Detracting From the Narrative

My personal feeling is that citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course in intellectual self-defence to protect themselves from manipulation and control. — Noam Chomsky

As I grow older, it’s curious how some of the catchphrases bequeathed by my parents, and no doubt handed down by their parents, take on a halo of wisdom.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right”: that was my noisy mother shouting at three boys bent on poking and prodding each other, who would each then complain and give the excuse that the other guy started it. I’m convinced now that on the rock of that simple statement an entire ethical edifice could be constructed, for individuals, communities and nations.

“Don’t believe what you read in the newspapers”: both my father and mother this time, when as lads we might describe some political or unusual event reported fervently in the newspapers or other media.

Subversive knowledge

This subversive statement could only be a bequest from earlier generations of working class, farming and business people in both family lines. They are all unknown to me, those ancestors, although I recall a book of old photos of extremely plain and homely women in Victorian finery on my mother’s side, unknown even to her. Yet there seemed to be a strain of undisciplined, critical intelligence, usually unfocussed on the trappings of success, that descended to us, the unruly lads of my parents.

I’m struck by the mock-academic tone of some current affairs commentators — say on CNN — when they talk about the construction of narratives by politicians and their cronies, although it does encapsulate an interesting way of looking at competing factions and viewpoints. It’s all about who gets to tell the story, and who is convinced of it. It’s about manipulation of information to move people politically and ideologically, or medically.

Pandemic?

I’m thinking of the H1N1 “pandemic.” I think the World Health Organization has shot themselves in the foot this time. They’ve cried wolf about a disease that on balance is roughly comparable, or less, to the flu we all deal with every year. The northern hemisphere even had the benefit of observing the less than fearsome aspect of the “second-wave” in Australia and other southern jurisdictions.

In Canada, at least, though, we heard panicky statements about the second wave, the need for millions of doses, the spending of billions of dollars, and the lack of need for thorough testing for a “completely safe” substance (although so-called unadjuvanted vaccines would be provided for pregnant woman — to me this is strong medical doubt about the safety of the adjuvanted variety).

The newspapers and other media were full of trumpeted calls to get vaccinated right now… no time to lose, or the sky would fall.

Of course, there wasn’t enough vaccine for everybody who should have it right away. And the demand created by the media resulted in long line-ups at clinics and increasing restrictions to select groups (except for some teams of hockey players who jumped the queue — the fans might catch it from them, you know…).

Now health officials are complaining that people are starting to lose interest in getting vaccinated as the “crisis” winds down. As of today, 250 people have died of swine flu in Canada. During regular flu season, as many as 4,000 will die. Permit me to add the voice of a health official, the former chief medical officer of the province of Ontario, critical of the entire vaccine situation as it was perpetrated by the authorities and mainstream media:

“I’m not letting the media off the hook totally, but I think the real villains of the piece here have been those public health officials who have consistently overplayed and overstated the importance of what is happening.”

So the near hysteria has begun to dissipate as the fearmongering largely came to nought. This will require a new object of fearmongering.

The power of the media

This is a lovely case study of a social narrative manipulating people, and the power of the media.

I become more and more skeptical of the mass purveyors of the news — they are primarily, it seems to me, agents of social manipulation. Oh there is news, when it can be distinguished from entertainment, and occasionally useful information is brought forward, but that does not seem to be the primary purpose. I think of sportscasts on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio twice as long as the short news blurbs given without context or critical thought. I think of CNN’s relentless focus on the death of Michael Jackson for what seemed weeks. Surely there is a wide world out there, with significant events that need informed attention. No?

Recently on CBC TV I saw the host of a news show seriously question the necessity for the usual overheated rhetoric of a reporter who provided a typically fearful segment on the swine flu. This reporter readily and even pridefully gloried in the power of her report to rouse people to action and anxiety. She seemed indifferent to whether or not it might be totally accurate. It was a telling moment for me.

By the way, there’s an intriguing article by J.M. Balkin on how the media simulate political transparency — the nature of the mass media such as TV is to subvert the information they may attempt to impart. And for a more readable take on the media and propaganda check out Methods of Media Manipulation by Michael Parenti.

