Tip

Many guitar players already know this, but if you are a new guitar owner you may not be aware that it is very important to provide a good environment for your guitar. This is especially true if you have a quality guitar that would be costly to replace.

You should keep your guitar in an environment that is not too hot or too cold, and not too dry or too damp.

If you keep your guitar in your home, you probably don't have to worry much about temperature extremes. However, you do have to be concerned about humidity levels. Winter tends to greatly reduce indoor humidity, and low humidity can cause cracks to develop in the thin wood that is used in the body of quality guitars. Once a crack develops your guitar will not only lose a great deal of its value, but you will be lucky if it doesn't affect the quality of the sound from your guitar. The good news is that humidifiers for guitars are pretty cheap and readily available in guitar shops and from online music stores. I like to use the humidifiers from December through March in Minnesota. That is when the extremely cold and dry winter air presents the biggest challenge to indoor humidity levels.

Carrying your guitar in your vehicle may also require some precautions to avoid exposing it to temperature extremes. Before you put your guitar in your vehicle it is a good idea to let your vehicle warm up in the winter and cool down in the summer. That way you won't risk causing structural problems due to rapid expansion or contraction of the guitar's fragile components.

Guitar Player's Friend

It has been more than a month since I was last inclined to put anything in this blog. I can't say I haven't had the time since it is still winter in Minnesota and I'm not inclined to spend much time outside enjoying the weather this time of year. I'm still having fun with jam sessions and memorizing new songs to play and sing. I have about 2 dozen now that I am comfortable with performing from memory now. I'd like to double that number this year.

I'm still having some success selling my "Guitar Player's Friend" transposition tool on eBay, but it is not very profitable by the time I pay all of eBay's fees and PayPal's fee. I would like to try getting a web site set up to allow people to buy direct from me to see if I that would provide a little better profit margin. I have sold 140 so far since I started in mid 2005. I think that's enough to show that there is a market for this handy little device, but I need to figure out a relatively inexpensive way to get exposure to a larger audience of guitar players.

I'd like to hear from anyone who stumbles across this blog if you have any ideas for subject matter or thoughts about my ramblings.

Back to Minnesota

It has been a while since I was last motivated to add to this blog. In the meantime I drove to South Carolina and spent about 3 weeks with my youngest son, Richard, and his wife Amber at their home in Irmo, SC. It was nice to get out of Minnesota while winter was taking over the northland. The weather in SC was more like spring than winter. There were only a few days the temperature stayed below 50 degrees and there were a lot of days in the 60 and 70 degree range. We decided that it wouldn't be a bad place to live during the winter months.

We also visited Marlene's brother and his wife in North Carolina for a couple of days. They live about 3 or 4 hours away from Rich's place. We both enjoyed our visit and all the good food they provided while there. I also enjoyed playing my guitar and singing for them for a couple of hours.

Now we're back in Minnesota enduring seemingly endless subzero temps and more snow than we've had for a few years. Thankfully we are healthy enought to deal with all the little inconveniences that come with living in this rather extreme winter weather.

I'm looking forward to another jam session at the senior center next Tuesday, and I signed up to participate in another new jam session for electric guitars and equipment on the 29th. That one should be interesting because the focus will not be country music or bluegrass, but geared more toward rock and pop music. It has be a while since I did much of that, but I thought it would be fun to see how it goes at least once. If it's a good fit for me I will add it to my schedule and make it the 5th monthly scheduled jam session.

There doesn't appear to be much interest in this blog yet, so I guess I'm going to have to find something more appealing to the masses who might like articles about guitar music and related issues.

