Jonathan Bernard

Today I have decided to learn everything on Jaco’s self-titled solo debut CD. That is a pretty large goal, and I know I will not be able to go through it as fast as I would like. Jaco’s music is some of my favourite music, all genres and artists considered. His playing has always drawn me as a bass player. While there are many other great players I look up to, Jaco is the one I want to emulate the most. I want to absorb his skill set, to whatever degree I can.

Musically I am bored right now. Most of the stuff I play is simple from a musical perspective. Even when learning new material, most of the time the technical skill required to play the patterns is all I am picking up. The reason why the player chose the those notes is within my understanding. A lot of what Jaco was doing is far beyond my knowledge, and very different from what I am playing right now. I do not expect to suddenly know the mind of Jaco after following through one CD, but I do hope that by playing his licks, his grooves, I will be pushed out of my comfort zone, theoretically as well as technically. To me, Jaco’s lines always created a thick groove, and yet they are some of the busiest bass lines I have heard. I want to be able to place notes like he did.

Maybe I will record and post stuff I have learned to YouTube.

I have run a GNU/Linux system as my main operating system for a little while now. I started on Red Hat 6 back in ‘99, but since then I’ve used Debian, Slackware, DSL, Knoppix, and others at various points. The latest has been Ubuntu. I picked up 7.04 and have been pretty satisfied since then. After marriage and a kid, I appreciated how simple Ubuntu was to set up. The default settings were livable, with a little tweaking.

Recently, I have started getting the itch again to tinker, and Ubuntu’s default setup is no longer satisfying me (nothing wrong with it, just not what I want). So after some deliberation, I am going back to a Slack-based distro: ZenWalk.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting here after a long day in Paris. If you will excuse my indulgence, I want to write down what happened today.  It was a fun, exhausting, rewarding day. I warn you, this is a bit long. Read the rest of this entry »

Per Prof. Downing’s suggestions, here is a quick overview of Mercurial: Read the rest of this entry »

Love cannot be defined in one thought. I will attempt several, each of which I believe capture some of the essence of what true love is:

Love is a commitment first and foremost. A commitment to honor, cherish, and protect the object of your love. A commitment to the emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being of the one you love. A commitment to think of your loved one first and to provide for their needs first. True love says no-one and no-thing can dissuade my commitment to you. True love is very emotional, but true love is not an emotion. True love is a commitment. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems fitting to me that the first entry in my blog is a justification of its existence. After all, the thought that my words deserve their own shrine on the Internet feels rather arrogant. However, I think there are many good reasons to blog on a semi-regular basis. Let me show you.

Read the rest of this entry »