The struggle for the narrative

We see this struggle for the control of the mass “narrative” on every hand. Take global warming, for instance, which is considered of real concern by just about every scientific body on the planet. Yet, the real problems that are in progress right now are obfuscated by undeclared lobby groups with ostensibly respectable names and professionals specializing in denial funded by big power. The tobacco industry went through the same process when the link to cancer became obvious, but apparently the money behind the current crop of global warming skeptics is even more stupendous.

Sometimes there’s not even a struggle: the “narrative” is taken as given and it becomes a subtext of the culture at large… I think of the constant and subtle glorifications of war that go on continuously in the media and in our hearts.

When I was a kid, living in a log cabin lined with books in the wilds of British Columbia, my mother at some point ordered for us the logic game Wff ‘N’ Proof. She aspired for us more than we were capable of or interested in: I don’t think my brothers and I ever seriously played it, preferring the excitement of Risk and Pit to the arid climes of logic.

Lorne Greene

But as part of that same game package, there was The Propaganda Game, co-written by Lorne Greene, of Bonanza fame and old-time CBC radio announcer. (Interestingly, he acted in the HBO mockumentary The Canadian Conspiracy, about the supposed subversion of the United States by Canadian-born media personalities.)

I remember in the game documents that he expressed concern about the need for independent thinking from the citizenry, and this was his way of contributing.   I spent some time with The Propaganda Game, although again my younger brothers weren’t very keen on playing. They always claim I cheat…

In the game, players learn to identify prejudice, causal oversimplification, faulty analogy, tabloid and wishful thinking, hasty generalization, attacking a straw man, appeals to ignorance, emotion, flattery, pity, prestige, etc. (For a short course on the mechanisms of propaganda covered in the game see these excerpts…. )

The “Expert Game”

In the “expert game,” one seeks examples from the real world.

Why is this, or something very similar, not taught seriously in every school at every level? Who controls the narrative on these kinds of enquiries as a staple of education?

In his article on the manipulation of images as a means of controlling the social narrative about the Iraq war, David Hiles cites Noam Chomsky’s plea above.

In a heartening related article, teacher educators Mark Hofer and Kathleen Swan examine how educating students about the technology of photo manipulation can give insight into how to best “read” images.

The power of technology, its speed and versimilitude in controlling narratives, is substantially more than in Lorne Greene’s day.

I found this journal article excerpt by Anthony Kubiak on the narrative of terror and terrorism to have a useful discussion on what “narrative” actually means. He states narrative and the structures it builds are prior to language. I’m not sure…

And whatever the basis of terrorism, that one man’s terrorist can be, sorrowfully, another man’s role-model, brings home to me that my parents’ compressed truths above would do well to hold sway.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right. Don’t believe what you read in the papers.” Thanks, all my relatives.

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Haida Gwaii Watercolor, Part II

This continues a much earlier post, Haida Gwaii Watercolor, Part I, when I first began exploring doing a watercolor painting of the North Beach area near Tow Hill on the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the west coast of British Columbia. (The Islands are known more and more by their Haida people’s name, Haida Gwaii.)

It’s taken me awhile. I’ve struggled with the watercolor medium, partly because I’m not painting as much as I used to, and I digressed to work on another painting or two, and because technically it always seemed to be just beyond my grasp.

The end result, as you will see below, is still not completely satisfactory, but it does give me the feeling of space and wildness I was working towards, in the kind of sketchy impressionistic manner I like. It will have to do…

Here are several of my aborted attempts. It pains me to show them but I learned one or two things from each abysmal failure — especially what not to do. The things that kept throwing me (you wouldn’t know from these outings that I’ve actually painted a few acceptable daubings of other subjects), were the sunlight in the trees and the mist or fog. OK, I was having trouble with the ocean, too… and the waves… and the figure on the beach…

Getting the mist should have been really simple. Work wet on wet, let the paint fade in the background and in the foggy area. But it never seemed quite right. I started to develop a complex about it. In the final version, I got the fade as much as possible and then clouded it up more with a tiny little bit of pthalo blue in chinese white, just enough to cool it, and that seemed to get closer to what I wanted.

