The New Neo

Especially in Virginia. But also elsewhere.

Here’s a thread to discuss it.

UPDATE 10:30 PM:

I realized something today that I hadn’t fully appreciated till now, which is that I have some sort of PTSD about elections in general as a result of 2020. It wasn’t just the November count and the roller coaster experience as state after state faded away in the wee hours of the morning and for the next couple of days. It also included what happened in the Georgia runoffs later on. The entire thing felt like some sort of Greek tragedy in which you know the ending but have to watch the whole awful thing unfold – only this time, minus the poetry.

Somewhere along the line – even before that election – I had lost trust in election integrity as the rules kept changing and the opportunities for cheating multiplied. After that election, no lead seemed safe. I hate to be this way, but that’s where I’m at, and that’s what I bring to the Virginia election.

However, with all those caveats, the news so far is encouraging, and that is good. But I’ll only believe it if it holds to the end.

Some days it just seems like roundups are the only way to handle the cascade of news. So here we go…

(1) Tomorrow is the Virginia gubernatorial election, which seems especially important because the right actually has a chance. But modern-day voting policies in a state such as Virginia can make all the difference in the world for the left:

So how do Democrats plan to ensure a McAuliffe win and a subsequent retention of power in the state and U.S. Senate? By using the same tactic they used in the 2020 national contest: profligate mail-in voting and fake grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts funding by philanthropies and wealthy leftists, a strategy revealed through Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s gift to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL).

(2) Speaking of the left and voting, there’s Wisconsin, in which the 2020 election saw subversions of Wisconsin voting law regarding residents of nursing homes. For example:

Luell also excerpted details from a document the WEC apparently distributed to nursing homes throughout the state. That document, entitled “Absentee Voting at Care Facilities in 2020,” informed “care facility administrator[s] and staff member[s]” that they could, among other things, “assist residents in filling out their ballots or certification envelops,” in express violation of Section 6.875.

Throughout the press conference, Luell made election law minutia understandable with the personal element, beginning with the fact that he launched his investigation based on a complaint his office received from “Judy.” As Luell explained, Judy discovered her mother had purportedly voted by absentee ballot in the November 3, 2020 election, even though “Shirley” had died on October 9, 2020…

In addition to Judy, the children of six other residents of Ridgewood Care Facility expressed concerns about a ballot cast in their parents’ names. The patients’ children detailed to the sheriff’s office their parent’s lack of mental capacity and other facts indicating the votes did not represent the freewill of their parents, such as the difficulty in convincing one mother to sign any documents and one father’s statement that if he couldn’t vote in person, he did not want to vote. Also, none of those other six residents had voted in the 2016 presidential election, or in any election since 2012.

More at the link.

(3) Here’s what may have happened with the shooting by Alec Baldwin, from someone who seems to know a lot about the gun involved and what Baldwin is alleged to have been doing with it when it went off. An excerpt:

The actor, as reported, was sitting in the pew of the church, practicing. He was trying mightily to get the draw-cock rhythm down and that was his focus, though dangerously adding the element of speed. It never occurred to him that the gun was loaded. (Rule No. 1: All guns are always loaded.) He was unaware that his muzzle had drifted onto the camera crew where Ms. Hutchins and director Joel Souza were crouched. (Rule No. 2: Never let your muzzle cover anything you aren’t willing to destroy.)

In practicing the draw-while-cocking integration, his index finger had wandered onto the trigger, depressing it just far enough to bypass the cocking function. (Rule No. 3: Don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.) Struggling awkwardly, he released the hammer under the impression he had cocked the pistol. He hadn’t. The hammer flew forward. The gun fired (Rule No. 4: Always know what your target is.) It is quite possible that absent knowledge of these mechanics, he still believes the gun fired on its own, out of some defect. The defect was his.

The writer also discusses the fact that Baldwin had little to no experience with firearms even as an actor.

(4) “Migration Crisis Overview: Americanists vs. Transformationists“:

Most significantly, operational control of the border is no longer in American hands. Judd declared on television on April 10, “I was asked last night who is controlling the border? Is it President Biden? Is it Kamala Harris, who is it? And my answer was, it’s the cartels. The cartels control the border now. It’s not even the Border Patrol. It’s not even the U.S. government.”

