Guitar vs Piano - a Comparison

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a letter asking for some help and advice as she tries to learn guitar on her own. She is already a classically trained pianist, and so is quite familiar with music, but is struggling with learning to play guitar and, as in the movie “Young Sherlock Holmes”, doesn’t quite understand why it might take her more than a few days to master it.

If you are a guitar player yourself, please stop smirking! We all know how hard it is at first, and we all know the secret handshakes, etc., but it’s time to be nice and let new members into our secret club now. Having a piano player is a privilege. She is not a spy here to learn our secrets and then scoot back to the piano player’s club meetings and divulge all our best-kept jewels. The following is the note I sent to answer her questions.

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Here’s what you need to know about that guitar playing stuff:
Start with chords. You asked what power chords are? Ok, let’s start with that.

Most of the kid’s rock music these days is all played on power chords with only down-stroke picking. This is not because there are great and wonderful musical things to be discovered, but rather because anyone can learn this style of playing VERY quickly.

And, frankly some of these kids are into it just because they look good holding a guitar and they like the 'image' and the idea of being in a rock band. For some of them, it’s as much about the tattoos, the piercings, and the parties as it is about the music. On the other hand, I have come to appreciate and enjoy some of the music I hear from some of these young rock bands. I never liked the original punk music from the 70’s but this is what that eventually evolved into and some of it is actually listenable ...to a degree.

I liked the latest album from All American Rejects, for example. But I have found that much of the ‘modern’ rock music that sounds pretty good is mostly because of the production. The production is excellent. Lots of good slick ideas, and good effects for dynamics and theatrics, and impactful moments. But the basic musical aspects of the songs themselves are sometimes relatively crude. At least on the instrument side. The vocals sometimes have some interesting aspects to them. I was planning to use a ‘modern rock’ sound for some film score work I am currently working on, and so I studied a few songs from several bands in this category, and took the time to learn the songs, but I was amazed when I saw just how simple they actually were. It’s mostly all just 3-note power chords, with just rare diversions from that. I was really expecting something a little more complicated.

But it's hard to complain when you look at Blues music, which some argue is all just one song with a million verses. The pattern is so similar, that many blues songs sound the same. (But at least they use jazz chords!)

If you take a modern band like All American Rejects, or Green Day, or Billy Talent, or whatever, and then find a song of theirs you like and look up the TAB music on the web, you might find they all use a pretty similar structure of chords. It’s the same ‘shape’ of finger placements and it just slides up and down the neck from one position to the next to make different chords.

There are exceptions, of course. This is a bit of a cynical oversimplification and it's unfair to a degree, but a lot of stuff in the past 5 years IS like this and I’m trying to get that point across. You really can play a large percentage of ‘modern’ rock music with this basic chord structure. You’ll be amazed at how simple it is. But, for a beginner – it’s tremendous fun, because you’ll be able to play along with songs on the radio in no time, with almost no practice at all.

A POWER chord:
A power chord is a major-toned chord, heavy on the 5th interval which, when cranked up loud and distorted, sounds ‘powerful’. I have my own full 6 string form, but here is the form the kids are using these days:
It is three notes, basically. The root, the 5th, and the octave. 1,5,8. These are played on the 6th, 5th, and 4th strings usually, but then they sometimes move the pattern over one string so it’s the 5th, 4th, and 3rd strings. The 6th string is the fattest one. The one closest to your chest when looking down on the guitar as you play it. The lowest sounding one. Tuned to E. (sometimes tuned down to D for ‘Dropped-D” tuning. That allows the player to simply bar one single finger across three strings and move it up and down. Cranked up, it sounds heavy and mean, but is the lowest common denominator among guitar players. Many guitar players don’t consider this to be really ‘playing’, yet there are some people making a living doing this.)

Place your index finger on the 5th fret. That is an A note. Now place your 3rd finger two frets up on the 7th fret, and bridge it across the 5th and 4th strings. The note from the 5th string is an E, and the note from the 4th string is the next higher A again. Just play those three strings and no others. Down-stroke with the pick, and that’s it. Must be played with thunderous volume and distortion on high! Distortion is part of the chord. (actually true. There are harmonics that come from distorting this particular chord, that don’t appear when you play it clean. Try it both ways and you’ll see.)

Now take that same pattern/finger positioning and simply slide it up and down the neck to different positions. And that’s what they do. Just like that. At the 5th fret, it’s an A chord, at the 7th, it’s a B. At the 8th, it’s a C chord, at the 10th, it’s a D, and so on. I read a couple of interviews in Guitar Player where some punk guitar players say that they have even removed the top 2 strings because they never use them. They play it like a four string. One guy said he only ever plays the two bottom strings. (The 'bottom strings' refers to the bass ones. ”Top strings” refers to the thinnest, highest tuned ones, closest to your legs) In super-distortion mode, with screaming vocals, you can see how that is.

