Since I’ve been so busy with CrippleBush lately, I’ve neglected the hell out of Divided Front. Today, I tried to remedy that. I planned on re-recording a handful of tunes but, now that the day is done, I managed three. It amazes me sometimes how I manage to piss my time away without accomplishing anything substantial.

As it is, I’m glad I managed the three tunes. I took a decent chunk of time to tab out “Down and Out in New York City” … it’s been bugging me for so long that no one else in the world has tabbed the song.

It isn’t laziness that kept me from doing myself, though. I can pick out a song, find the notes, figure out the riffs and fills, the chords and the melody … but it’s such an arduous, harrowing process. It doesn’t come easily for me. I don’t pick the correct notes right off and blaze through a tune in minutes. I have to painstakingly dissect it, find a sequence of notes and then use that to determine the key and, from there, I start to learn the song.

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Talent and skill are two things in short supply. They are one of many rare tandems in life … brains and beauty comes to mind.

I predominantly spent this evening writing. I also made a simple and delicious dinner, played the guitar and the piano and found various ways to waste time on the temporal vacuum called the Internet. I did find an article on time signatures and learned some interesting things.

I play instruments, but I am loath to call myself a musician. To me, a musician is like a carpenter. They have a skill that they parlay into a trade that yields them pay. Musicians are people who play instruments professionally, for money. I play instruments because I can (to a reasonable extent) and because I enjoy creating things and expressing myself through song. I would love to be paid, but I am not willing to put myself on public display … which is a pretty crucial component of being paid to entertain people.

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