Well, I was worried about Charlie last night and I couldn't sleep, so I went downstairs with my backpacker guitar and found the electric tuner. The electric tuner is a wonderful ear-training device; you get a graphic readout showing whether a note is sharp or flat, which of course is the whole deal with instrument-tuning, I realize.

But it also means that you get constant, immediate, very accurate feedback about what you're playing when you play a note on the keyboard. So, for example, last night I played scales on the guitar by 'ear' - I found the w-w-h-w-w-w-h intervals on all the strings, and as I played them, I looked at the electronic tuner's readout and sang the notes out. I'm hoping this will both teach me the notes in each scale on the guitar fingerboard, and also teach me to hear the notes themselves and name them properly in my head . . .

It's funny about the role of immediate, positive feedback in learning a language or skill like this. (I think of music as a language, really, because it involves reading, writing, listening, and 'speaking'.) Emil said that he felt his spelling improved when he started working on a computer with a built-in, real-time spellchecker. Getting the feedback right away was important in that circumstance, too. Not sure what else to make of that; it seems like a powerful force for good when technology truly does make learning something easier.

I'm also thinking about the layout of the guitar fingerboard. Emil said that the notes aren't symmetrical across all the strings on a guitar they way they are on a violin or mandolin because guitars are optimized for chords. I'm wondering if that accounts for the arrangement of all stringed instruments, and if that's how you tell whether a stringed instrument was historically intended for solo play or choral accompaniment . . .

I think I'm going to ask my guitar teacher for some Celtic stuff next week. The picking patterns he showed me last time are enough to keep me going in that arena, and will sooner or later satisfy all my picking needs for singing along with folk songs . . . so now I want to learn something with a melody line.

Stay tuned! (heh, heh)