Waves on the seashore were a new subject for me as well. I approximated more by suggestion and innuendo than by a convincing depiction, I think.

The sunlit portion of trees also gave me trouble. I studied my little reference photos a lot, trying to find the simple signs that would tell the viewer, if I could get them down, that these trees were lit by the sun. Again, the final version makes an attempt, but how successful I don’t know.

On separate sheets of paper, I tried to produce dry-brush figures that actually looked like some kind of person, and not a blob with blobby appendages, after choosing the size I wanted with a couple of pencil marks on the painting.

Finally I worked at getting the suggestion of a person walking the beach with a stick. With trepidation, I brushed something down on the actual painting.

He even seems to be wearing a hat… The dog was an afterthought, and turned out surprisingly well.

I’ve settled on the slightly pretentious title, Pilgrim Seeking Where Raven Created Man, referring to the Haida creation myth at this location.

Since I like my little figures, here’s a close-up:

Now I have to figure out what the next painting project should be… I’ve got some great subject matter to choose from, and I hope not so difficult to get to grips with.

Some wonderful pastels are standing by that I haven’t used at all yet. But I think I will stick with watercolor again… I’ve a new limited palette idea to try out, courtesy of John Lovett. That’s the thing about watercolor… there’s always something more to try.

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Scam Baiting: The Hobby

I still get spam at my work email, although my home email and WordPress itself have very successful spam blockers in place.

The spam I occasionally get at work is all of the fraud variety… there are no pharmaceutical or extension technology sales being offered, for which I am grateful.

The work spam tends to be either of the payment transfer type or more commonly the Nigerian 419 scam. (The 419 refers to a section of the Nigerian criminal code.)

Most people know of the latter especially, although there are many, many variations. You can read many of the typical examples at Scamorama, which encourages people to read the scamming emails out at parties for the amusement and education of all.

You get an email from an unknown individual in Nigeria or an African country usually who has picked you as that special someone who deserves to receive millions of dollars or pounds as you help this stranger (almost always with an impressive title) illegally divert funds from some moribund bank account or assist in moving their inheritance out of the country. Of course you will get a large cut.

If you were foolish enough to believe this in your larcenous little heart, you would just have to forward some small fees which unfortunately crop up so that the transaction may proceed… which of course it never does.

There are major subject matter variations, such as winning the big Princess Diana lottery based in London, or being invited, all expenses paid, to a major United Nations conference in Dubai, or… well you get the idea. Unexpected expenses and costs will arise at the last minute and everything will be fine if you can just spare a few dollars to solve the problems.

I’ve even gotten them in French and Spanish from time to time. I’m on a mailing list somewhere that is cherished and passed on from fraudster to con man or woman apparently without end.

There are two things that bother me about these scams. The first is that some nearly illiterate criminal, with mostly incoherent thought processes, actually imagines that people will believe and act on the preposterous misspelled and ungrammatical messages he or she sends at random.

The second, of course, is that there are people who seriously respond to these scams and are bilked and even, in cases of some poor souls who have actually travelled in pursuit of their riches, been robbed and murdered.

This disturbs me because I am forced to notice the monumental iceberg of human stupidity and venality bobbing below the surface all about us (and occasionally, it must be said, in me), of which these scams are one tip. I prefer to move about with the illusion that reason and honesty prevail in all quarters and really dislike bumping into reminders of other realities.

So imagine my childish glee at discovering what is probably a famous article in scam-baiting circles, The Incredible Shrinking Artwork, by master scambaiter, Shiver Metimbers.

Before I go on to describe my delight at that article I should describe scam baiting itself. I’ve often thought what would happen if, for a lark, I pretended to take one of these ridiculous offerings seriously and responded. But on balance I have other things I’d rather spend my time and effort on, so I let that idea go.

But many others have had the same thought and, for better or worse, followed up on it and made a hobby out of baiting the scammers.