Anyway, try it. This is a major power chord. It covers much of the modern punk style rock music. Get some TABs off the web for songs you might like, and play along.

Then, once you get comfortable, you can start to expand your horizons to learn minor chords, and 7ths, 9ths, 13ths, major/minor variations on each of those, and then diminished, augmented, etc. These are the so-called “Jazz Chords”. On guitar, Jazz is much more advanced than rock. But you knew that.

Then you can get into learning scales, and you can see how the scales interact with the chords.

Guitar vs. Piano.
I have given a little thought to the comparisons between guitar and piano and as a trained classical pianist, now learning to play guitar, this discussion might be useful and interesting to you.

There is an entirely different mental concept behind the guitar as compared to the piano. The piano is simultaneously easier AND harder to play than the guitar. The ways in which the piano is more difficult to play might be as follows:
1) You are playing two things at the same time. You play one chord or melody with the left hand, while doing another with the right hand. That is hard! It is not unheard of on the guitar, but it is VERY difficult. Chet Atkins and Andre Segovia were known for this. I have also done it a bit from time to time myself, but it takes planning and huge effort because of the special challenges with the guitar by it’s very nature. But every piano player does this. It’s simply part of how the instrument is played, and to me, as a guitar player, I find it magical and impressive – and the hardest part.

2) You can play 10 notes at a time instead of 6, as on a guitar

3) It is such a high-fidelity instrument covering so much of the musical spectrum, that you are responsible for providing much more of the overall sound, most of the time.

4) In some classical music, there are some very complex arrangements written for piano. A lot of black notes on paper. You are expected to play it all, even though it might involve different melodies and different rhythms on each hand at the same time.

However, the piano is easier to play than guitar, in the following areas:
1) All the notes are in a simple sequence from low to high. There is no skipping or gaps. It is linear. The notes run from A to G in sequence, including sharps/flats. Everything is exactly where you would expect them to be.

2) The pattern of the keys repeats. What works in one octave can be repeated in the next pattern and it still works.

3) You only have to do one thing to make a sound come out. You press a key. One finger on one hand can make a sound, there is no coordination of two fingers to make a single sound come out. Without this necessary two-handed coordination for every note, it is easier to play faster on a piano than on a guitar. Imagine if you had to play everything in an octave synchronization to make any sound come out at all. Imagine the notes on your right hand had to also be played with your left hand and be coordinated to press the key at EXACTLY the same moment in order for just a single note to come out. How fast would you be able to play then? (that is what you do to play lead on a guitar. Only it’s even harder than that for other reasons I’ll explain in a bit.)

4) It is mechanically triggered. A piano is a stringed instrument, but unlike all other stringed instruments from guitars to harps, to lutes (except perhaps a hammer-dulcimer), the musician never actually touches the strings. Strictly speaking, (from a guitarists’ perspective) you don’t actually ‘play’ the piano directly. Rather, you play KEYS, which operate hammers, and the HAMMERS bang on the strings to make the sounds. They always hit the right strings, and they always hit it the same way. The only touch elements to playing it are basically how soft or hard you hit the keys, and how long you hold the keys down, and the sustain pedal.

With the guitar you have a few extra challenges:
1) As implied above, you must both finger a string at a certain fret AND pick it at exactly the same moment in order to make any sound come out at all. So playing quickly becomes a real challenge since you have to coordinate the two entirely different activities together very precisely.

2) There are 6 strings and they are all tuned to a different scale, instead of one single scale of notes as on a keyboard. So the note at the 5th fret on one string is different from the note at the 5th fret of a different string. It’s like playing on 6 keyboards at once, where each keyboard can only play one note at a time, and so to make chords you place them stacked very close together, and each keyboard is tuned to a different scale of notes, and you have to make chords by bridging across the multiple keyboards at once with your fingers inserted between the keyboards. Imagine that!

3) Because of the differently tuned strings, there are multiple forms of chords in the same register. But they have different sounds. For instance, there are 7 versions of a C-major chord that come immediately to mind. And they all sound different. This is why it is very difficult for guitarists to read music from traditional “standard notation” music written for piano and wind instruments. Wind instruments play one note at a time, so it is not an issue for them since they play no chords. Pianos play multiple notes to make chords, but there is only one scale on one keyboard. And the notes are all in sequence. Guitars have 6 strings, six scales and they are even offset for the last two. Standard notation doesn’t make sense for guitar, because the chord notes shown are ambiguous, and can be played too many ways and they all sound different. So this is why for many years, they used so-called ‘chord charts’ These are tiny pictures of which strings and frets are used and they represent named chords. Now, although that is still used, the bulk of written music is done in “Tabulature”, called TAB for short. It looks a little like standard notation because there are horizontal lines set up in bars, with notes and rests, etc., except the notes are numbers, and the horizontal lines actually represent strings. The 6 strings of the guitar. The numbers represent the fret number. Then there is a whole series of symbols that represent things you do on a guitar that are not even possible on a piano. For example sliding into a note from below or above, or bending notes, or hammer-ons, pull-offs, pinch-harmonics, tap-harmonics, etc. So standard notation, designed for piano, does not allow for these elements.

