The sofa was soaked in sweat when the ambulance arrived. I couldn't reach my phone, so I could only type in "Help" to a neighbor on Facebook. The room was spinning and I could barely sit up, and I was so sleepy, and the medical workers would not let me rest and even in the ICU. I had to stay awake for the tests. I learned later that my choice of using natural medical treatment probably saved me from a stroke that could have probably been much worse. Guitars are not supposed to be healing tools.
Lita Ford said in an interview that when she began playing the guitar, she bought a Gibson SG for a few hundred dollars and now they cost a few thousand! My first guitar was a Squier fat strat found at a pawn shop for just a hundred dollars, which I later sold. I missed the fat strat sound and later found a better Squier and it's my favorite stock guitar now. I've tried buying expensive guitars and they have problems too, so Phoenix guitarist Don Petersen told me to just buy a good guitar that stays in tune and if necessary, change out the hardware with custom gear. Missouri Blues legend John Evans said that you can tell a good electric even before you plug it in by the way it handles. Buying concert DVD's and CD music is a really good way to learn from the artists and not so much their songs, but their techniques. So many people drop out because they focus on learning on a song and they lose interest.
I've not learned one single song yet and I've been playing for seven years. Backing tracks found on the Internet is a good way to learn to play in a band and what your role should be. I know chord shapes and how to do bends, slides, and I love playing slow Blues.
Since getting out of ICU, I started playing more with finger slides, because I couldn't move my left hand fast enough on the fret board. Now five months later and daily practice, I can do hammer-on's and pull-off's, bends and more, but tapping is still not going to happen on the fretboard for a while. Maybe never. A VA doctor told me that I'll keep having micro strokes and because I choose the herbal path, there is really nothing they can do. But pills nearly killed me and I figure that the music path has already extended my life.
Today, a friend asked what was wrong, because I seem different. There is no stopping the end of a song and the outro has to come sooner or later. There should be plenty of sustain until then and happiness is the key.
A blog dedicated to music and the performers, as well as beginners
Friday, October 23, 2015
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
The magic of music for a happy ending
Lana Jefferies Music LLC is no more and R.D. Kepple Consulting LLC is working with Dell Mack Productions LLC, in a joint operation. It is still a place of healing in the woods on the Enchanted Farmstead so named in honor of my late wife, Dora and my friend, Stevie Nicks and I like happy endings.
The name, Lana Jefferies Music LLC, was created to help a friend in a bad way.
Lana Jefferies-Rask was a friend who had a surgical procedure go wrong and the music company was created to give her purpose and she enjoyed making "Lana's Adventures," a day in the life of the CEO when she was outdoors with her friends. No one made any money, but the Missouri woman met a man from Colorado and they fell in love and settled in Kansas. So it was a happy ending after all!
Lana asked to discontinue the company when she started a brand new life that music helped to create for her.
The music and video studio with Green Screen created in a converted hay barn continues to improve the sound quality, appearance and professionalism. The independent studio works with production companies in the Ozarks when they need Green Screen shots with a low budget.
The studio now works with elderly music producer Delbert "Dell Mack" McKinnon and Dannie O'Reilly and they helped to create "Rick's Place," the studio in the hay barn. There is something magical about working with professionals who had their heyday on the stage and retired to fading away in songwriting. Being forgotten is just something that I personally do not agree with and if a music professional or amateur musician or singer wants to record, Dell Mack will work with them.
Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks had a telephone intervention with me years ago and she said, "You've grieved for your wife long enough" and it was Pathological Grieving where I could not let go. Every word I wrote in a story was about Dora. Stevie advised that I learn to play the electric guitar and at the time I thought it was the dumbest idea that I ever heard. Boy, was I ever wrong!
Learning to play the electric guitar helped me to shed all that pain from my heart and I am seriously not the same person that I was in 2004. My late parents always said that I was tone deaf and I discovered that I had to learn what the specific notes sounded like, so anyone can play music if they practice enough.
The music professionals have all been very understanding and very nice. I never dreamt in my life that I'd be let into that world and I'm very grateful. As a retired journalist, I now work for free to help some of the most amazing people in entertainment!
