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Without actually intending to, I have set about learning some new skills and areas of interest this summer. I didn’t make a New Year’s resolution to learn new things in 2019; it probably wouldn’t have happened if I had. Nevertheless, I am proving again to myself that there are always new things to learn. In no particular order, here’s what I’m getting to know this year:

Soccer

I followed the FIFA Women’s World Cup pretty closely. Although I obviously favored our world champion U.S. Women’s National Team, I watched a few matches between other countries as well. I’ve watched soccer on and off over the years. My college had a pretty decent soccer program when I was an undergrad, and I went to one or two matches. My middle son played for a few years when he was middle school aged. I usually watch at least some of the men’s World Cup, even last year when the U.S.A. didn’t qualify. However, it has been the unparalleled success of the American women that has kept me watching (I can ride a bandwagon just as well as the next guy.)

I wanted a Carli Lloyd t-shirt after the 2015 World Cup; I laughed out loud when she scored a goal from midfield in the final against Japan. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one in any of the sports memorabilia stores around here. Regardless, when this year’s tournament rolled around, I was primed. And a funny thing happened: For the first time, I started to understand the game.

I didn’t get it when my son played, and I watched a lot of matches in a lot of cold weather. But now I’ve begun to appreciate the passing, the attacks, the tackles, the set-ups for corner kicks, the trick moves, all of it. I yell at the TV when I see an inexcusable no-call on an obvious foul. I understand stoppage time (though I still don’t get the no-time-outs thing; it has to be tradition.) I think I might even be close to getting the offside rule.

It’s a bit like opening my eyes to a whole new, previously ignored world. If I were 30 years younger, I would try to find an amateur league to play in. My high school was too small to have a soccer team, so I didn’t have the opportunity to play in my teens. Too bad; I’ve never been overly sure on my feet, but with practice I might have been a decent player, if only on defense.

Anyway, since the World Cup ended on July 7 (the day after my oldest son and his lovely wife got married, the subject of another post,) I’ve been watching NWSL soccer matches on Yahoo! and ESPN. The closest team to me is Sky Blue FC, located in northern New Jersey and in dead last in the standings, so I’ve adopted them as my team. It hurts not at all that Carli Lloyd plays for them.

Slide Guitar

I love the sound of slide guitar, and it’s long been one of my round tuits to become proficient at it. For those who may not know, you play slide guitar by placing a tube of some kind (metal, glass, whatever) on one finger of the hand that’s on the fret board. That finger slides up and down the strings, producing a sound that is wicked or sad, depending on what you’re going for. Every year during Holy Week when I hear the old spiritual Were You There, I imagine how good it would sound on slide guitar. One of these days …

Anyway, this summer I’ve become more serious. Type the search term “how to play slide guitar” into the You Tube search field and you’ll get no shortage of tutorials. I’ve experimented with open G tuning (tuning the guitar strings so that they make a G major chord if you don’t press any of them down.) One of my best college friends and I have played the Jethro Tull song Locomotive Breath together as long as we’ve known each other. I’ve got the rhythm guitar part with a slide down. My goal is to take be able to play a lead guitar solo on slide that won’t make people cringe. This is called growth, my friends.

GarageBand

When I was 13, I learned that musicians record their parts individually rather than necessarily all of them playing the song at the same time. My mind was blown. Ever since then, I’ve had a fascination with multi-track recording.

GarageBand is audio production software that comes installed on every Apple Macintosh computer. I’ve used it in the past; I produced every episode of my late, not lamented podcast The Geek Side of Life using it. This year, though, I’ve made an effort to learn how to create music with it. Last winter I recorded a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in which I played rhythm and lead guitars, sang, and played two software instruments. The results were so-so, but it was a ton of fun. It was a time rabbit hole. I spent an entire Saturday on a five-minute song and could have spent more time than that.

A couple of months ago I created theme music for the videos I do for my day job. I built it entirely out of GarageBand loops. No actual musical instruments were harmed during the production of the piece. A rock masterpiece it is not, but I had so much fun doing it. It was a Saturday night. I don’t know what time I started, but next thing I knew it was one in the morning and I didn’t feel tired. Time becomes irrelevant when I focus on creating something. You can listen to the results by playing the track below.

That said, I’m sure I know about five percent of GarageBand’s features and capabilities. I’ve subscribed to a series of You Tube videos that give tutorials. I expect that learning how to create with that program will be very rewarding for me. I will never be a master musician (I don’t have the desire to put in the time required,) but I can create songs that a few people might like, I’ll have a really good time, and I’ll learn some audio production skills. Not a bad way to spend my time.

Learning

This is my version of self-improvement for the summer of 2019. Will it make me a better person? I don’t know; probably not. It might make me a more interesting person, at least to some people. At any rate, I want to keep learning. I want to learn more about the physical sciences and foreign languages and folk stories that can inspire my fiction and computer coding.

For however many days or years I have left, I want to keep learning. It’s what makes life interesting.

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