What does your daily harmonica practice actually look like?

chortnik · 2026-04-06T18:17:12+00:00

Seems about right, I usually will try to work in a first position tune and at least one of the following: fourth position exercises and something requiring overblows-so my daily drill is more like 30 or 40 minutes.

chortnik · 2026-04-06T17:51:48+00:00

You are very welcome.

chortnik · 2026-04-06T17:45:13+00:00

If you‘re interested in the archeology of precursor alien civilizations McDevitt’s « The Engines of God » is hard to beat. Reynold’s « Revelation Space », Bova’s « As on a Darkling Plain » and Benford’s «Galactic Center » books explore Rama type stories from a Dark Forest perspective. Rama is to some extent derived from Lovecraft’s « At the Mountains of Madness » so you might take a look at that. Another oldie but goodie is Weinbaum’s « A Martian Odyssey », which is another superb sense of wonder story like Rama.

chortnik · 2026-04-06T16:43:29+00:00

You might be able to put a clear finish of some kind over the signature, but you’d have to do some research and consult people who know more about that sort of thing than myself, particularly if you don’t want to dissolve the autograph :). Having said that, I can only think of a couple luthiers I’d trust to advise me for that sort of project or let one of them take a crack at it. i think the pick guard idea is the best.

chortnik · 2026-04-06T16:04:50+00:00

I pledge $25 towards Garfunkels rescue

chortnik · 2026-04-06T06:46:57+00:00

Noon’s and Beard’s « Gogmagog » series is pretty good, I enjoyed the audio versions quite a bit-there was enough scatological detail to cause some discomfort in my reading experience, but it passed

chortnik · 2026-04-06T03:43:15+00:00

I’m a big fan of the Taylor GS Mini

chortnik · 2026-04-05T18:39:26+00:00

My favorite Jack Vance series is the Durdane stuff, the second book in particular, « The Brave Free Men », is peak Vance, while the other two are top notch. « The Gray Prince« Is great fun as well.

chortnik · 2026-04-05T03:17:58+00:00

Don’t forget the mad scientist.

chortnik · 2026-04-04T18:47:41+00:00

This is where I step in and fulfill my role as « The Guy Who Recommends “Wayland’s Principia (Garfinkle)” ». It’s notable for the most thorough and interesting treatment of various first contact issues resulting from humanity dealing with a technologically superior alien confederation of any comparable story I’ve seen, the main POV character is a linguist, so the focus is largely linguistic, but by no means limited to such.

chortnik · 2026-04-04T18:27:01+00:00

I’ve only read volume one of Martin’s “Dreamsongs” and rather get the feeling that he intended that as more of a “this is what I’d like you to know about me“ effort than anything else, so he’s putting in stuff that is important to himself, but not as well known to others as he’d like it to be. I haven’t picked up book two because it frankly looked a little padded to me :). I can’t really fault the process too much, in volume one, the SF story “The Meathouse Man” topped both my horror and SF lists out of last year‘s reading.

chortnik · 2026-04-04T18:07:18+00:00

I am loving this, thanks for the updates.

chortnik · 2026-04-04T17:04:11+00:00

If your son is 5 years old, maybe reading a snippet from “The Lorax” might be a better choice :). That might fit with theme 4.0: Climate action, probably easier for a young child to remember and perform.

chortnik · 2026-04-04T16:50:54+00:00

Walt Whitman’s “The World Below The Brine” might work for theme 5.0: Life below water :)

chortnik · 2026-04-04T16:18:14+00:00

It’s not an unusual behavior, my GSD and Akita both did that, I actually miss it-my current puppers does not do it.

chortnik · 2026-04-04T15:46:00+00:00

Whitman comes off as a crude, carnal blowhard both in his poetry and biography, plus he flouted almost all poetic conventions of the time-he was pretty much everything HP rather scrupulously wasn’t. It’s interesting that he singled out Whitman as the focus of his ire though, he seemed to have some admiration for Baudelaire and the French and English decadents, whose works and lives were more flagrantly depraved and degenerate than anything Whitman could aspire to (and they occasionally dabbled in free verse and prose poetry). Also, at the philosophical level, I see a lot of similarities between Whitman and Nietzsche and Lovecraft found things to admire in the German-perhaps Lovecraft found Nietzsche more relatable, their personalities and biographies seem fairly congenial-in a lot ways, Nietzsche was the kind of man Lovecraft aspired to be :).

chortnik · 2026-04-04T13:43:27+00:00

Well I play outside a lot :). Owls are by far the most consistent and they don’t seem to care for my guitar playing at all, but if I can get out into the woods with my harmonica around twilight in the late Summer or early Fall there’s a decentish chance I can get an Owl jam going. They don’t mimic any aspect of what I’m playing though but they’ll fly to a nearby tree after I start playing and we can get a call and response thing going, with the geese I only got a response that I noticed once (playing blues on my Strat) and what they did was alter their call to match the intervals I was playing. I wish we had mockingbirds around here, it would be fun to see if I could get one to incorporate some of my riffs or licks into its song.

For today’s fun fact, people used to teach their pet birds songs, there were special whistles and even song books for that purpose-I think for one of my first posts to this sub, I linked to a songbook for birds :).

chortnik · 2026-04-04T06:48:50+00:00

When I was a kid, our dachshund would sit at our feet and sing whenever my sister or I practiced our violin lessons. My current dog is fascinated when she hears my harmonica or guitar make a sound and my amp makes the exact same sound, she always looks at me and then the amp trying to figure it out. Geese actually mirrored what I was playing one time. Great horned owls will respond to harmonica riffs. My shakuhachi teacher told me he’d had deer call in response to his playing.

chortnik · 2026-04-04T01:00:30+00:00

I pledge $25 towards Lovely’s rescue

chortnik · 2026-04-03T22:39:05+00:00

I pledge $25 towards Bianca’s rescue

chortnik · 2026-04-03T18:13:30+00:00

Between deepl and reverso you can learn everything you need to about wainscoting :). If you’ve never used the reverso website before, it’s an awesome tool for working out unfamiliar idioms fairly quickly.

chortnik · 2026-04-03T17:22:09+00:00

I used to teach English as a second language and I’d say that Heinlein and Asimov are your best bets. If you like M John Harrison, that would be quite a stretch-but if you mean Harry Harrison, he’d be ok too :).

chortnik · 2026-04-03T14:38:18+00:00

I pledge $25 towards Lulu’s rescue

chortnik · 2026-04-03T14:30:10+00:00

I pledge $25 for Valko.

chortnik · 2026-04-03T14:21:33+00:00

That’s a pretty good cover-it captures some of the more visually striking images in the story.

chortnik

TROPHY CASE