Songwriter Billy Arr has been a great friend to me and so was the late Basil Ray Campbell aka Ray Carson, and Edgel Groves Sr. as well as Andy Powell of Wishbone Ash. There have been so many people who I thought were uncaring people unless it was about money, but I was seriously wrong. They cared. About me. That's just weird. It was like an army of entertainers decided to secretly save my life. That's got to be of God!
This little studio of mine in a hay barn may never be a million dollar outfit like The Village Studio in Los Angeles, but maybe some good will come of all this crazy behavior of mine. The Aspie mind is extremely creative and I'd like to help the entertainment professionals. BTW, The Village even invited me to tour that legendary place where magic is made!
Lana Jefferies Music LLC is no more, except a name, but the studio is still a reminder that life can start over again, no matter how old you are. People do care about each other and in this time of so much violence, I think this story is pretty cool. It's like a Cinderella story where the pumpkin and the mice turn into a studio and a band and the only thing that is lost, is the pain.
The name, Lana Jefferies Music LLC, was created to help a friend in a bad way.
Lana Jefferies-Rask was a friend who had a surgical procedure go wrong and the music company was created to give her purpose and she enjoyed making "Lana's Adventures," a day in the life of the CEO when she was outdoors with her friends. No one made any money, but the Missouri woman met a man from Colorado and they fell in love and settled in Kansas. So it was a happy ending after all!
Lana asked to discontinue the company when she started a brand new life that music helped to create for her.
The music and video studio with Green Screen created in a converted hay barn continues to improve the sound quality, appearance and professionalism. The independent studio works with production companies in the Ozarks when they need Green Screen shots with a low budget.
The studio now works with elderly music producer Delbert "Dell Mack" McKinnon and Dannie O'Reilly and they helped to create "Rick's Place," the studio in the hay barn. There is something magical about working with professionals who had their heyday on the stage and retired to fading away in songwriting. Being forgotten is just something that I personally do not agree with and if a music professional or amateur musician or singer wants to record, Dell Mack will work with them.
Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks had a telephone intervention with me years ago and she said, "You've grieved for your wife long enough" and it was Pathological Grieving where I could not let go. Every word I wrote in a story was about Dora. Stevie advised that I learn to play the electric guitar and at the time I thought it was the dumbest idea that I ever heard. Boy, was I ever wrong!
Learning to play the electric guitar helped me to shed all that pain from my heart and I am seriously not the same person that I was in 2004. My late parents always said that I was tone deaf and I discovered that I had to learn what the specific notes sounded like, so anyone can play music if they practice enough.
The music professionals have all been very understanding and very nice. I never dreamt in my life that I'd be let into that world and I'm very grateful. As a retired journalist, I now work for free to help some of the most amazing people in entertainment!
Songwriter Billy Arr has been a great friend to me and so was the late Basil Ray Campbell aka Ray Carson, and Edgel Groves Sr. as well as Andy Powell of Wishbone Ash. There have been so many people who I thought were uncaring people unless it was about money, but I was seriously wrong. They cared. About me. That's just weird. It was like an army of entertainers decided to secretly save my life. That's got to be of God!
This little studio of mine in a hay barn may never be a million dollar outfit like The Village Studio in Los Angeles, but maybe some good will come of all this crazy behavior of mine. The Aspie mind is extremely creative and I'd like to help the entertainment professionals. BTW, The Village even invited me to tour that legendary place where magic is made!
Lana Jefferies Music LLC is no more, except a name, but the studio is still a reminder that life can start over again, no matter how old you are. People do care about each other and in this time of so much violence, I think this story is pretty cool. It's like a Cinderella story where the pumpkin and the mice turn into a studio and a band and the only thing that is lost, is the pain.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
A New Kind of Publishing Company
Lana Jefferies Music LLC (LJM) is a music and video recording company, but the website at http://www.lanajefferiesmusicllc.com/ sells much more than just music and films.
Now if you're an independent artist, writer, musician, singer, etc., you can sell your work with LJM as a downloadable product! If it's a story, we can do fact checking and proofreading and the rates are variable for this service.
So what if you're a singer, without a band, or a gifted musician far above your friends and need to record with other professionals? The computer software exists to use a music track to email to our company and we mix it with local artists or your friends on other continents. The first album of Toto was created like this and the mixing software has enormously changed since the 80's! Then each time a sale is made on the website, the band gets a huge chunk of the money!
