked up.

"But I hear the donkey outside!" he said.

"Who are you going to believe?" asked the Mayor. "Me, or my donkey?"

Network Answering Service

San Francisco, 1976. But it actually started with Lamont Johnson, a jazz piano-player in Los Angeles, in 1969. At breakfast, he told us roommates his great new plan. We would start an answering service, for musicians!

"A what?" I asked. He explained it. Answering services used switchboards to answer the phone when the musician was out. I knew how to operate a switchboard, because of my hotel jobs. As soon as we had a switchboard and some clients, we could all take turns. He showed us listings in the Los Angeles yellow pages. Not one of these answering services specialized in serving musicians!

It sounded like a swell idea. Quickly we were recruited. Me and another guy were sent to obtain an endorsement from the head of the Los Angeles musician's union. I made up some charts with pictures of statistics going up. We got an appointment.

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The Corduroy Coat

Denton, Texas, 1965: Paul Miner had this camel-colored corduroy sports jacket. It had leather buttons, and leather patches on the elbows. He loaned it to me one day.

On that day, wearing the corduroy coat with my round glasses and unruly hair, being a hippy and all, Patty Cake said, "You look like Bob Dylan."

I said, "Who?"

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The Abandoned Road

Dallas, Texas, 1966. On this particular day, my girlfriend and I decided to take the psilocybin before heading out. Driving the Morgan from Dallas to Shady Shores was an odd adventure. It was about thirty miles, and seemingly many days driving.

I knew of this place from years earlier. College roommates and I had lived nearby, and some scouting trip discovered an abandoned roadway that had once run atop a dam built across Lake Dallas. In a concrete building halfway out, remnants of the dam's machinery remained, huge wheels and vast pipes, going nowhere.

Whoever these mysterious builders were, they were fickle, for after building the dam across the lake, they'd cut a hole through it, so it was no dam any longer. Just a finger of elevated land reaching toward, but not touching, a finger of land from the other side. On the elevated crest, earth and stone and even trees, and the once roadway ran, and stopped at the cut.

Just the spot for our picnic.

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The Return of MegaTapper Newsletter

Mount Shasta, CA, September 25, 2007: In years past, Mobius Megatar published the **MegaTapper News** over several years, and it was very popular, containing articles, lessons, interviews, and news bits of interest to two-handed tappers around the world.

But in the press of moving to the mountains, setting up the shop all over again, installing and programming our new CNC machinery, and getting back into making touch-style basses, the newsletter fell to the wayside.

Well ....

It's baack!

And better than ever. Delivered by email, in an easy to read format, the first issue of the MegaTapper News carries --

** An article on 'motors,' which are simple, repeating left-hand patterns so you can chug along while playing melody or improvising with the right hand.

I remember talking with Frank Jolliffe years ago -- he was once well-known in the two-handed touch-style field, and he's a great improviser -- and he told me that, although it appeared that he was improvising with both hands, in actual fact he was switching his attention quickly back and forth, and he had a lot of left hand 'motors' to keep going while his right hand improvised.

So I made a study of 'motors' and discovered seven different kinds of motors, and breaking it down simply like this, it made it easier to learn one at a time.

I've actually written lessons about these motors, and it just so happens that the first one is being published in the new Mobius Megatar newsletter, first issue going out this week.

** Plus you'll discover an intriguing series called (Easy Touch-Style) 'Chordology', which will make chords, and chord substitution and re-harmonization clear and easy, using a simple and new way of looking at chords and harmony.

** Plus ... Tappy Tips ... and more!

So if you haven't already done so, I invite you to sign up for the free MegaTapper News here!

Here's to speedy learning, music, and fun. It makes life more enjoyable.

He's baack ... on YouTube!

YouTube, September 19, 2007: Over the last two weeks, in my spare moments (hah!) I recorded our 'TrueTapper Eclipse' instrument. This is our most basic instrument, and while it is perfectly suitable for a professional musician to do studio recording, any student with a summer job can afford this instrument.

The video is a demonstration of the features of the Eclipse, and the Bloggard in his guise of Traktor Topaz, strange musician from another planet, plays a couple of songs and explains how the instrument is constructed to make learning fast, and playing easy.

The video is a companion to the previous video which explains the Easy Touch-Style Method of learning to play music using the two-handed tapping technique. The Easy Touch-Style video is the first of several, and in one of the online forums, my very good friend Greg Howard suggested that I make a video playing some music.

So I thought -- Why not?

So, assuming that YouTube is online and streaming just now, the Bloggard presents:



Now, at last, the neighbors can know the source of those strange flickering lights ... late at night ... and the ... peculiar ... sounds. Oh, yes. Yes, now they'll know.