4) Guitars are sometimes retuned to a different tuning – which changes all the notes on every string at every fret. None of the old chords make sense and you have to learn all new chords. It’s like learning a completely different instrument. Imagine that you sat down to a piano and someone had jumbled all the notes that came out when you played the keys. So that when you pressed a C, an A would come out and when you press an F a B comes out, and a B is an A, a G is a C, etc. Imagine none of your chords making sense anymore. Well, that is what alternate tunings are like on a guitar. It seems crazy, but people do it to get different sounds out of the instrument. Deeper sounds, more jangly sounds, resonant sounds, unusual chord sounds, etc. All highly interpretive and highly musically creative. On my acoustic album, “Natural Light” I used 4 different tunings on those songs. Standard: EADGBE, then also, CGCGGC, CGCF#GC, and DADF#AD. As you can imagine, standard notation just doesn’t work well for this, but TAB does. You simply give a legend that shows what the 6 strings are tuned to. So you can write in TAB in any tuning – because you never have to know what the notes are even called. It’s not about named notes. It’s not about the key you’re in or the sharps and flats in that key. It’s all about string and fret position.

5) Then there is fretboard fingering. Even if you finger the right string and fret and pick the string at the same time, you might not get a sound, or the sound dies quickly with a ‘thunk’ kind of sound. This is because there is a whole world of ‘touch’ issues around how to play and feel the strings on the guitar. It is not simply a hammer hitting the string, with each string providing a separate note (like a harp). No, here, fretting/fingering techniques are extremely important. You must press firmly down on the string, just behind the fret to allow the fret to become the terminal point for the string, and therefore create a clean, resonant sound. Also, you must not pick slightly before or slightly after you finger the note – this causes slurring, and short lifespan of the note. Or no note at all. You must be PERFECTLY synchronized. Also, your fingering on the fingerboard makes a difference depending on the angle of your finger, the roll of it, the nail, the meat of it, the flatness of it, etc. Remember the game ‘Twister’? Well some chords remind me of that for the finger placements. Multiple fingers placed in ‘Twister’ mode (to make a chord) on the fingerboard present more challenges – how to hit the right note with enough pressure and yet not touch any other notes or other strings or brush them and thereby dampen them. This gets tricky. Especially since you not only have to hit this chord with all these factors in mind, but you must hit it quickly on the fly in a series of chords as part of a moving progression.

6) Also you have to develop techniques for dampening strings that should not be heard, while allowing other stings to ring through. These are advanced techniques and can be done with right or left hand depending on the situation.

7) Also, there are various different picking techniques involved. With piano, there is only hitting the key with your finger which operates the hammer which hits the string. You can hit it hard or soft to get dynamics on a given note. Here on guitar, there is certainly hitting it hard and soft, sustaining a note a long time, or making it brief, but there is also downpicking, up-stroking, circle-picking, sweep-picking, finger picking (different styles of this too – Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Banjo-style, Classical, etc.), finger-plucking/pulling, hammer-ons and pull-offs (single and two-handed), alternate picking, smooth legato-style, there is making it ‘chunk’ by palm-muffling as you downstroke, and more. There is picking on the note then bending up. There is picking on the up-bend and relaxing back down to rest note, There is sliding into the note from the fret above or below, there is pinch and tap-harmonics of a note and different techniques for each. Etc.

8) Picking with picks, picking with fingers, picking with nails, picking with combinations of picks (for the bass string side) and fingers for the treble string side.…

9) Then there is the whole world of using vibrato. Whether to twist your hand to get it with a repeated semi rotation(my friend Neil Doherty has a natural ability for this, but I could never manage this with my left hand for some reason), or do it back and forth from the wrist. Tremolo bar techniques, etc. There are many different ways to hit a note on a guitar, and they all have to do with feel. The feel of the artist and sensitivity to the guitar and how it works and how it responds. This is why it can be such a sensual instrument. Since your fingers are touching the strings directly, your approach, touch, and emotions are translated directly into the sound coming out, and so you can be very expressive in how you play, once you have the feel for it. For an example, listen to my last song – called "Goodbye". Hopefully, you’ll get a sense of this from that.