A frequent rationale is that if a scambaiter can tie-up one of these scammers for awhile and keep them occupied doing the kind of nonsense they seek to have others do, there will be fewer actual victims. That may be an honorable motive, turnabout is fair play after all, but I think it’s more about having fun putting someone on in a good cause. A major on-line source of this activity is at 419 Eater.

I laughed out loud several times reading The Incredible Shrinking Artwork and I encourage anyone in need of a few moments of amusement to read it and get the full benefit.

But the gist is this: scambaiter Shiver Metimbers responded to a well-known 419 scammer, John Boko, who sent the typical email under one of his other names. Mr. Metimbers shifted the ground and wrote back that he was an art dealer, one Derek Trotter, with a major gallery looking for wooden carvings from Africa.

Mr. Trotter was also keen to find young talent and was offering scholarships up to $150,000 for the right new artists.

Could Mr. Boko (under his other name) assist?

Nothing was heard for awhile until Mr. Boko, using the Boko name this time, wrote to inform Mr. Trotter that four artistic, talented young men of his acquaintance on the Ivory Coast wondered whether Mr. Trotter would be interested in helping them develop their artwork.

And so they were off…

First Mr. Trotter asked for a sample of the young men’s artwork so that he could confirm their talent and qualify them for the scholarship. He sent them a small plastic collectible from a British kids television series from which to produce a carving. Eventually he has Mr. Boko courier to him by Fed-Ex quite well-done carvings of those plastic figurines which arrived in a solid wood box.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trotter explains to Mr. Boko, there must have been shrinkage and the figurines did not meet spec. Mr. Trotter, for the purposes of the scholarship, is unable to find them acceptable.

They go on in this vein for awhile. The series of photos of the artwork in the article are amazing.

Eventually, Mr. Trotter relents sufficiently to have Mr. Boko try once more. This time, Mr. Boko’s artists must produce a carving of a Commodore 64 keyboard.

Eventually it turns out that the meticulously carved keyboard when received was chewed on by a hamster, of unknown origin, temporarily named Bert. At least that’s what Mr. Trotter’s brother emailed to Mr. Boko.

And shortly thereafter, Mr. Boko was informed, Derek Trotter Fine Arts was forced to go out of business and any outstanding issues could not be resolved.

There are other similar scambaiting tales at, for instance, Dumbentia . One scambaiter resented a religious variation on the 419 scam so much, which preyed on the pious gullible with many Biblical quotes, that he wrote back as a nun from a convent prone to animal sacrifice.

An article on Ars Technica notes that scambaiters have managed to get the scammers to even tattoo themselves to convince the baiter of their sincerity, or travel long distances in hopes of a non-existent payoff.

Some have understandable ethical concerns with scam baiting. The site 419 Eater provides the scambaiter position on some of these, such as: Isn’t scambaiting racist? or, Isn’t it only just greedy people who get victimized by these scammers?

It also could be a dangerous activity, since one is dealing with criminals after all. Another similar site to 419 Eater, 419 Baiter, outlines the resources and care one must take to have a risk-free experience…

Some of the scammers are starting to wise up and insist on communication by telephone, for instance, and the same site gives guidelines on how to deal with that.

Am I going to change my mind and try out scambaiting? No, I don’t really need that kind of involvement with people. I prefer my interactions to be more… straight forward. Time is short, in the end.

But I can see the allure.

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Notes on images, from the top:

1) What to wear when the charities come to call… found on http://www.rizdin.com/

2) A 419 scam chart from NextWeb Security found on the BigCityLib blog.

3, 4, 5) Scamming the scammer, from The Incredible Shrinking Artwork, cited above.

Play: The Serious, The Weird and The Lighthearted

“Culture is… played from the very beginning.”
– Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens

I wanted to post an entry on weird and wonderful sports, past and present. I ran across an article on oddball sports and it made me curious about the subject, especially with the increasing popularity of spectacles like the 2nd Annual Canadian Cheese Rolling Festival, held recently at Whistler, British Columbia, where the 2010 Olympics will be held.

