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Jan., 1998 to Oct., 1998
Continued Development of Violin skills - Am now studying chamber music, playing regularly in a string quartet.
My skills as a chamber musician are in demand, and I've been asked to join the Chamber Musicians
of Northern California. This is remarkable progress considering that I have playing the violin less than two years,
and when I started back to playing in December, of 1996, I could not play the simplest beginning exercise without
stumbling.
July, 1997 to Jan., 1998
Continued Development of Violin skills - Garnered ideas from many sources, but the primary source
of inspiration was the ideas of Edwards Deming about achieving quality.
Largest chunk of time was devoted to the violin. Worked through over 100 musical etudes, studies,
and caprices by Wohlfahrt, Kayser, Dont, Masas, Kreutzer, and others during second half of 1997. Made substantial
progress so that I am currently working on unaccompanied Bach Sonatas, Vitali Chaconne, Saint-Saens Introduction
and Ronda Capriccioso, and others.
1997 was the first time in my life that I played "fiddle" music by ear with other musicians.
Attended weekly "jam" sessions, I found a knack for playing extemporaneous harmony. Classical musicians
call these obbligato, apagitura, or descant, fiddle players call this doing a "lick". In any case it
has be extremely fulfilling to stand toe to toe with a small group of experienced down home musicians and wrap
a few nice sounds around their songs. I have learned to do this with just about any slow, familiar harmonic tune.
This experience brings with it a considerable amount of personal satisfaction and self confidence
that the decisions and directions I have chosen over the last two years have been the right ones. There is no doubt
in my mind that these kind of efforts will eventually take me beyond the mediocrity that traps many of us.
Apr., 1995 to Feb., 1997
Time out for Personal Interests and Development - Took Time Out to explore miscellaneous alternative avenues
in a way which was not possible in the context of full time consulting. Some were Smalltalk related, some were
not.
Revisited ideas for Computer Managed Instruction. These second generation
concepts which germinated from my 10,000 hours of on-line experience working with the PLATO system in the 1970s,
a system developed at the Computer Education Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Champlain-Urbana.
Revised ideas about CMI in light of the works of Dr. Edwards Deming, current multimedia, Internet, and personal
violin learning experiences. Plans include development using Gemstone for a variety of Instructional areas. Efforts
are proprietary and at very early stages, but may one day be the basis for significant advances in technical high
tech training.
Learned about the concepts of Edwards Deming, the man who brought
quality to Japan in the 1950s. This included reading more than 15 books about his ideas.
Developed various small Smalltalk applications as programming experiments
and just for fun. This included research for software development aids. Demonstrated full screen graphic display
rates as fast as screen refresh in Smalltalk. Wrote various other small applications.
Ongoing experiment to apply Deming concepts of improving quality to violin playing just before Christmas, 1996. The experiment is currently on-going. Took up practicing the violin again
after layoff of over 25 years. The experiment is to observe how to achieve quality for very difficult tasks. Learned
much about achieving quality. With the help of Deming’s ideas and other concepts, lead me to accomplish in a few
months what had been elusive during 10 years in University of Arizona orchestra as well as a year in the Tucson
Symphony.
Practiced Physical discipline by swam 2 miles a day part of this time.
Studied the Nature of Free Enterprise. Read "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, and "The Visible Hand" by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Have developed an on going personal interest in the fundamentals of Free Enterprise.
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