I've got rhythm!

Aaugh, just what I was afraid would happen. I've been having a very fertile musical period since I last posted here, but somehow good musical times somehow always seem to render me verbally inarticulate. It's quite frustrating, because I'd love to tell my friends about the fascinating time I'm having, but without the ability to articulate what I'm experiencing, it's all "like, wow, the dominant-tonic relationship, y'know, it's deep..."

"Switch Back Rag" has continued to inspire and challenge me. It's quite simple, mostly staying pretty close to the C major 5-finger position, but that's good because it enables me to concentrate on the ragtime trick of having the steady beat in one hand and the syncopation in the other.

Inspired by this syncopation, I got out my rhythm reading books and started practicing rhythms & syncopations on my little drum-let (kind of a tambourine without jingles). In fact, I was having so much fun with it that I went out and invested in a set of bongo drums, so that I'd have 2 different rhythmic tones to play with, and I have to say, the bongos are a most amusing toy. I'm not even attempting to play them in any authentic fashion, just using the deeper tone to mark the downbeat while exploring the various quarter-note/quarter-rest pattern-options within a measure of 4/4 time.