Knowledge Ratchet

Five years ago I bought an accordion on ebay. I worked through the first few volumes of the Palmer-Hughes accordion method, which entailed learning how accordions work and how to read music. After a while I tried writing my own songs, which entailed learning scattered bits of music theory. And once I had a couple of songs I liked OK, I started messing around with recording them on my Ubuntu box, which entailed learning a hodgepodge of things about hardware, software, and sound.

Then the philosophy department assigned me three new courses in a row and all of that stopped. I spent 18 months developing new syllabuses and learning a lot about political philosophy and applied ethics, while forgetting most of what I'd learned about the accordion, songwriting, and home recording.

There's little I find more discouraging than forgetting things I worked hard to learn. So now, as I try to get back into the music stuff, I hope to use this blog as a knowledge-ratchet. As I recover the things I knew, and learn new things, I'll post them here. Then, the next time I'm distracted by other subjects for a year or two, I'll have a music notebook to fall back on.

That's the overall goal, anyway. My short-term focus is narrower: to work through Fux's The Study of Counterpoint.