10) Then there is the whole world of guitar sound effects and how to play them as you play the guitar. Piano has no equivalent, but synthesizers do to a degree. But with guitar there are certain effects that are integral, not just in how it sounds, but in how you PLAY it – such as a wah pedal, or a volume pedal, or a voice box, even basic effects like sweep flangers, swell, autowah, and compressors, etc.

11) Then there is slide guitar playing and all the techniques there. Playing combinations of fretted notes along with the slide, some may be behind the slide. Different tunings to accommodate the slide. Muting with other fingers, plucking the strings, using fingerpicks for slide playing, etc. This is another whole artform.

But Piano is Not Easy Either...
As I mentioned above, piano is not exactly a walk in the park either. It also has it's challenges. The two instruments are different. The guitar is more limited in it's scope and is played by directly touching the strings which presents many opportunities, but also many difficulties and requires many techniques, while the piano is larger, more expansive, and more of the music is played on this instrument, but also, more mechanical, so the difficulties generally arise from the music itself rather than the limitations of the instrument, since it is easy to make chords and sounds on a piano, but difficult to play the vast sounds and complex melodies that exist in some of the more challenging piano music.

I hope I didn’t insult any piano players with this! I am always very impressed by someone who plays piano well. I’d love to learn! – if I only had the time.

The Dallas Guitar Festival

On Sunday I visited the Annual Dallas Guitar Festival, or, as it used to be called, “The Guitar Show”.
There were thousands of unique and vintage guitars and tons of amps and special effects, and all sorts of great gear. As a guitarist, it’s always wonderful to see that stuff and learn about it and play with it and try it out. There were some really fantastic guitars there. These are the kinds of guitars that you can never find in the major guitar stores. This sexy-looking flying V-style one has a handwritten sign on it that says, "No touching, playing, drooling on, stroking, or mounting this guitar." There were others with amazing paint jobs, and some that were even scuplturessuch as this one from the Dimebag Darrell Art Collection. Normally, you can go from one retail store to the next, and just see the all the same new guitars of the same major brand names, Fender, Gibson, PRS, Epiphone, Taylor, Martin, Gretch, Guild, etc., but you never seem to come across a vintage 1961 Strat for $10,000, or a vintage National guitar, No D’Angelico New Yorker or custom handmade guitars like Minarek (shown above) or Warrior guitars, or other rare custom one-off's like the left hand one shown below being played by the luthier that built it, and brought it to the show to sell. In stores you don’t see a Breedlove acoustic, and you certainly don’t see a 1957 Gibson Les Paul for over $100,000.

But here at the show, suddenly all these rare guitars come out of the woodwork (so to speak), and they are fascinating to see and touch and play and hear.
But frankly, the real reason I go to the Guitar Show is to see the performances of famous guitar players. The list is simply too long to put here, but my favorites are Phil Keaggy, and especially Johnny A.
Last year, I was late and just caught the last 10 minutes of Johnny A’s performance, but this year I was there in plenty of time.

He is a fantastic player, and he put on a great show with only a bassist and drummer. But this time, he was a bit late getting started. Johnny was getting a little perturbed by their delays in getting things setup, and you can see that in this picture. He had great technique and good energy, and he and his band were very tight as usual. Johnny is a remarkable talent no matter which style of guitar playing you prefer, and I was amazed at the variety of different excellent tones he gets out of that Gibson Johnny A signature guitar. The one that the public can buy always seems to have a sunburst finish, but I've only ever seen him play this one with a transparent black finish over a flamed maple top, and gold-metallic sides and back. His playing seemed like effortless vurtuosity. Also, he sits on a stool instead of standing up. He is a man of small stature, so I suppose that camoflages that fact. Nevertheless, he seems to move more, and to be more animated than many other guitarists that stand and walk around. He somehow manages to sit at one place but still rock and move around. It would be worth it to get his DVD. After only playing for 30 minutes, the people who run the stages were concerned about the schedule, so they were signaling him offstage to wrap it up. Then they stopped the sound halfway through the song. I guess he got the message and finally stopped playing, looked offstage and said, “You want me to quit? You want me off stage? Ok fine – I’m gone.” And with that, he unplugged his guitar and walked off. The crowd booed. Not him, but rather the stage manager who was forcing him off the stage at 1pm to make way for the next act.
I took a number of great pictures of him, including catching him at the moment when he was arguing with the offstage manager. As you see here.

I also took a number of other pictures around the show. Other acts such as George Lynch, Rick Derringer, etc. were playing in 1 hour segments all day every day for two and a half days on the various stages. I couldn’t wait around for Phil Keaggy this time, though. There was a big free-for-all jam on Friday night. There were four stages inside and outside. The large Peavey Stage in the big echoing hall room, the Guitar Center stage, another outdoor stage, the acoustic stage (shown below), a clinic stage for experts to speak on techniques for playing or guitar repair or all kinds of guitar-related activities.