The secret to our eventual success is keeping costs very low, using state-of-the-art software and trying to work with other startup companies and studios around the world.
Visit our website today and check us out. The prices are kept low to help people and to make more global sales for our clients. You might even be invited to join the Board of Members on the corporation and hold meetings via video-conferencing. It is a NWO of doing things and the average person will benefit from it. Namaste.
Now if you're an independent artist, writer, musician, singer, etc., you can sell your work with LJM as a downloadable product! If it's a story, we can do fact checking and proofreading and the rates are variable for this service.
So what if you're a singer, without a band, or a gifted musician far above your friends and need to record with other professionals? The computer software exists to use a music track to email to our company and we mix it with local artists or your friends on other continents. The first album of Toto was created like this and the mixing software has enormously changed since the 80's! Then each time a sale is made on the website, the band gets a huge chunk of the money!
The secret to our eventual success is keeping costs very low, using state-of-the-art software and trying to work with other startup companies and studios around the world.
Visit our website today and check us out. The prices are kept low to help people and to make more global sales for our clients. You might even be invited to join the Board of Members on the corporation and hold meetings via video-conferencing. It is a NWO of doing things and the average person will benefit from it. Namaste.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Why sponsoring a film is a good investment
An investor recently told me that putting money into sponsoring independent films and music is a good investment, because as the world grows progressively worse, people will watch more movies and listen to more music. In fact, the statistics prove this claim to be true and downloading sales of entertainment is increasing.
Cisco recently published statistics on the increasing numbers of laptops, which is the workhorse of marketing, to the phenomenal increase of smartphones! Cisco maintains that despite the number of smartphones outnumbering laptops, the users of computers on WiFi gain the greatest hits in marketing any product!
The kind of film and music is especially important as well.
Lana Jefferies Music LLC filmmakers prefer making videos with a positive message and we hope to be moving to comedy. Will Rogers once said that it's best to convey a social message in a funny way, rather than a critical, scolding manner.
It's very likely that Hollywood studios with big budgets are going to lose money to independent film studios, because of the cost. The outsourcing of movies is becoming a legal nightmare, because international copyright laws are almost impossible to enforce, until the global government is completely established in the next 10 to 15 years.
So investing money into starting companies like Lana Jefferies Music LLC, or studios closer to you, may not gain big profits soon, but continual injections of small amounts of cash will result in big payoffs. Independent studios are the future of entertainment business and they can be as little as the couch and a laptop, or a converted barn to a studio with a Green Screen.
Cisco recently published statistics on the increasing numbers of laptops, which is the workhorse of marketing, to the phenomenal increase of smartphones! Cisco maintains that despite the number of smartphones outnumbering laptops, the users of computers on WiFi gain the greatest hits in marketing any product!
The kind of film and music is especially important as well.
Lana Jefferies Music LLC filmmakers prefer making videos with a positive message and we hope to be moving to comedy. Will Rogers once said that it's best to convey a social message in a funny way, rather than a critical, scolding manner.
It's very likely that Hollywood studios with big budgets are going to lose money to independent film studios, because of the cost. The outsourcing of movies is becoming a legal nightmare, because international copyright laws are almost impossible to enforce, until the global government is completely established in the next 10 to 15 years.
So investing money into starting companies like Lana Jefferies Music LLC, or studios closer to you, may not gain big profits soon, but continual injections of small amounts of cash will result in big payoffs. Independent studios are the future of entertainment business and they can be as little as the couch and a laptop, or a converted barn to a studio with a Green Screen.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Tracking the future
Our company is owned by outdoors folks. We watch the patterns of nature and follow the animal sign. And so that translates into succeeding in film production and perhaps crossing the boundaries of genres, because that's where the trail leads.
We did a kayaking video and when it was released, the short film did wonderfully.
Then it rained and the rivers flooded, but the kayakers still came.
The entertainment business is a lot like farming in that it's high risk, high stress, but always challenging. It's worth the trouble to create something from nothing.
Our computer tech has been pestering us to use remote controlled devices for filming such as helicopters and cameras on a track for one reason or another. A RC helicopter with a live camera feed to a laptop would be great for deer hunting intelligence, until it gets hung up in a tall oak tree.
