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The annual Jazz Festival in UmeÃ¥ has ended for the fortieth time. It’s a great experience with all kinds of jazz and its magnitude and the caliber of visiting artists competes with (surpasses) Stockholm Jazz Festival. Miles has been here, Duke, Ella and Coltrane also. Unfortunately I missed them, but I have seen John Scofield, Wayne Shorter, Mike Stern and Joe Zawinul. This year the highlights were Richard Bona, Etienne Mbappe and Robben Ford.

Richard Bona was great, of course. He played the whole range from the sweetest ballads to storming funk. He can do anything he wants with his voice and with his bass. In one song he sang together with himself (using a looping machine) in multiple voices. No instruments, just Mr Bona himself, from the lowest bass to the highest pitch. It was awesome and the audience was captivated.

Robben Ford gave us a lot of 12 bar blues roundups during two hours. But he and his crew were good, really good. During the concert I was placed so that I could see the hands of the bass player, Terry Carlton (son of Larry Carlton). Terry was a very nice acquaintance. I watched him groove during different kinds of blues songs and I was inspired and got something into my system. I will definitively push the limits a bit more, when we play the blues in my band. Lesson learned: Always place yourself so that you can see the bass player!

Last night I discussed something interesting with my daughter Pernilla (13). Have you ever felt like you are having ghosts in the corners of your life? Normally you do notice them. You can be completely unaware of them, but then a certain situation triggers their action and they jump out, scare you and affect your behavior. Yes, I know there are no real ghosts, but this picture was born in our conversation and I like it.

You react in the situation in a different way than you wanted to. We discussed how we, both I and she, could react in a childish way that we afterwards were embarrassed over. We agreed on that if we could the see the repeating patterns that triggers the reaction and identify the ghost, that is describe them with words, part of the battle is won. You have to try to “step out of yourself” and look at your reaction, perhaps together with a friend. You are not to condemn yourself, but just look at what happened.

It is interesting how we could agree and understand things like this together by finding a common language to describe the concepts. It is also fascinating how adult and child can help each other to grow as individuals.

I continue to report observations and advancements concerning the bass part of my life, a part that contributes to much joy and satisfaction in my life.

As you know, I like to experiment, so after a year with floating thumb (see earlier posts); I went back to the “standard” way of having your thumb resting on the pickup or B-/E-string. I noticed a little bit more edge on the funky feeling and when playing fast. With the floating thumb technique the fingers are bent and with the standard technique the fingers are more straight. Obviously I still have more control over fast movements when the fingers are straight. I believe that the finger should hit the string with enough speed to get a good sound and that might do the difference. There is not much difference, but enough to be noticed and felt.

As the speed of a song increases, I tend to play more and more staccato-like, that is rate of tone/pause decreases. I don’t let the string ring enough. This behavior was also improved as I changed to standard technique.

This month I am working on “Charlie” by Red Hot Chili Peppers and I find it easier to capture the funky feeling with straight fingers. I felt kind of liberated when I did the change back. Still floating thumb has its advantages, especially when playing on the G-string. I might end up using both at different times.

We live pretty close to a forest and me and my dog have wandered to and fro there, continually expanding our territory and learning to find our way around. Sometimes we tread the common tracks, but most of the time we make our own paths. Very seldom we meet someone. The animals we have met are mostly birds, like woodpeckers and black grouse. I have almost felt like it was me, Viggo and our forest.

Then one day a week ago I found footprints along my path, footprints of a bear. The population of brown bears is increasing in Sweden by 5% per year, though we do not have nearly as many as there are in Canada for example. Viggo wasn’t that interested, so the track must have been a few days old. I can tell you that a look around a bit more now when I walk in the forest and I always have my camera with me. I might have big company.

I am reading Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough, an architect and Michael Braungart, a chemist. I read a few pages every day, just to make it last as long as I can. Why? Because I like the book very much and it is food for my thoughts.

The subtitle is “Remaking the Way We Make Things”. The book is a manifesto that presents a new approach to manufacturing. It encourages a paradigm shift and the term “eco-effectiveness” is coined. They challenge the conventional view that we should recycle, reduce our emissions and reduce our use of natural resources. Doing less harm is good, but it is even better to do good. They mean that what we call recycling is really downcycling. Buildings, neighborhoods and even whole cities can be entwined with surrounding ecosystems in ways that are mutually enriching.

Their idea is to not try to reduce waste, but to eliminate the concept of waste altogether, while preserving commerce and allowing for human nature. Sounds like a dream doesn’t it? The authors work together along this path and have created products and buildings in a new and radical way. Even the book itself is special. It is made of fully recyclable plastic with non-toxic ink. The live in their vision.

It is easy to be pessimistic about man. We have ruined and spoiled nature. We fight each other. But man has also achieved great things, even landed on the moon. Couldn’t we use our ingenuity to live in symbiosis with nature? Couldn’t we learn from the ecosystem of the nature and build our own ecosystem to reflect that. The authors think it is possible. I almost begin to believe also…

Have you ever been in that situation that you wanted to rename a directory and you couldn’t? Windows tells you “used by another user or program” and you know for sure that you haven’t any programs using that directory. What to do? Use an excellent program called Process Explorer from Sysinternals, that tells you which program that is holding the resource. Select Find >> Find Handle in the menu and write the name of the directory in the search field and press the search button.

This happened to me 5 minutes ago. What program was cheating on me? Acrobat Reader. I had viewed a pdf-document in this directory together with documents in other folders. Even though Acrobat now wasn’t displaying this particular document, the lock was still on the directory. I had to close down Acrobat completely to be able to rename. The UltraEdit and even Microsoft Word behaves like this sometimes.