I did see a great, simple device called a “Sound Enhancer” for $200. It is basically a stand for a guitar amp that captures the sound coming out the back of the amp and reflects it underneath and shoots it out the front. It’s staggering the difference in sound depth and volume and quality. You can hear it as one man is playing through a small Fender vibrolux and his assistant lifts up the amp while he plays, and then lowers it onto the stand. The change is remarkable. If I start playing out on stage instead of in the studio, I will get one for my Vetta amp.
I did buy a couple of books of guitar-building and repair techniques, and also I picked up a strat body for only $50. I plan to rebuild my EJ Frankenstrat again. I got tired of just white, so I decided to go for a traditional sunburst look. I haven’t had a sunburst strat in over 20 years.

You may see some of the amazing guitars here in some of these photos. I found an exact replica of SRV’s beat-up old strat. The one worn down to the bare wood. Every detail was faithfully reproduced, including the curled-up sticker, and every scratch and gouge. In fact, one boopth area of the show is the guitarist Hall of Fame, and Steve Ray Vaughan is shown in detail there with stories and pictures - and his original guitar is actually enshrined there in it's glass case, so it was easy to go back and forth and compare between the original SRV, and the extremely talented, clever reproduction.
Also, I saw the Gibson Johnny A signature model. It is absolutely beautiful. It plays great and sounds fantastic. It's like an ES-336 small body, but has small devil-like horns instead of the rounded 335/336 horns. And it has a gorgeous flame sunburst finish, and a Bigsby tremolo installed at birth. Just excellent. What a work of art. It's one of the few guitars I'd still like to get. Not just to add to my collection, but to actually play - a LOT! My style has come to incorporate a tremolo bar quite a bit in the last 2 years, so having that combined with Gibson Custom Shop humbucker pickups would be very nice indeed. Then there is the twin-necked PRS Double-Dragon, with incredibly ornate inlays of two fighting dragons in the body. This guitar is worth over $40,000. Or you can see the line of ‘50’s strats in every possible color each for $6300. Or there are the vintage Gibsons. The ES-335’ for around $25,000. The Les Pauls for $20,000 to $150,000. There is a 1961 3-pickup black Les Paul Custom that was for sale at $120,000. I have a white version of that exact same guitar. Mine is a 1989 and it’s in perfect condition. So it’s nice to know that if I keep it in good shape for a couple more decades, it will be worth that kind of money one day! Of course, by then, I couldn’t possibly part with it, so the actual price becomes somewhat academic, doesn’t it?

The Art of Archery

You steel your back and hold your left arm rock steady, as you draw back the powerful bow string. It has a 70 lb draw weight, so it is exactly like lifting 70 lbs with one arm. Sideways. For accuracy, you are using a wrist release, which is a strap-on wrist band with a metal pinch caliper to hold the string itself. As you bring the string further back, the resistance builds until finally the cam shifts, rolls over, and you get it past the high tension point and into the furthest draw position.
You relax, and settle into your stance. The first knuckle of your right hand nestles into the open space of your right ear as your head looks along your outstretched left arm. You open the fingers of your left hand and let the bow handle pivot on the joint between your thumb and palm, so that your closed fist does not alter the bow at that critical moment when you finally release the arrow. You peer through the tiny circular ring tied to the string which, when pulled back, is finally tilted into position to allow you to see through the little hole through to the sight.
You align the bulls-eye of the target directly in the center of the crosshairs built into the sight attached to the bow. Your main focus is on the target, but in your foreground peripheral vision you are aligning the glowing red fibre-optic dot with it. You are looking through a magnifier to bring the target bulls-eye up close and see it in enough detail.

Your left arm is a little tired from holding the tension of the incredibly taut bowstring. As you watch intently, the crosshair swims around a little. It’s impossible to hold it exactly on target when it’s such a tiny little spot the size of a quarter in the middle of a target bag 90 feet away.

You think about how you have calibrated the sight in. Is it accurate? It was calibrated for 60 feet. But is this a logical extension for 90 ft? This is not downhill or uphill, so gravity will not distort the trajectory. There is a slight breeze from the left that wasn’t there earlier when you adjusted for windage, so you move your bow to slide the crosshairs slightly to the left, but how much? How strong is the breeze, and how far will it blow an ultralight carbon arrow to the right over the course of a trajectory 100 feet long over 90 feet of ground distance? What if the breeze you are feeling is not consistent the entire distance between you and the target? You quickly calculate. You know it will be traveling at 320 feet per second, and it has to travel about 100 feet. That means it will be airborne and exposed to lateral forces for less than 1/3rd of a second. Maybe about 2 inches? 3 inches? Is that enough to allow for a 1/3rd of a second drift with this breeze? You decide about 2 inches, so in your mind's eye, you imagine the target is two bulls-eye widths to the left, and settle on that mental image.

