Aw nuts

Yahoo! Geocities is closing down later this year.

Which means I need to start migrating 10+ years of gaming material to new homes.

Luckily, most of the links are local. Unfortunately, not all are. C'est la vie - ten years of free web hosting was a good run.

Wet blankets and naysayers

What's with some people?

I don't mean people carrying buckets of cold water. Sometimes, idea people need a little cold water thrown on them when they start to go a little crazy.

I mean people who feel the need to tear down an idea or project that doesn't affect them, involve them, suck resources away from them, or impact them, but that other people would like to see.

Enter: The Lyre Book.

I was cleaning out my email, going through three years' worth of letters from a lyre mailing list. And I was struck by the repeated requests for sheet music for this six-stringed instrument.

I've always privately poo-pooh'ed the idea. I like to improvise on my lyre. Who needs sheet music? But there it was, several times a year, new players who really wanted some sheet music.

I have music typesetting software. I know a handful of songs you can play on lyre. Why shouldn't I knock out a little booklet of lyre sheet music? And many people were enthusiastic about the idea.

Except for the people who felt compelled to point out that not everyone learns well from sheet music, or that they think video is really a better way.

Well, sure. I was pretty clear that this is just a little tunebook, written for melodic and not chordal playing (because I have no experience with that) and is not meant to be all things to all people. It's for the people asking for the sheet music. I'm not going to come into your home and make you play "O When the Saints" if that's not your thing.

You want a booklet on chordal playing, or a YouTube series on playing by ear? That sounds awesome! Y'all go out and do that. But why is it necessary to talk down the tunebook?