Then we've been toying with the idea of filming model cities created on a card table without actually being there. We'd simply use a Green Screen with actors.
Basically, we like creating great videos for as little money as possible and with the hope to make a pretty decent living one day so that we can hire professionals, build new studios, buy lots of new cameras, remote controlled devices, booms, more real estate for sets, and other gear. Also, getting paychecks might be nice.
Mostly our ideas of how to compete in the future comes from sitting in the forest and talking about the next video while hunting. There is no greater board room. Pizza delivery is a bit of a problem, but when you're tracking the future, there's often no conveniences around. It's all pioneer territory.
We did a kayaking video and when it was released, the short film did wonderfully.
Then it rained and the rivers flooded, but the kayakers still came.
The entertainment business is a lot like farming in that it's high risk, high stress, but always challenging. It's worth the trouble to create something from nothing.
Our computer tech has been pestering us to use remote controlled devices for filming such as helicopters and cameras on a track for one reason or another. A RC helicopter with a live camera feed to a laptop would be great for deer hunting intelligence, until it gets hung up in a tall oak tree.
Then we've been toying with the idea of filming model cities created on a card table without actually being there. We'd simply use a Green Screen with actors.
Basically, we like creating great videos for as little money as possible and with the hope to make a pretty decent living one day so that we can hire professionals, build new studios, buy lots of new cameras, remote controlled devices, booms, more real estate for sets, and other gear. Also, getting paychecks might be nice.
Mostly our ideas of how to compete in the future comes from sitting in the forest and talking about the next video while hunting. There is no greater board room. Pizza delivery is a bit of a problem, but when you're tracking the future, there's often no conveniences around. It's all pioneer territory.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Why build a studio?
The music and video studio of +Lana Jefferies Music LLC is near Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and it's owned by Lana Jefferies with a daughter interested in music, and +Rick Kepple, a disabled veteran, widower and writer/photographer, as well as +Dale Allen and he enjoys learning music when he's not fixing computers.
Music education helped Kepple when he was on prescribed morphine and felt suicidal. In fact, he listened to +Stevie Nicks and +Fleetwood Mac music religiously, sometimes 24/7 and turned off the satellite TV. Eventually, he began practicing a used +Squier Bullit Strat and a 10 watt +Peavey amp. Within two months, Kepple took himself off of morphine, on hydrocodone. Other guitars like +ESP, +Epiphone and a variety of amps from +Roland and +Marshall helped take him off of the narcotic.
Blood tests proved Kepple's instincts correct and despite not taking any prescription medication and going to all herbals, the cholesterol and hypertension dropped. Pain was managed by a change in lifestyle. Kepple is an +Army veteran and a believer in the organic lifestyle example presented by rock legend, Stevie Nicks.
"Time and time again, troops, their families, military and medical professionals tell us that arts can make a difference in the quality of life for troops and their families," said Rear Admiral Alton L. Stocks, Commander of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. "We are excited to examine those claims through research and practice." http://www.musictherapy.org/new_music_therapy_program_supports_wounded_warriors/
Dale Allen, the tech for the company, began practicing guitar after seeing the changes in Kepple. The two had worked together when R.D. Kepple Publishing was in business during the early part of the 21st Century. In fact, Allen has noticed significant changes in nerve endings healing in his fingers and faster thinking while he is working on computers! Allen is a Navy veteran.
Lana Jefferies believes in the power of music too after she saw the positive changes in her daughter after joining a music program at +Laquey Missouri school.
Rick Kepple and +Wheatware.com presented Lana's daughter with a beautiful, red Squier Strat, because music helps kids to learn to release their emotions in a healthy way and music education can also increase learning and test scores.
A Department of Veterans Affairs counselor told Kepple that the VA also encourages veterans to study music and uses music in therapy sessions. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/sep/04/music-helps-vets-control-symptoms-ptsd/
While the trio at Lana Jefferies Music LLC hope to work with established motion picture studios and seasoned music professionals, and some are already eager to work with idealistic rural Americans and it shows in the video, Angels in Disguise ... http://youtu.be/4AOLQuwZUaw
"The coolest reason to build the studio is to make the world a better place to live," Lana Jefferies said. A studio can be in an extra room or even a converted outbuilding.