Your arm is getting more tired and starting to burn, but still you try to hold steady. Think of becoming steady as a rock. Rigid like steel. You are a steel beam lodged firmly and deeply into the ground. You remember to keep on breathing regularly so that, because of held breath, your heartbeat doesn’t move your arm that tiny pulse that is enough to throw you off. Breathing slowly, but steadily, accepting the burn of your muscles, accepting the distance, the temperature of the air.
Then the breeze, the other people, the sounds - they all suddenly disappear. You enter a twilight zone of silence. You extend your feelings and senses out into the space around you and your senses suddenly click with the universe. THIS is the moment. You feel it, and you respond. You are one with the universe, as, with the flick of your index finger on the small trigger, the caliper pincher releases the string, and the arrow is let loose on it’s mission. It swiftly, smoothly, silently rushes at impossible speed, spinning as it drills through the air, seemingly passing between the oxygen molecules. The thin black carbon missile is unleashed and committed to it's path. It is beyond recalling now. Your part of this is done, and you did all you could do. In the blink of an eye, it has suddenly crossed the distance and the silence of the moment is broken with the satisfying thud as it punctures the target block. It’s a bulls-eye. A direct hit. All your precision and your strength, and your skill, and calculations paid off. Life is good. The moment completes, sounds return, and the day breathes again.

That, to me, is archery in a nutshell. It’s all about precision. It’s all about skill, and strength and control. It’s about that moment where there is a silence in the universe and everything is paused waiting to see where the arrow lands. The satisfaction of the successful shot.

How did I get started in this sport?

My daughter is a Girl Scout. She has been since she was six years old. One day, she came home from a Girl Scout week-long camping trip and told me excitedly about all the fun she had that week. She talked about the other girls and the campfire stories, and the little crafty tokens (called “Swaps”) that they make and trade with each other and wear pinned to their hats. When she talked about the activities, she mentioned three specific things that she really had fun with.

1) Horse riding
2) Astronomy-stargazing
3) Archery.

Horse riding remains her biggest passion to this day, and she plans to continue on to make horses her vocation. She is planning to become a veterinarian specializing in equestrian physical therapy.

Since we live in the city, there was nothing I could do to help her more with her horse riding except take her to the special horse riding camps for Girl Scouts which she is still attending now, 10 years later. For the other two activities, I took my next bonus and went out and bought a decent telescope, and some bows and arrows, thinking that I could make these some fun family outdoor activities we could all do together.

I have written about telescopes in a lot more detail earlier in this blog, but I will add here that I bought a beautiful Celestron 8” diameter Schmidt Cassegrain-style telescope with right ascension motor to track and compensate for the movement of the Earth as it rotates. However, after the initial excitement of seeing Saturn’s rings, Jupiter and it’s moons, a couple of nebula, and the mountains on our own moon, the novelty had worn off, and we rarely looked through it again. It is heavy to carry outside and it takes about an hour to set up for a session, and then it’s difficult to get it exactly right, plus all objects seen through a telescope by the naked eye are always just white – color only comes across in photos where the camera is set to long exposures. The human eye doesn’t work that way. After you’ve seen a few dozen objects and they are all just white dots, well, the novelty and excitement begins to fade, and the effort of carrying it outside and setting it up in the dark, is less appealing.

Then there was archery. I bought a kid’s longbow for my daughter, and a beautifully-made elegant wooden recurve bow for my wife, and I bought a second-hand, but high-quality compound bow for myself. They lacked the strength to draw a compound bow like mine and so wanted the recurve bow, and longbow. The bow I bought for myself was formerly owned by a well-known hunter, affectionately referred to as ‘Doc”. A retired physician who has traveled the world, including African Safaris, Australia, the Canadian Arctic, etc., and he has hunted 22 different species with his bows. I am completely uninterested in hunting, however, I do enjoy the target shooting.

That bow was a PSE Mach 6 (shown above). A fairly expensive bow. Where average bows are perhaps $300 to $500, this bow, as it was optioned, was worth about $900 brand new, and I think I paid about $400 for it. This was like the Rolls-Royce of bows. Well-built, but extremely heavy. Doc had two like this, and he only needed one, so he kept one, and traded the other in for a different style and that’s the one I bought.