But then I got to thinking about how serious play is, and re-read some of Johan Huizinga’s book from 1938, Homo Ludens. That title indicates how central Man the Player, Humans Who Play are in the scheme of things, a label probably more appropriate to our species than Homo Sapiens.

So before I go on to the fun, playful listing of eccentric sporting activities, bear with me while I delve deeply into Wittgenstein’s discussion of the Philosophy of Play in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Sorry, just kidding. Would you believe Nietzche’s Spiel Theorie? No? Good. (It’s odd that the German word for play, spiel, becomes in English “a lengthy or extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade.” The play of words, it seems.)

But Johan Huizinga, cited above, was a serious scholar and considered one of the founders of the discipline of modern cultural history. He devoted considerable thought to play and what it really means. Homo Ludens as the title to his book on the subject carries considerable freight. It characterizes our species as the one which plays, in a continuum with the rest of animal life. This is in contrast to our proud imagination as Homo Sapiens, a label meant to separate and raise us above the lowly creatures of the earth.

Play is what links us to the rest of life on this planet: think of puppies, or young baboons, or the young of any species at play. Perhaps even insects play, if we but knew.

But we humans have elevated our play into a supreme activity, as we shall see in concrete examples below. It is central, even if often unrecognized, to who we are. Culture is play, Huizinga would maintain. Play is not just a smaller and specific part of culture.

Poetry and indeed all creative writing is a kind of play. We’ve given that word to theatricality. We play instruments. The mock conflict of contest and sports and play are linked. Think All-Star Wrestling.

Western civilization itself is a form of play. Huizinga described the legal system, in this case the British, as a kind of play: “The judge’s wig, however, is more than a mere relic of antiquated professional dress. Functionally it has close connections with the dancing masks of savages. It transforms the wearer into another ‘being’.” There is a link between play and ritual.

Huizinga characterizes play in at least three ways:

1) Play is free, is in fact freedom. To me, this is profound.

2) Play is not “ordinary” or “real” life. The mundane is transformed or transcended or just creatively altered. This is a stepping out into an other, temporary, realm.

3) Play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration. This is a different point than the second. Play is secluded in some sense, limited. “It contains its own course and meaning.”

Play must be fun — effervescent, bright, self-motivating — or it is not play. Play is the Ur-metaphor of our times, despite what the workaholic might want us to feel is important, or what the violent want us to fear.

Play is the oldest and most primal form of culture, and the most up-to-date.

Tyranny seeks to take all play out of a culture, because play threatens complete hegemony of thought and deed. And so tyranny must fall eventually, since it denies the ultimate source of culture, although at what cost in suffering and despair…

I think of North Korea. The regime takes on an aspect of rigid ridiculousness, bearing the distorted visage of play, fossilized and malicious, as it seeks to repress, suppress and oppress its people.

Play is distinguished by being completely superfluous and unnecessary. And yet…

Play is Zen.

That’s a lot for play to live up to. Or not. Let’s look at the human at play…

On With the Games…

The modern Olympics have a history of what, at least in hindsight, seem to be rather bizarre sporting endeavours. Or maybe not just in hindsight. I’m thinking of synchronized swimming…

One discontinued Olympic sport was obstacle swimming over a distance of 200 metres. “Competitors first had to swim to a pole, climb up and down the pole, then swim a bit, clamber over 2 boats, swim under two more boats, and then swim to the finish.” Perhaps understandably, this event was held only once, in 1900.

Tug-of-war was an Olympic event for quite a few early Olympics. A Gold in tug-of-war… I don’t know what kind of lucrative endorsements you could get for that.

Even more so, for another 1900 event, live pigeon shooting. Belgian Leon de Lunden took Gold with 21 kills.

As mentioned in another post, Indian Clubs: The Next Fitness Craze?, swinging Indian clubs was an event in the 1932 Olympics.

Moving on beyond the Olympics, there’s the annual Man vs. Horse Marathon held in the Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells to see just what species prevails over a cross-country route of 22 miles. In the 25th running of the race, in 2004, for the first time a man won over the horse. I’d like to see that event in the Olympics, actually.

