The Music Corner and Half-assed office tour.

Today I kinda cleaned up the corner where the Guitars hang out and gave the Ocarinas a place to hang out over there, turning it into the music corner. Weed is pretty helpful if I can balance it. Really should try to find a simple way to get some weed on a somewhat regular basis. Seems to make me just a less miserable bastard in general. Also feel emotions rather than deflect them, probably better for my mental health eh? Just need to make sure to have tolerance breaks. Anyway... the music corner kinda sprang up as a need to move the light bench a little bit to make it easier to work on.

My little Midi keyboard sits above my normal typing keyboard so it's not there but yeah. Figure I should have my instruments in one place.

Can kinda see an overflow bin under the Ocarina table and you can see a bit of the light test bench as well.

You can see the little 4 hole sweet potato, that's the first thing I ever bought with money I worked for. It was all I could afford as it was $80 + S&H and this was back in the early aughts so it took some convincing to get my grandmother to help me out with the purchase (I had no bank account yet). I got it from Songbird Ocarina who should really do a once over on their web site...

Got the Dragon Tooth up on the top right with the book that came with it on the shelf above. By the way this is an end table from my living room but the way I set up the living room made it so I couldn't fit the end table so here it is. The dragon tooth is also from Songbird. Probably my best sounding Alto C tuned ocarina.

Bottom Right  is my dual chambered harmonic ocarina. I got that from STL Ocarina and it's pretty solid. My main complaint is that the holes are a bit tiny and hard to feel with my guitar fingers and all the callouses. It makes a really cool sound and the harmonics are really kinda haunting sometimes.

Left of that is the first ocarina I ever got. I still can't play it right because it's really airy and not great but I keep it because it was my first and my grandmother got it for me. I got it at The House of Guitars in Rochester, NY. Which is also a happy memory tied to it. That place used to be awesome... not sure about nowadays, have not been in a long time. I got my first guitar there, also bought for me by my grandmother. It was a Stagg X300 and I really miss it... if I ever see one in the wild and have the money I will buy it instantly, not because it was the best guitar ever, but because of the feelings attached to it.

Left of that is a little pendant ocarina I got off ebay just to check it's quality. It's not great. Looks cool and annoys the cat so that's nice.

Left of that is my Alto C that I play the most because I can take it places and not worry about dropping it. It's one of 3 plastic ocarinas I have and it sounds pretty good. Got that from Songbird as well, a few years ago.

Of course above that is the aforementioned Sweet Potato 6-hole Ocarina of Time from good old Songbird. The first thing I ever bought with my own hard earned money from cleaning some basement and painting a porch. I remember my cat used to come running to me when I played it... it was kinda cool.

In the middle is my plastic Bass C Ocarina, that's why it's a fat ol fucker. I bought it at the same time as the Ivy dual chanbered one at a time when I wanted to experiment with other tunings and sounds. It's got a real deep, resonant tone. Far better than I expected from a hunk of ABS. Would recommend if you want a big ol Bass sound in C on the cheap because HOOOO BOY... you priced them ceramic bass ocarinas? Sheeeeeit.

Top left is a junk ocarina off Amazon. I expected it to suck but man it got here and the fipple was cracked so it just makes an airy hiss when you try to play it. I only got it as part of a light thing I was doing, actually plan to re-do it's lights and have it be a light for the ocarina table.

Above them are my method books, tab books, notation books, etc. The top left book is for the Erhu and is entirely in Chinese so that took a good bit to learn how to play. Under that is a few guitar books I bought over the years stuff like official tab books and a method book.  On the right I have books for Ocarinas and some tabs I printed out for the 6-hole back when I got it in the early aughts. Weird what things I protected over the years, isn't it?

Now I got some rules to prevent me from getting too many ocarinas and guitars, I have to pay for any new ones with money I make from music. Otherwise no more. But I do know the first ocarina I will probably buy next...

Left to right we start with the Rogue Rocketeer, that's my fuckin' around guitar. Basically something I could buy cheap and then tinker on, replacing parts like the tuner heads, pickups, bridge, etc. Maybe wire my own preamp built on some arduino or raspberry pi power.

Then there's the Erhu. It's like a violin with 2 strings, no frets and the bow is locked between the strings. It makes a lot of cool sounds and is one of my favorite instruments, hence my having it of course. The cat freaks out sometimes when I play it though. You'd think it would be easy to play but man it's hard to get really good.

Next is the Dreadnaught. I need to sand down the saddle and the nut on it, the action is too damn high and I got some medium bronze strings on there so an F chord feels like I am about to rip it in half and it flattened out my finger tips when I played it too long.

Across the top of those is a Dizi, a flute with a bamboo reed. It takes some getting used to in order to even get a sound from it but once you do it has a pretty interesting sound. Very straightforward notation layout on the holes.

Finally on the right is my SG. I've been trying to get this thing since I was a teenager. It's exactly what I wanted and is definately my best guitar. I got it for $220 last year. It happened like serendipity, I was looking at guitars for a while and saving up... hoping to find myself an SG I could afford with the features I wanted. At the time I was ready to order I thought I would go through and look one more time and there it was. So I quickly bought it and been happy ever since. Had to lower the action a little since I kinda like my action low... for me it lets me play a little quicker and get into barre chords quicker.

You can see a lot here. On the bottom right you have a laptop running as an amp emulator so I can play with lots of different sounds and only hear it through my monitors instead of being loud and bothering people around me. Above it is the server with a skull on it. Above that is the 3D printing shelf. There's 2 3D printers but I do need to replace parts on one of them.

Then there's the white board and below that is the light bench and the ocarina shelf which has one of my parts overflow bins. Then some storage behind the guitars and to the far left is a little book shelf with some books of course and an incense burner at the top for days when I feel like making it smell different in here.

That's only half of the office but that's where most of the stuff is. I got my desk in the other half and there's a few drawers next to me with art, instrument and note taking supplies... as well as another overflow area for parts.

Anyway got some crap to get done around here.

Cheers.

Here's a time lapse of a gecko trying to get into her food bowl.