I enjoy writing short tutorials to get people started on something that may have seemed intimidating to them before, and I thought it might be fun to write up something that isn’t related to software but that I have thought a lot about in the last 15 years: jazz bass playing.

While listening to the song Dear Life on the new Beck album, I wondered who played the piano on the Beatles' Martha My Dear. A web search found the website Beatles Bible, where the Martha My Dear page showed that it was Paul.

A few months ago I saw a call for contributions of recordings of original holiday songs for a CD to be called “A Charlottesville Songwriters Christmas” to benefit a local charity. Around here there seems to be a law that when you name a business you have to name it either Jefferson (whatever), Piedmont (whatever), or Blue Ridge (whatever), so I decided to write a song whose name is a variation on “Blue Christmas” called “Blue Ridge Christmas.” I thought about…