I bought some aluminum arrows and a target bag, and started practicing in my backyard. I tried to get my wife and daughter to practice with me, but there was no interest after the first session. I even joined us up to a family archery club, but we only went to one session as a family, and they tried it and I think had fun, but probably not enough fun to want to bother coming back. The drive there took over an hour each way. I even bought them both compound bows that were adjusted to very light draw weights, so they could shoot them easily. Still no luck. They just didn't seem interested.

But I continued to practice as my own interest grew. I became fascinated by the concepts of precision involved in archery. Shooting a gun is very simple, by comparison. You simply aim the gun at the target, hold it steady, and squeeze the trigger. That’s about it. The bullet is small and light and very fast and it travels straight to wherever you were pointing the gun when you pulled the trigger.

But archery is very different. First, you do not simply aim the arrow at the target because the arrow is a long heavy item that travels much slower than a bullet, and so it does not travel exactly straight through the air. Instead, it arcs through the air with a graceful trajectory. It lifts up at first, and then descends down on the second half of it’s flight. This arc is called the ‘drop’. Also, it is very susceptible to winds and windshifts and sudden gusts.

So you must know how to compensate for distance, and for winds blowing from the side. Also, the arrows have different weights, and some fly differently. For example, I started making my own carbon arrows, and when I would glue the fletches (feathers/vanes) onto the shaft, I used a special jig that gave them a 3 degree twist so that the arrow would spin in midair. This counteracts the flight-effects of any warps or bends in the arrow, since it evenly distributes the effect in all directions. The arrow essentially screws itself through the air – very fast.

As for how high to lift it, you must calibrate the sight on the bow for different distances, taking into account the draw weight of the bow itself, and the weight of the arrow, etc.. For a longer distance, you must aim higher, so that it will arc far enough to reach the target. For shorter distances, you aim lower for less of a ‘drop’ over the distance.

I began to get deeper into the art of archery, and so I bought every book I could find on the subject and read them all. Then I read every article on the web that I could find. Then I went back and bought all the instructional videos I could find. I learned more and more, and found myself practicing perhaps 2 hours per day most days. I became very accurate.

But it wasn’t long before I found that I wanted a better bow. Doc’s hunting bow was a solid bow and could easily survive falling out of a tree. Or being hit by a truck…, but I needed something lighter. Something more suitable for shooting several dozen arrows in a single session. Hunting bows only need to be shot once, so weight is not as much of a factor. But try holding a 14 lb weight at arm’s length for any extended period of time, and at the same time, pull a 60 or 70 lbs draw weight pressure against it. It’s very tiring! That will wear your arm out pretty quick! Once your arms get tired, your accuracy suffers, because you can’t hold it still. You are pulling with all your strength and trying to hold it still, but the targeting pin or crosshair is swimming around.

So I ordered a custom-made bow from Mathews – the top manufacturer. They make some fairly exotic, very high quality bows, often for Olympic competitors, etc. I ordered a custom made Mathews MQ1 in a red anodized finish directly from the factory. I didn’t care for the camouflage finish of my Mach 6, since I would never be taking it hunting. But I liked the metallic red finish of this competition bow. See this inset picture. Then I set about making a sight for it myself. I looked far and wide and all over the planet to different suppliers, and bought a number of pieces that I cobbled together into an excellent sight. You can see it in the inset phote here. It is the black thing that looks like a D-shaped magnifying glass mounted to the red frame of the bow on a long black metal arm.I started with an excellent, high-precision, all metal machined superstructure, with very precise adjustments for height (distance) and for horizontal (for windage). Then I bought and made an attachment to hold the visual aids themselves. I used a D-shaped unit that bolts together in ways that allowed me to mount other items to it, and to customize it. I found two magnifying lenses that fit that D-shaped mounting frame. One is a 2X, the other is a 3X – giving me a 6X magnification of my target. No one had ever heard of doing that before. Usually, any lens that gives more than 3X is too dark to see the target with the precision needed. But by using two lenses of lower magnification with daylight between them, it stayed bright enough AND gave me the magnification I wanted. Then, I also added a crosshair into the casing. You can buy the fine wire used for that. Then I also made a fiber optic center dot. I bought some fiber optic filament, and cut it, bent one end using a match, and then melted the end into a flat circle. This captures the ambient light and gives a nice lit red dot right in the middle of the crosshairs. That, combined with the crosshairs, and the two optical lenses, together with the very precise vertical and horizontal adjustments on the mechanism, gives me a fairly precise sight for this bow.

I added a few other options to the bow as well, like a 36 inch competition Olympic-class stabilizer by Doinker. And a very high-end arrow rest. This is the unit that the arrow actually sits on at the bow. There is a semi-circular carriage, with two thin metal prongs and the arrow rests on those prongs. I put some limb-savers on it, to absorb some of the shock on the bow when the string is released. The bowstring has tremendous power, and can shake a bow to pieces. This is why you should NEVER dry-fire a bow. If you fire a bow without an arrow, then there is no resistance, and the full force of the string is transferred into the limbs of the bow and can crack them. The total cost of this bow was about $1600 when all was done. That's roughly four times what you would pay for a decent normal hunting bow. This is like the “Ferrari” of bows.