Goodbye "Guitar Zone"

I got some kinda sad news this week. The guitar store called Guitar Zone where I bought my Taylor guitar is going out of business. There are several things I liked about this particular store that I'm really going to miss. First, it is the closest guitar store from my home. Second, I got to know the owner and most of the guys who worked there pretty well. Third, they sold more than a dozen of my Guitar Player's Friend books on consignment. It is also disconcerting that this is the 3rd guitar store in the north suburbs to go out of business in the past year or so. The closest one left on this end of town is in Andover which is less than 5 miles away, but they are relatively new and pretty small. They also don't carry any major guitar brands like Gibson, Martin, Fender, or Taylor. I wonder if they will still be around by this time next year. I think there are a couple of major developments that have become a major problem for the smaller independent guitar stores. The internet has made it very easy to buy accessories and sheet music online cheaper than they can be found in the guitar stores. The other thing is that the competition from the Guitar Center chain, and now Best Buy stores, makes it difficult to compete on price and availability of the major brands. Both Gibson and Martin have priced the cost of distributorships so high that a small shop cannot afford to carry their current product lines. It is sad that these guitar manufacturers can't make accomodation for the smaller guitar stores. And it is hard to believe that it would hurt them to have their products displayed in the small stores without charging nearly $100K per year for the privilege.

November - 3rdTuesday Jam Session

Yesterday was the 3rd Tuesday, afternoon jam session at the Ham Lake Senior Center. (Not the 3rd jam session on Tuesday, but the jam session held on the 3rd Tuesday of the month). It was a little strange because two of the long-time regulars weren't there. The wife of one of those two is the one who normally supplies a treat for the mid-session break so there were no cookies or bars or anything for the break. On top of that the lady that usually makes the coffee for the mid-session break was about an hour late so we didn't even have coffee. This was a typical Tuesday session turnout with a total of 9 players. There were 6 guitars, 1 amplified dobro, 1 electronic keyboard, and 1 accordian. The dobro was a good addition to the group. I'm not that fond of accordians or electronic keyboards in an acoustic guitar jam session, but I can live with it.
Since a couple of the players passed on their turns to lead, I was able to do 6 of my songs. Unfortunately one of the songs I did made a lady cry because she lost her husband early this year and the song brought back memories that made her sad. The same lady gave me a Merle Haggard songbook that I know I will enjoy using. Some of the people at the jam sessions call me Merle because I do 6 or 7 of his songs that everyone seems to like.

If anyone out there in blogland has any stories about jam sessions, guitars, wildlife, or any NEW jokes, I'd love to hear them.

Mundane Monday

Not much to write about today, but I don't want to get out of the habit so I'll write about my mundane Monday. Started the day with 2 cups of coffee like I have done every day for many, many, many years. The highlight of my day was lunch with an old friend I hadn't seen for about 15 years. It was great to see him and get caught up with all the things that have happened in his life since I last saw him. When we parted we both agreed to get together again soon, but we didn't make any definite plans. After lunch it was time to get into my normal Monday routine again. Since I retired I have been washing and drying the laundry every Monday, and my wife, Marlene, folds the clean laundry and puts it in a basket for me to carry upstairs to our bedroom. Monday is also the day I have to collect all the trash from the wastebaskets and then take the big trash container down to the end of the driveway for the pickup on Tuesday morning. Neither of these weekly chores take much time so I still have plenty of time to do whatever else I want to do on Mondays. I did practice my guitar and singing this evening so I will be ready for the jam session tomorrow afternoon. The afternoon jam sessions usually have less than 10 participants so we usually get a chance to do at least 5 songs each. I have about 2 dozen songs I can do from memory, so I like to have the chance to to more than 2 or 3 per jam session. A few of the participants don't do any from memory, and nobody makes a big deal about it.

Deer and woodpeckers

Today I decided that this blog might be a good place to keep track of some things that I really enjoy about living where I do. Yesterday afternoon we watched a small whitetail doe browsing in our back yard, and she was soon joined by a much larger 8 point buck. The buck had apparently been wounded at some time because he had a very noticible limp in his left front leg. It looked like the buck may have been attracted to the doe, but he never got closer than 20 or 30 feet away from her. We watched them both for about a half hour, and then they slowly wandered into the tall grass and disappeared into the swamp behind our lot. This morning as I came downstairs I caught a glimps of something through the sidelight on the front door. When I stopped and looked out through the sidelight window I saw that it was a pileated woodpecker that had landed on an oak tree in my front yard about 10 yards from the front door. We have always had pileated woodpeckers living in the area, but they are wary birds so we don't see them all that often. They do have a distinctive loud call that we often hear even if we don't see them.