Notes_Norton

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

Remember, he (or she) who has the most birthdays, lives the longest.

Apple is designing a new automatic car. But they’re having trouble installing the Windows!

I'm never ever going to say never say never again around these parts cause you guy will never let it rest.

Stop, Stop, Stop - Hollies

And I know it. She's good-looking, a world-class singer, and she plays synth and guitar, too!!! She's the kindest person I've ever met, and she is my very best friend. I won the love lottery! Notes ♫

Happy B-Day and many, many more.

Period Pizza? I don't think it'll be a best seller. Even on certain times of the month.

Lyrics: I couldn't sleep at all last night. We learned this one for a regular audience member, and it's fun to play. Mrs. Notes and I do the solo close to the recording. Tossin' and Turnin' - Bobby Lewis

Didn't care much for Tolkien and never got past The Hobbit book, but I devoured the Castaneda books back then. But I appreciated the Tolkien movies at a much older age. The LSD days were definitely a lot of fun. Acid rock was some good music and fun to play too. But today, I'm pretty straight, two or three glasses of red wine per week is it. No particular reason, I just got tired of being high, I guess. But who knows about the future? My wife's name is Leilani. She never hears "Leilani who?". Off-line I just go by Bob, so if I call someone and say "It's Bob", I'll definitely hear "Bob who?" On-line, I'm just Notes, and nobody says "Notes who?" so I guess my sister's business partner did me a favor. Notes ♫

Not easy, but that depends on the horn player. A good horn player can play in any key, but what you get used to is always easier. In the past, most jazz guys liked Eb or Bb (F and C on the tenor sax and trumpet - C and G on alto) because so many of the standards were written ion those keys. These guys hated E and A (F# and B on the tenor). I grew up playing in guitar bands, so E, A, and C are easier for me (F#, B, and D on tenor). I can play in any key, but the keys I play in most often are the most comfortable for me. Unlike the guitar, to play a song on the sax in a different key involves entirely different fingerings. It's like learning it all over again. So if the song starts in Bb (my C on tenor) and then changes to B (my C#) I have to learn it again in C#. Every instrument has its challenges and gifts. That is why non-transposing instrument players have to learn our scales and arpeggios in all 12 keys. It helps to get the common patterns under our fingers, and that makes learning things in different keys easier. In my first band, we learn a song that has no saxophone part (an oversight, I'm sure). The guitar player teaches me barre chords, and I play rhythm guitar. At the end of the song we modulate and all I have to do is move my hand up one fret and finger everything the same way. My reaction? "WOW! This is great! Wanna modulate again?" But like I said, every instrument has hit's challenges too. It's much easier to read music on sax or piano than it is on guitar. In the old tape days, it was very common to speed a song up by running the tape playback faster. Play along with some old pop records, and you will find some of them in between keys, even if there is an organ or piano in the group (which can't play between keys). In our duo, we learn songs with these things in mind. What key is best for the singer. That's the first priority. Ease of play, if the singer is best in a difficult key, we'll try it in a half step above or below to make it easier. BUT if it doesn't sound as good a half step away, we'll leave it in the more challenging key. How does the song sound in this key? I don't know why, but some songs just don't sound good in certain keys, again, a half step away usually solves that problem Record key, if we can do it well in record key, we'll keep it in record key. I played with a blind piano player for a couple of years. He could play in any keys, but preferred keys like B, F# and C# because it's easier to find the black keys on the piano by touch. A lot of Stevie Wonder songs are in those easy to find by touch keys. He went back to France and became famous, Gilbert Montagné. Funny road story with Gilbert. We were booked by an agent in a redneck bar. This was back when country folk had short hair and hated long haired weirdos. So Gilbert has long hair, sunglasses his wife picked out that were teardrop shaped (feminine) and like most Europeans at the time carried a 'man purse'. So we go walking in, Gilbert can't see so I'm leading him in, arm in arm. The rednecks confronted us, thinking we were 'homos' (in their words) and wanted to beat us to a pulp. Luckily there was a couple of them calm and reasonable enough to listen, and they calmed down. Gilbert knew a lot of songs from every genre, so when we started playing, we hit them with a lot of recent country music hits, and in the end, they actually liked us. Back on topic... One last word to the guitar and bass players here. Be happy you can change keys without learning the song again. And if you are playing live, don't be afraid to speed it up a little bit. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

I've learned to "never say never". Things change, and I've gone through many changes so far in my life, so there is no reason to think I won't change again.

