Legato tuning inspirational update

[theharpguysandiego]

Hi, all,

The following is my progress and experience over the last few months. I went from being discouraged to hopeful and then elated and super excited again with my musical endeavors. Hopefully this inspires you if you're in a similar rut I was stuck in for the previous 6 months. If you have questions please send me an email.

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It's been around 9 months since my last post in September 2025.  At that time I was practicing an hour per day and seeing good improvement.

Then I took my 86 year old mother and her dog on a 3000 mile 3 week road trip to visit family.

When I got back I found that I had lost my motivation to play music. I figured it was because I was wiped out from the trip, making sure everything went well considering I was responsible for my elderly mom and her dog.

So, I just waited for my motivation to return. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. I did some research and I think it had something to do with dopamine. I probably exhausted it because I was so hyper focused on taking care of things during the trip with my mom.

So, 6 months passed and I didn't play at all. Then I started to worry that if I started playing again that I would suck and have to work a long time to get my skills back. That made me even more reluctant to resume playing.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and just force myself back into playing. This was around 3 months ago. 

Much to my surprise, it didn't take long to get back to where I was 6 months earlier. I think my practice regimen and the Legato tuning were a major factor.  I was encouraged, and my motivation returned.

I was completing my practice regimen in 45 minutes before my trip, and now I'm completing it it 35 minutes. I think this points to the benefits of the Legato tuning and my disciplined practice regimen.

On top of that, I had major computer problems that I was putting off dealing with. If you've watched my YouTube videos,  you can see where i had to switch over to Linux and my face cam changed and was a bit clunky looking. But that's what I had to do because windows would no longer run on my 1 year old $3000 Asus laptop. Bummer. 

Well, my motivation to play segwayed into me trying to get windows back on that laptop. More epic failure. So, back to Linux permanently now. At least i have a fully functional laptop and not a $3000 brick.

I got OBS reinstalled, Kdenlive reinstalled, LibreOffice Impress back, and restored all of the slideshow files and mp4 files i had configured for them. I had 290 slides with mp4 files linked to them and I was able to get them working without having to start over. That was huge. I was dreading that because of how many setbacks I had to deal with along the way. 

BTW, if you're thinking of going down the Linux path, I'm using Ubuntu. For the software I'm using for video production (all free) you have to be aware of how they're installed. There are several software management platforms (Snap and apt are most common). If you're installing plugins, like the video background removal module for OBS, you need to install OBS with apt. The file paths used for plugins are different with Snap and apt installs. So, even after figuring all that out the background removal plugin still wouldn't work. Eventually I found an article that said the .so file might have some incompatible manifest and there's another tool you can install that corrects the manifest. It friggin worked (shocked face).

So I'm back in business. I'll be posting a new set of videos within the next week for 1st Inversion Triads.

I've been very productive. I also took time to really learn how to use the Roland GoKeys5 I bought last year before my trip. It's amazing. I have written 2 original songs with it and will upload them to YouTube pretty soon.

If that weren't enough progress in the last 3 months, I also finally got the 8K2 midi button controller that jason keene uses working. So I bought flute and trumpet SWAM sounds that i can switch between while playing. 

I'm happy to provide more details if anyone is interested in learning or implementing these solutions.

Thanks,

S...

https://youtube.com/@theharpguysandiego?si=kRUFNUkUehGvnk9D

Sent from my Galaxy

[Klaas]

Thanks for the update, Scott.

It's great to hear that your skills came back so quickly after the long break and that you've gotten your music and video setup running smoothly again. That's a lot of progress in just a few months.
This forum doesn't see a lot of activity, so there may not be many replies. (I did not even get a reply from Erik the admin of this group.)  However, we're fortunate to have a few Facebook harp groups where members are active, supportive, and willing to offer encouragement.

Cheers
Klaas