(5) Jen Psaki tests positive for COVID. I think, based on a combination of her age and vaccinated status, plus the odds in general, that she’ll be absolutely fine. But her positive test is another example of the fact that even the vaccinated can be infected though often symptom-free or with very mild symptoms (she reportedly has very mild symptoms), and that the persecution of the unvaccinated is an unwarranted power play. Anyone can get this thing, and the risk the unvaccinated pose is mainly to themselves, if that (many are already immune because they’re already had COVID, and I don’t think they pose a risk to anyone at all).

[NOTE: This post and a planned Part II (on dancing while singing) were sparked by a fairly lengthy discussion with Rufus T. Firefly and several others in the “walk and chew gum” thread, about the difficulty of singing and playing the drums simultaneously.]

The idea that it’s hard to sing and play drums at the same time – harder than to sing and play another instrument – isn’t something I just came up with on my own. In fact, being neither a musician nor a singer, I don’t feel personally qualified to say. I find it all rather difficult.

But it’s something I’ve read about quite a bit. There’s a lot of discussion about it among people who play music, a kind of accepted wisdom, although that “wisdom” is also often challenged (as it was in our own discussion).

So, is it really so very hard? And what exactly is meant by “at the same time”?

Obviously, one can’t play a wind instrument while singing, although someone like Louis Armstrong would alternate the two and did a great job of it. The main instruments we’re talking about would be the piano (or other keyboards), the guitar, and the drums, and it’s rock and pop music in particular that we’ve been talking about.

It’s not that it’s impossible to do any of this simultaneously. Obviously it isn’t at all impossible, because there are people who successfully sing and play said instrument or instruments. It appears to me, however, that there’s a continuum, and the continuum involves – for whatever reason – a progression, easiest to hardest, from rhythm guitar as easiest for singing, to keyboards, to lead guitar, to bass guitar, and then to drums. With drums I’ve read that there’s the extra difficulty of it often being a seemingly more aerobic activity, which can bring problems of breath control when singing is introduced. Watch that video of Queen’s Roger Taylor singing and drumming “I’m in Love With My Car” (featured on my previous post) if you doubt how especially strenuous drum playing can be.

Some people simply can’t sing as they play at all, so they stick to singing without playing (even though they might actually be able to play an instrument when not singing). Some people can do both when both activities are kept quite simple. Some can do it when at least one of the activities is at a more complex level, and some (rarer still) when both activities are moderately complicated. But I don’t think anyone plays his or her most complex instrumental music while simultaneously singing his or her most complex singing, although that certainly would be something to see if it could be done.

It also depends what is meant by the words “at the same time.” Most complicated playing I’ve seen that is done by singing musicians – whether it be on guitar or drums – is done during the solo instrumental sections when no one at all is singing, or is done by someone who isn’t singing at all (or just chiming in on the chorus, perhaps) while the lead singer sings. But with a person who sings lead and plays lead guitar simultaneously (such as Mark Knopfler, for example) at a high level (although some hate his singing, I happen to love it, particularly his tone and phrasing), there are usually short phrases of singing accompanied by somewhat simpler playing, and then for a moment (probably when the singer is taking a breath or resting very briefly at the end of a phrase), there’s a little riff on the instrument. Then the singing resumes, and the two modes alternate that way.

However, I must add that Knopfler’s guitar skills are such that nothing he does on the guitar sounds simple to me, because his tone is so spectacularly beautiful and idiosyncratic, so very musical and melodic and emotional, that even a single note seems complex.

If you want to see some discussions of the phenomenon of singing while playing an instrument, see this or this. There are a ton of other sites where people discuss the difficulties involved. The commonalities between bass guitar and drums and the difficulties they each present to singers apparently include the need to keep up a rhythm that doesn’t completely parallel the melody line, so it’s much easier to do if the drumming or the bass lines are very simple. Rhythm guitar apparently doesn’t present the same issues involving singing. I’ve also heard some people say that singing really well while playing piano – although much easier than singing while playing bass or the drums – is not something everyone can do, even if the person is otherwise quite musical.

Here’s a fairly tongue-in-cheek discussion from Dave Grohl:

Some other discussions you might want to look at: this one on rhythm versus lead guitar, as well as this, this, and this.

And in this video, singing teacher Ken Tamplin features the best 10 singer-drummers. So of course they exist. He professes to be able to teach people how to do it:

Also, regarding singing and dancing: it’s rare. But that’s for Part II.