Lazy Afternoon - Regina Belle

I gigged on Cruise ships from 1986-1989. Back then, there was no TV on the ships, except for pre-recorded advertisements and a taped movie that played again and again and again and again. When I jumped ship, I hooked the cable back up, but after a few months I realized I wasn't watching. The few times I did sit down to watch, I was doing more fidgeting than watching. So I disconnected the cable. The house is wired for an antenna, and I'm capable of doing that, but I never bothered. When I had the house painted, I took the antenna mast down. I guess I got used to doing things instead of watching. Instead of watching TV: I learned to make user styles for Band-in-a-Box, started a mail-order business selling them. I learned how to run a mail order business That turned into an Internet order business, so I learned to make my own web pages, made a website ... ... ... and learned how to run an Internet order business. (I've sold my wares to musicians in over 100 countries so far.) I learned to sequence backing tracks from scratch, so I don't have to depend on karaoke tracks, or the tracks sold on the net that are never in my key, never in my arrangement, usually with the wrong groove, and so on. I spent more time fixing the few I purchased than building my own, so I do my own I've sequenced more than 600 backing tracks for my duo, which helps us stay booked https://www.nortonmusic.com/cats/songlist.html it takes time, but it's not really work. It's making music. And it makes our product (music) sound better than the competitors. We've got to the point where we charge more money than our competition, and still have more gigs per month than our competition. I learned to play wind synthesizer I learned to play lead guitar (still learning on that instrument, it's my 7th and newest) Full disclosure: Mrs. Notes and I have a one-at-a-time DVD subscription from Netflix. A couple of times per month, we'll slip in a DVD and watch a movie. It's the absolute only time the TV is on. I've never seen Taxi, Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld, Geme of Thrones, Downtown Abbey, Cheers, Glee and hundreds of others that I don't even know the names of. I guess I'm missing some pretty cool things, and no-TV isn't best for everyone, but right now it's working for me. I might change my mind and start again some time in the future, who knows? Notes ♫

I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.

I'll give Windows one complement. It's better than Apple. With Apple it's "Upgrade or Die". I have apps that worked on Win 95 that still work today. Nothing that worked on Macs 5 years ago works today. My taskbar used to be on top, so it was like a drop-down menu. Win10 had an aftermarket app that let me do that. Win11 put a halt to that. Other than that, using Win11 is like Win10. Notes ♫

I'm the drummer, and I'm the bass player. I make my own backing tracks. My first instrument was drums, then sax. I got on the road with a 5-piece band, and every songwriter doesn't have the good sense to include a sax solo in every song, so I learned to play bass, rhythm guitar, and to learn parts on the organ. In that band, the drummer was also a singer, so I would do a few songs on his drum kit while he got up front and sang. The nicest thing about being in a duo with my wife is that we are independent, and don't have to put up with the bad habits of other musicians (we have enough of our own). Since we went duo in 1985, we were never out of work until COVID, and now that it's settled down to a dull roar, we're doing 15-20 gigs a month again. http://www.s-cats.com Notes ♫

Our first promo picture - back in 1985. The name is trademarked, but others in different areas of the country use it. But in case they become big stars, like Lady A, they won't be able to take our name away.

Since we are on the topic of names: 1) satya, what is your new name? 2) And while we are on the subject of names, for those of us with names that aren't our name, how did you get your name? I'll go first. Back in the Jurassic era of the Internet, before these forums, and we had to use Usenet/Newsgroups to converse with each other I joined alt.saxophone On alt.saxophone there was already someone named Bob Norton and another Robert Norton. My sister's business partner called everybody by a nickname that he made up, and because I'm a musician, he called me "Notes". So on alt.saxophone I became Notes Norton. I never bothered to change it, and now that I have a little 'empire' selling aftermarket style and song collections for Band[-in-a-Box, changing it would be foolish. I have a reputation. How about you all?

I don't watch the news. Actually I don't watch TV at all, and haven't for decades. I read news online, and I get to pick and choose what interests me, and avoid what is going to make me angry. Old news? A friend gave us a book, "Killing Lincoln" by Bill O'Reilly. It's not something I would have picked off the shelf, but he said it was a good read. Wow! A page turner, and I learned a lot about the events that I didn't know. Notes ♫

We play quite a few songs on the gig a little faster than the tempo on the record. It adds energy. Of course, that depends on the song and what we think our audience would react positively to. But 50%. No way. I can't spit out the words that fast. Many years ago when I was in a band that opened in concert for the "star" band, I noticed that they played many of their songs faster than they did on the record, so I just figured it was the right thing to do. We learn from the masters. Notes ♫

I just found out that I’m color-blind. The news came completely out of the green!

Every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows, a lot of people hate it. Sometimes their hate is justified, like for Win8 or Vista, other times not. I remember people hating Win95, Win 98SE, WinXP, Win7, too, and IMO they weren't bad at all. I suppose some people just don't like change. And Microsoft doesn't help by moving things around and renaming them so they are hard to find at times. In my experience, the move from W10 to W11 is more like Windows 10.1. For this user, very minimal differences, mostly cosmetic. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

You Can't Sit Down - Philip Upchurch (Got the Church in here) And vocals added to the original...