I hate the term “loner.” I am not a loner, I just prefer solitude. I wish I had more opportunities to socialize with people, but I recharge my batteries best when I am alone. Solitude helps me to cope with the onslaught of the world.

I like to play and think about music. I should also write more about music in general, but I am happy to play away. Today I listened to some Coltrane and some Mingus, reminding me how deeply the blues are infused into their music, no matter how extended their music becomes. Mingus, in particular, melds a deep blues and gospel feel with a very intricate counterpoint. He was a true composer in every sense of the word. Coltrane’s genius is in his interpretation and extension of the music, played through his glorious sax. Both of them are absolute monsters on their instruments.

I feel like my guitar practice is going slow, but I have made some palpable progress. I can now play Barry Greene’s arrangement of “All of You” with some authority, though I don’t have it fully memorized. I’ve also made a lot of progress on David Frackenpohl’s arrangements of “Invitation” and “Bluesette” as well as Corey Christiansen’s arrangement of “Yesterdays.” In fact, “Invitation” is nearly memorized, as is “Bluesette.”

I’m finding that my memory for chord solo arrangements is becoming better, as is my sense of key and chords. In the past, when learning some of Morgen’s arrangements, I haven’t really understood what the chords were that I was playing - I just learned the fingerings and didn’t necessarily learn the chords. Now I have a better sense of what I am doing, and I’m sure I’m learning phrases that can be used in creating my own arrangements or in improvising on tunes.

This reminds me that I need to learn the unaccompanied melodies and bass lines to all of these tunes. One thing that really hit me today when listening to Coltrane play “Invitation” is the way in which the melody is always present in his improvisation, no matter how much he extends certain chords and melodic motifs. I need to be able to constantly refer back to the melody when in the midst of improvising - this has always been a weakness of mine since I usually get too caught up in the chords, losing sight of the melody.

I took a break from writing and now I’m off track. I’ll just write a bit of nonsense now to make my 500 word minimum. Actually, it’s not nonsense since what I am supposed to be doing is freewriting. I never know what to write about when I have no theme in mind, so I’ll just keep writing until I think of something.

Writing is a lot easier for me now that I have been doing this blog for a while. Freewriting has really loosened up my flow with language, bringing writing to a level close to spoken language. In fact, one of the only things that holds me up is that I am an atrocious typist; I never really learned to type properly so I basically just use five fingers to type. Some sort of remedial typing course might help me to become faster at typing, really bringing my written facility in line with my spoken facility.