Music education helped Kepple when he was on prescribed morphine and felt suicidal. In fact, he listened to +Stevie Nicks and +Fleetwood Mac music religiously, sometimes 24/7 and turned off the satellite TV. Eventually, he began practicing a used +Squier Bullit Strat and a 10 watt +Peavey amp. Within two months, Kepple took himself off of morphine, on hydrocodone. Other guitars like +ESP, +Epiphone and a variety of amps from +Roland and +Marshall helped take him off of the narcotic.
Blood tests proved Kepple's instincts correct and despite not taking any prescription medication and going to all herbals, the cholesterol and hypertension dropped. Pain was managed by a change in lifestyle. Kepple is an +Army veteran and a believer in the organic lifestyle example presented by rock legend, Stevie Nicks.
"Time and time again, troops, their families, military and medical professionals tell us that arts can make a difference in the quality of life for troops and their families," said Rear Admiral Alton L. Stocks, Commander of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. "We are excited to examine those claims through research and practice." http://www.musictherapy.org/new_music_therapy_program_supports_wounded_warriors/
Dale Allen, the tech for the company, began practicing guitar after seeing the changes in Kepple. The two had worked together when R.D. Kepple Publishing was in business during the early part of the 21st Century. In fact, Allen has noticed significant changes in nerve endings healing in his fingers and faster thinking while he is working on computers! Allen is a Navy veteran.
Lana Jefferies believes in the power of music too after she saw the positive changes in her daughter after joining a music program at +Laquey Missouri school.
Rick Kepple and +Wheatware.com presented Lana's daughter with a beautiful, red Squier Strat, because music helps kids to learn to release their emotions in a healthy way and music education can also increase learning and test scores.
A Department of Veterans Affairs counselor told Kepple that the VA also encourages veterans to study music and uses music in therapy sessions. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/sep/04/music-helps-vets-control-symptoms-ptsd/
While the trio at Lana Jefferies Music LLC hope to work with established motion picture studios and seasoned music professionals, and some are already eager to work with idealistic rural Americans and it shows in the video, Angels in Disguise ... http://youtu.be/4AOLQuwZUaw
"The coolest reason to build the studio is to make the world a better place to live," Lana Jefferies said. A studio can be in an extra room or even a converted outbuilding.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Angels in Disguse
+"Angels in Disguise, is good," said +Jim McAllister on his +"Reflections on music, movies, TV, sports, American History, and other stuff" Google blog at http://jmcallister.blogspot.com/
"Angels in Disguise," is the latest video created by the meager staff of Lana Jefferies Music LLC near the small town of Richland, Missouri USA.
Lana Jefferies Music LLC CEO +Lana Jefferies, the daughter of a Baptist preacher, writer/photographer +Rick Kepple videos and edits the short films, and computer tech +Dale Allen all work together to do what many people say can't be done; work with established music artists and larger movie companies to help create better videos. The trio are a team from different experiences and education, and working together to make original videos sometimes in a genre all their own.
+Edgel Groves Sr., the author of the song, "Angels in Disguise," and featured in the short film of the same name, provided his work to LJM, citing the sincerity of the video production professionals working out of a converted hay barn. They keep their budget low and are making videos that Groves calls, "Earthy and Real."
The barn stalls where goats were once born were removed and a Green Screen was installed for special effects in films yet to come. The lean-to where the livestock once stood out of the rain, now encloses the control booth. The conversion isn't complete since the idealistic trio have been funding the new construction themselves while struggling to pay bills. But the studio is "functional," meaning that recordings can be done with unpainted walls, except in the studio itself. There, sound and video merge to create from the imagination. Funding is still needed to hire the backhoe for trenching and installing a septic system.
Investors are impressed by the remarkable achievements of the inexperienced crew, but so far no one has bought into the little company. No +Crowdfunding donations. They just have faith in God that their company can succeed.
To music artists and producers, that faith alone seems enough to risk working with the little company in the hay barn.
For more information about the little company or to buy Edgel Groves new songs, visit the Lana Jefferies Music LLC Facebook page, email rdkeppleconsulting@yahoo.com or just call 573-765-2506.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)