The Finns, who have a reputation for being pessimistic and dour, nevertheless came up with the sport of wife carrying, where the male must carry a female over an obstacle course in the shortest time. The prize depends on the wife’s weight in beer.

Octopush, or underwater hockey, is a non-contact sport conducted entirely underwater and is said to be growing in popularity. Two teams compete to maneuver a puck across the bottom of a swimming pool and into “goals.” There are referees and tournaments. Underwater hockey is not very spectator friendly.

Chess boxing combines the physical with the mental, perhaps for the mental. There are eleven alternating rounds of boxing and chess, starting with a four-minute chess game followed by three minutes of boxing and so on. This is a case of life imitating art, since this sport sprang up due to its description in the writings of French comic book artist Enki Bilal.

We’ve already mentioned the activity of cheese rolling, which apparently began in Gloucester, England. It’s not very complicated. People chase substantial wheels of cheese down very steep hills. The rolling cheese can reach up to 112 km/hr or more than 60 m/hr. An unfortunate accident occurred in 1997 when the cheese took a wrong turn and injured a spectator.

I would be amiss in not pointing out the existence of the Concocully Outhouse Races, in Conconully, Washington. Actual outhouses are raced. The Silver Jubilee event is coming up in early 2010.

According to Wikipedia, Extreme Ironing (or EI) is an extreme sport and a performance art in which people take an ironing board to a remote location and iron items of clothing. The official website says Extreme Ironing is “the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt.”

A Swiss biologist offended by the injuries endemic to most team sports invented Tchoukball in the 1970s. Tchoukball is a non-contact sport played by nine players a side on an indoor court measuring forty metres by twenty metres (130 feet x 65 feet). It has aspects of handball, volleyball, and squash. The object is to pass and then bounce a ball off a small slanted trampoline frame so that it lands outside a semicircular “D” on the court and thereby scores. It has become international in scope and was an event at the 2009 World Games in Taiwan.

Segway Polo has become a trendy activity for the Silicon Valley set. In fact, Steve Wozniak of Apple fame is a well-known player. The Segway, of course, is that electric two wheeled gyroscopically balanced contraption which was touted as the Next Big Thing but has taken a while to arrive. The Segway was first produced in 2002, and Segway Polo began in 2004. Technology as culture as play. The game is played similarly to horse polo but is rather more geeky looking.

A couple more interesting ones in passing: Freestyle Powerizer Stilts and Volcano Boarding.

Let me end with the 3,000 year old ball game called Ulama which is still played in a few places in Mexico. Players even had to wear protective gear because the solid rubber ball involved weighed five to eight pounds and travelled at up to 60 mph. The game is the usual… move the ball, in one variant only by bouncing it off the hips, to the end zones. Sometimes in the old days, the losers lost their lives.

One researcher has said: “That the Mesoamerican ballgame has survived and flourished for more than 3000 years earns it the distinction of being one of humanity’s great cultural expressions.”

The invading Spanish in the 1500s were fascinated by the rubber ball, and it caused a sensation in Europe when the conquistador Cortes took it there. It sparked the beginnings of the rubber industry.

As I get older, I see us humans as a species of quaint characteristics. Some are ennobling, like our love and talent for music, and some are not, like genocide. But play is at our root, and whether it’s swinging through the trees, bent over a go board, or putting on a show at a board meeting, we are the players.

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Notes on images, and another book on play

From the top down, the images (and links to sources) are:

1. Playing tennis in Dubai …

2. Tug-of-war as Olympic sport .

3. Indian club exercise .

4. Wife-carrying championship : The Estonian Carry.

5. Extreme ironing. I’m not making this up.

6. Segway polo…

7. The oldest ball game.

Another interesting book on the nature of play is Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, by Stephen Nachmanovitch, 1990. It’s about spontaneous creation and where inspiration comes from…

Aging Guitar Enthusiast

As noted in the recent post Manchild with Guitar, I’ve taken up the guitar again after about 45 years. I’m now pleased to report that I know more about what I’m doing with it than I did when I was 13 going on Eric Clapton.

