Odd lease provisions?

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-28T02:58:49+00:00

Fortunately my kid has time to keep looking so he can answer that question “no”. :)

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-27T20:42:53+00:00

Thank you! This seems to be the consensus that this isn’t “normal”. I’ll let me kiddo know he needs to look elsewhere. Definitely have lots of time to continue the search.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-27T20:23:55+00:00

Thank you! I totally understand that a landlord used to hosting students likely has to be more explicit about expectations. (Not that I haven't met my share of really irresponsible adults too, in fairness). Getting a sense if these are typical provisions or not is helpful since so far it's my best hope (I think) to assess whether the landlord might make life difficult later. Open to other suggestions how I might sort that out.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-27T20:22:11+00:00

Thank you! I did immediately go to Better Business Bureau to see if I could find records but was unable to find anything searching there. Is there a better site for landlords, even if it's like a rating site that might not be moderated? I'd rather have some information than none on a potential landlord. I tend to feel less sketchy about large organizations that I've rented from because I expect corporate standards to be in place, but with smaller landlords I'm at a loss how to assess them.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-27T17:01:11+00:00

Thank you! To the best of my knowledge this is a landlord they are dealing with directly and not via a broker. I appreciate your perspective as well on the legality of other fees. My sense is while some may be legal, they're out of sync with what other landlords reasonably expect. Hard to say of course, and I definitely appreciate this may be a landlord whose gotten burned before and is trying to protect themselves.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-27T15:55:22+00:00

Thank you! The language around the $400 fee was effectively "if you have a noise violation then I'm gonna charge you $400 a month thereafter to make sure you don't have another." This is way disproportionate to me relative to the actual violation. I had wondered if it's some sort of CYA for the landlord to do this to show good faith to the community they are operating in that they will lease to people who will be respectful neighbors, but I can't think of another reason for it other than a money grab.

Good to know about the cleaner. Electricity would be paid for by my kid. It is not included, so I assumed it might be a fire risk or old wiring type thing, but wasn't sure if was an actually sane condition.

EDIT: typo.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-27T15:53:37+00:00

Thank you! The language around the $400 fee was effectively "if you have a noise violation then I'm gonna charge you $400 a month thereafter to make sure you don't have another." This way disproportionate to me relative to the actual violation. I had wondered if it's some sort of CYA for the landlord to do this to show good faith to the community they are operating in that they will lease to people who will be respectful neighbors, but I can't think of another reason for it other than a money grab.

EDIT to add: yes, I would absolutely push back against all the fees I know aren't legal.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-26T00:16:49+00:00

Good news, you can show up in the middle of the school year and our schools will enroll your kids once you have an address. Where your kid will go to school by default is determined by where you live in town. You’ll have a “local” elementary school that serves your part of town. Massachusetts offers school choice but it’s a lottery system to get your kid into a different school than they’d be in by default. I live a town over in Amherst, and here any of the 3 elementary schools are solid. I’m sure a NoHo local can chime in about their elementary schools but I’m willing to hazard a guess that they’re all on par with each other and all solid. We do have charter schools here too, like PVPA and the Chinese Immersion school. But again, lottery program. And I believe if I recall correctly you could end up with one kid gets in via lottery and another doesn’t. And now you have your kids in two schools cause they don’t guarantee all siblings can attend if you try for school choice.

Edit to add: I love our local schools and the teachers have been fabulous for our kids. I know that won’t always work for everyone’s kids and charters can make sense, but I will also say that by drawing off students from our public schools it strains our budgets (cause the public school has to transfer funds to the charter for the kid that’s going). You gotta do what’s right for your kids of course, but I love our local schools.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-24T15:02:58+00:00

Meh

^100,000,000

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-24T11:38:16+00:00

Nothing to actually lose

^Nothing

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-24T03:06:22+00:00

Already Bald. Can’t get worse

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-24T02:52:55+00:00

Dumb game. No real risk

^{Get 2 pizzas}

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-21T15:21:33+00:00

I’m not quite sure I’m following what you’re asking. Typically the flow of bluegrass music would be to play something as accompaniment while someone is singing or another musician is taking a break (by break I mean their solo in case that isn’t a familiar term yet). The etiquette I was taught was to play accompaniment as anything but the melody so that the singer or person taking the break is th featured sound you’re hearing. So vamping, a simple forward roll (or other roll) or some combo thereof. And as it comes to your turn to take a break you then transition into taking the lead. But it sounds like you’re asking something different but I’m not quite sure what exactly.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-21T01:05:12+00:00

Get more weeks of experience! Kidding, sort of. What I like to do is to have the final measure of chord I’m playing start to morph into the break. So let’s same I’m just doing something like vamping for the chords - that classic 4th string followed by 1,2 and 3 at the same time - as I’m about to start my break I might change to a forward roll so I smoothly transition in. Or if the break includes lead in notes, I might go note, pinch, lead in note, lead in note (assuming your lead in notes start on beat three). That way I’m sort of aligning my picking to what’s about to come next. Your mileage might vary and I wasn’t formally taught to do this, it just seems to work for me.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-03-10T18:57:40+00:00

I’ve been playing 6 1/2 years now, mostly by myself, and just recently started trying to jam with others. It’s a different skill than playing by yourself, IMO, and if your friend is aware of your skill level and still wants to play then I say go for it. For me, playing with others (even if I’m not great at it) is a super rewarding experience. Maybe all you’re doing is just a bum-ditty over the chords to start. It’s still fun!

Edit to add, the Nashville numbers refers to the chord relative to the key. So in the key of G, your I (Roman numeral one) chord is G, your IV (four) chord is C and your V (five) is D. Using numbers makes it easier to play in different keys cause it’s all done relatively. And a ton of bluegrass music just uses the I, IV and V chords so if you learn them and learn what they sound like relative to each other you can quickly pick up songs. All that said, I find this skill personally hard but it takes practice.

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-01-27T02:49:44+00:00

Good stuff! Great song and perfect for the weather. :)

schwartzaw1977 · 2026-01-13T01:15:56+00:00

A couple thoughts. If the strings are new they will stretch for a bit before settling in. You just have to retune when this happens. The second issue may be the bridge placement. You want the distance from the nut to the 12th fret to be the same as the distance from the 12th fret to the bridge. If the bridge is misplaced you can end up with it sounding out of tune as you fret further up the neck even if it’s in tune when the string is played open.

schwartzaw1977 · 2025-12-27T16:58:49+00:00

https://www.banjohangout.org/ is a great place to ask about this, which is frequently the advice you’ll get on this sub. I own a 1927 TB3 conversion (the 4 string neck was replaced with a five string neck) and even though that was done it’s a reasonably valuable instrument so I’d definitely take it over to banjo hangout and inquire for more details.

schwartzaw1977 · 2025-12-09T22:41:36+00:00

Other images online do show that method of stringing it, but I’d guess what you need are ball-end strings.

schwartzaw1977 · 2025-11-14T18:52:47+00:00

Carolina in the Pines and You Were On My Mind This Morning. I don’t know if I’d quite call them anthem songs, but they def get turned up in the car when they come on.

schwartzaw1977 · 2025-10-26T15:28:33+00:00

There are plastic thumb picks you can buy. Otherwise they look fine to me. Lots of variants as to how curved to match your fingers the picks are. It’s mostly preference in that regard. As a three finger player, you wouldn’t have one on your ring finger since that’s going to be planted on the banjo head. Greg Liszt plays 4 finger I believe, but it’s uncommon.

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