RhythmJunky

This is very similar to my experiences. My teacher is a professional jazz pianist and we spend far more time talking about chord extensions, progressions, how to change the chords if you're playing with a bass player and how to comp etc, than I did with previous teachers. We use far more interesting pieces than I used to in the past, and I have pretty much free reign over what I play. There's been a few times when I've suggested a new piece in a lesson, we've pulled it up on YouTube and within a minute he has the key, all the chords and melody figured out by ear. Even on stuff he's never played.

I think they're all pretty much just IPA or some other similar organic solvent. They may have a few other degreasers in there to clean off grease a bit faster but they're all just volatile organics.

Many years ago I used to work in maintenance for a company that made very high end manufacturing equipment for the chip industry. We'd occasionally get the electrical racks sprayed with water or coolant if we had a quick disconnect that didn't.. well.. disconnect...and our standard recovery was to rinse them down with ipa ( isopropyl alcohol not India Pale Ale ) and let them dry out thoroughly. It always seemed to work.

I've been learning piano/ keyboards for about 7 or 8 years. I get online lessons every fortnight, which work well and don't have any wasted time (meaning I don't have a 30 min drive each way etc). It took me a long time to find a tutor who didn't want to just work through the grades. There's an entire industry based around them here in Ireland, so much so that they made a film about it. ('Making The Grade'). I had a local tutor once who suggested Phil Coulter songs when I said I wanted to learn more contemporary songs. I was thinking 'Fairy Tale of New York'. She was suggesting 'Puppet on a String'. I didn't last much longer with her. Funnily enough I had a choice of excellent and local bass tutors when I wanted one. BTW don't forget that you don't have to do Classical grades. There are Jazz grades and Rock grades these days. I occasionally throw in a piece from one or the other from the respective books into my repertoire.

I still laugh about when I was walking past the window of a charity shop in Wimbledon (my son was living there at the time) and there was a cello in the window. I still like to think about the decision behind donating it 'well Crispin has moved on and needs a better instrument and Arabella is much more into expressive dance....'

Yup. Same here. Education (and youth in general) is wasted on the young.

I've admired how much use of 3D printing you've used in your build. I'm sat here reading this in my post Christmas lethargy when my mind started to wander and I ended up thinking if it'd be possible to 3D print an entire cabinet. Or maybe a frame into which you could bond ply or MDF panels for damping. That'd be an interesting build. Just a thought.

Whenever I used to interview people I always used to respect someone with an OU degree higher than from a 'bricks and mortar' place as I recognised how much they must have actually wanted the degree. I do have to admit some bias though. I did an MBA with the OU when I was doing a job with a huge amount of travel (some years up to 80 % of my life was in a hotel room).

I know that this might not be the main point of what you were saying, but i worked with a tech once who used to brag to anybody that would listen, that 'no child of his was ever going to go to university'. I don't believe a university education to be the be all and end all, but I could never understand why he wanted to handicap his kid's futures so much.

That was an interesting Christmas present. Was she under the tree or wrapped separately ?

They know that all their listeners have reached the age that by the time they've played a dozen songs, we've forgotten what the first one was anyway. Buying any more than a dozen would just be a waste of money. Now what were we talking about again ?

I was given a Digitech Trio which I'm planning to use with my synth workstation (Roland Fantom 08). I purposely asked Santa for the old model, as I didn't want his elves making additional features that I didn't need ( and the new one was approx 3 times the price) .

Absolutely love it. It has a great 'Lego' vibe to it. Nice one.

I just used 4 of those to rebuild a piano bench so that I could bolt the padded bit down to the leggy bit. Great job. Very neat.

Nothing irrational with that. In fairness I can enjoy other small, folkie stringed instruments as much as the next person. In moderation and in the right environment (ie typically an Irish bar with the Guinness flowing like water) But not ukuleles, and absolutely, definitely, without any question whatsoever. Not banjos.