I am really benefiting from the wealth of guitar instructional material now available, in book-form, on DVDs, CDs and on the web. I’m also taking lessons, which is something I couldn’t afford when a youngster.

But the work I put in as a lanky teenager of sad disposition has also really helped my current learning curve a lot. All the common open chords came back quickly, and the changes one to another. I knew one pentatonic box, without knowing what to do with it. But now after learning the other four up the fretboard, I’m thankful for the little bit of a base my younger self bequeathed me.

I’ve found that I’m not quite as tone-deaf as I assumed, and that helps as I now learn to jam along with blues tracks in different keys using one useful book-CD combination I’ve come across. I still haven’t recovered the little bit of fingerpicking skill I managed back then, but I’ll be coming back to that too eventually.

Although I was a pretty bad and limited guitar player back then, and remain so largely today, I now see avenues of practice and enthusiasm where I can improve more than I thought possible.

At 58, where do I want to go with playing a guitar? Firstly, I want to pick up my electric guitar, plug it into the amp, turn it up loud and begin to rock. Secondly, and more to the point, I want to learn to improvise, playing lead over a chord structure. My fantasy is to get to the level where I could play a small set for my family and friends, and they’d be duly impressed… (and not feeling, oh my god, he wants to play the guitar for us again)… don’t know if I’ll ever get there.

I’m interested in playing solo instrumental electric guitar, since unless I can talk my wife into banging out a few piano chords with me, I anticipate playing by myself almost all the time. Although I could relearn my halting way with reading regular musical notation, I find guitar tab so much more natural to pick up, although lacking in time information. I can’t motivate myself to learn note sightreading, given the relative shortness of my time.

But I want to play the song, the melody, with such other rhythm and lead accents as may fit in. Most popular tab music, though, disappointingly omits the part sung by the voice. It’s as though playing the guitar as a rock/pop instrument amounts to rhythmic background with occasional lead fills. That’s not what I’m interested in. I want to play the whole thing (or at least a simulation of it).

I’ve read this same lament on one website or another, where somebody asked a group of electric guitarists if anybody could play a song. The group was quite accomplished with either good rhythmic chops or lead skills, but nobody could produce a whole song on their own.

So I anticipate eventually arranging, in some sense, my own instrumental versions of songs I like. This is not so farfetched with some of the software available today. I’ve also become quite interested in the whole chord melody style, although it’s often jazz-oriented and at its technical extremes out of my league or interest. But the idea of using alternate chords, or adding additional chords, to spice up a song has whetted my interest, and does not necessarily require fingerpicking.

For the benefit of anybody else in roughly the same guitar position as I am, here’s a list of some of the learning aids, websites and blogs I’ve come across:

Books

My technical and theory sourcebook for the moment, and which I can really recommend, is The Everything Rock & Blues Guitar Book, by Marc Schonbrun. This is clearly and logically laid out, and the diagrams are plentiful and well-done. It comes with a CD which is a marvelous aid with most guitar books these days. This book has taken me through all five forms or boxes of the pentatonic scales, and discussed the additional note that makes them blues scales. I’m now working on learning the major and minor scales from this book.

(One wonderful feature of the guitar as an instrument is how moveable along the fretboard in the same position such aspects as the pentatonic, major and minor scales can be.)

Another book, which I’ve only gone through a little bit although it promises to be good, is Blues Guitar for Dummies by Jon Chappell. I really dislike the attitude implicit in the series’ name, that they have to insult the reader, but nevertheless, the Dummies books are often quite good.

Chappell has a related book called Rock Guitar for Dummies which also looks to have potentially useful info for a tyro such as me.

My other favorite book of the moment is Blues Jam Trax for Guitar by Ralph Agresta. Jam Trax are a series of similar books. These are slim volumes, but include an important CD. The CD has professional backing tracks in different keys and moods, and this blues one is a lot of fun for learning how to jam with the pentatonic/blues scales. Dial up the fuzz and sustain on the amp, and I’m enjoying the noise I make.

The pieces repeat long enough for me to putter around learning the different positions on the neck for whichever key they’re playing, and allows me to move up and down with all five “boxes.” The book includes the diagrams for the pentatonic scales, although they’ve condensed them into four slightly extended ones.

I’ve got some other books I’ve bought waiting in the wings… There’s Total Rock Guitar by Troy Stetina, which promises more detailed study of lead guitar.

I’ve got Chord-Tone Soloing: A Guitarist’s Guide to Melodic Improvising in Any Style by Barrett Taliarino, which comes highly recommended. It appears approachable by one of my skills.

There’s Fingerboard Theory for Guitar by Mike Christiansen and Guitar Fretboard Workbook: A Complete System for Understanding the Fretboard , again by Barrett Tagliarino. I’ve started the Christiansen book, trying to learn scales and basic theory.

One I want to work on soon, since I seem to be in a blues phase, is Blues By the Bar by Chris Hunt which goes into some detail about blues improvisation.

For music-to-play books, I’ve been working out of The Ventures — Pipeline: 25 Surfin’ Hits for Solo Guitar, transcribed by Dan Libertino. I’m getting a good grip on Walk Don’t Run and the Ventures version of Del Shannon’s Runaway, and I’ll probably continue on to learn Bulldog, Beethoven Five-Oh and Telstar. Eventually, though, I have to move on from the 1960s… I’ve got my eye on a great tab version of Steely Dan’s Reeling in the Years. And I’d really love to learn how to play something of Joe Walsh’s, either Rocky Mountain Way or Meadow .

The other music book I’ve learned songs out of is From Liverpool to Abbey Road, by Ron Manus and LC Harnsberger, which has beginner and up tab arrangements of Beatles songs which aren’t too simplistic.

Guitar blogs

I’ve come across some guitar blogs you may enjoy.

Guitar Boomers is subtitled: “Tips and tricks for aging wannabe rockers who need to make up for lost time.” Yeah! VintageP began the guitar at age 50, and seems to be going strong. He’s pretty serious about his equipment. He has some good advice in posts like “Rock ‘N’ Roll is My Golf” and “Aging Rockers: You’re Not Alone.”

If you find the guitar beautiful, as I do, a great blog is Guitarz. The writer loves to investigate and display old and odd guitars. For instance, there’s a post on a Teiscos Leftie, from 1964. And one on the Roberts Roto-Neck Guitar, which has two fingerboards on one neck…

A Guitar Teacher’s Lesson Notebook has, among other things, what looks like a useful lesson on beginning fingerpicking.

The Mad Stratter has posts of interest for more than just Stratocaster players.

Guitar Tips typically offers free “mini-lessons” as inducements to buy lessons, CDs and DVDs but there’s some good info there.

The blogs Guitar Hunter and My Life With Guitar may also be of interest.

Actually, there’s quite a large guitar blog scene. You can access many from this post on The Guitar Blog Collective!

Web-based lessons and tutorials

There are some greatly instructive web sites with free lessons, tutorials and articles. One such find is Guitar Noise. There are lessons, for instance, on solo arrangements for Neil Young’s The Needle and the Damage Done and the Who’s Behind Blue Eyes.

Another is iBreatheMusic with lessons and tutorials on Melodic Minor Modes, New Ways to Use Pentatonic Scales, Slash Chords and more.

There’s WholeNote: The On-Line Guitar Community, which has 2853 published guitar lessons on its site… although many are quite short, that should hold most of us for awhile.

Playing the guitar, I’ve found, is addictive. I might get tired practicing some song or phrase after awhile. Bah, humbug, I think, this guitar stuff is getting old… I put it down. And not 10 minutes later something is calling me back to throw that strap over my shoulder and start pluggin’ away again.

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Notes on images:

The unlikely guitar at the top is from this Flickr site…

The Bigfoot guitar looks like fun, from the haha.nu site.

And the guitar at the bottom is the Teiscos left-handed model mentioned on the Guitarz blog .