However, with this bow, and after all that I had learned through reading, studying training videos, and hours and hours of practice, on a 60 ft distance, if I stuck a Styrofoam coffee cup anywhere on the target bag, I could usually get 8 or more out of a dozen tightly packed arrows in the cup. And the others would be fairly close by as well. I was able to produce tight groupings of high accuracy – at least at 60 to 90 feet. But I needed a larger place to practice longer distances.

The person I ordered the custom Mathews bow through, and the man who gave me advice and got me started was Fay Frigon, the Texas Archery State Champion. He was the expert in the archery store that I bought my supplies in. He is a very nice guy, extremely skilled, and extremely knowledgeable about the subject. We became friends as I used to go to the shop most Saturdays for a year and look at more archery equipment, swap stories, and talk shop. One day, he invited me out to a 3-D competition.

It is like a cross between mock hunting, and golf.

Imagine a golf course with 30 holes instead of 18. And for each hole, you have a childrens’ tee position, a men’s tee position, and a professional tee position. Now imagine that instead of wide open grass lawn, you have bushes and hills and a path connecting them. Now imagine that instead of holes, you have full-size replicas of various animals such as deer, bears, turkey, wild boar, etc.. but these animals are not real, they are made of a densely packed foam, shaped and painted to look like the real thing. Oh – and the have targets etched into the surface for scoring. Also, like golf, where you only have one ball per hole – here you only have one arrow – BUT also, you only get one shot!

This is the MAC club (Mesquite Archery Club) and Fay is the resident pro – just like being a resident golf pro at a golf course. He teaches lessons for individuals, groups, etc.

I felt honored that Fay took me along with him, and as I was passing by a group of veterans of the club, one leaned in close and said, “You’re playing a round with Fay? That’s amazing – he hardly ever has anyone with him! That’s like being invited to play a round of golf with Tiger Williams! I hope you appreciate that!” I smiled and said, “I do! But I’ll try not to make it too easy for him to beat me…” We both laughed. The scoring is not for each group, but rather the scores of everyone in the competition are put on the big white board back at the snack bar so everyone can see how they did.

I learned a few lessons from Fay just walking around and shooting each target, and chatting about the decisions you make, the wind compensation, shooting uphill, downhill, through trees, etc. You have to be careful not to lose any arrows. They are so fast that no one can see them traveling, and if you miss the target, it may shoot off through the trees and across a field to who knows where. At a cost of about $10 each, you don’t want to lose too many!

At the end of the competition, I checked the board and Fay had shot a perfect score of 300. No one was surprised. He is “The Tiger Woods of Archery” after all.

There was one man at 290, and most of the contestants were in the 190 to 230 range. I looked for my name in that pack but it wasn’t there. I searched further up the board and then there I was. A score of 288. Wow! These men had been doing this for years and were veterans. And this was only my first competition. In fact I had only started in archery in the last year before that.

I felt like I could almost go into the Olympics for archery! I was very happy and very proud. I felt like I had learned much, studied hard, and frankly, I felt I had mastered it. At least for the compound bow competitions in this range sizes. Some of these targets are 55 yards, which is 165 feet away.

In the months and years following this though, we moved to a house with lakefront property and no opportunity to practice in the back yard. And the MAC club is at least a two hour drive away. Too far away for the time I have, so I haven’t brought my bows and arrows out in 2 years now. I do enjoy it. But like with so many other things – I wish there was more time!

The Profound Silence at the Top of the World

For some reason, I have been thinking about the far, far north lately. I never really talked about it with anyone, but that place fascinates me, and I just want to share my thoughts a bit.

It started about 20 years ago, when I was working at American Express in Toronto. I love maps. I used to have a map of Canada pinned to the wall in my cubicle. But since the cube walls don’t go all the way up, the map was mounted fairly low. Most of the populated parts of Canada are all along the southernmost edge, where it’s warmer and closer to the US border. But, whenever I was talking on the phone and my eyes wandered to the map, the part of the map at eye level was the top – the northernmost parts of Canada. Yukon Territories, and Northwest Territories (which now has been split into Northwest Territories and Nunavut Territories).

As I looked at it so many times, I started to memorize the islands and places, and I would look at a group of Islands the size of western Europe and see one tiny little village all by itself. And as I looked, I tried to imagine what it must be like living there.
So remote. So isolated. Is it just a cluster of igloos populated by a handful of Inuit? Or is it an actual little town with proper buildings? Are there stores there? Is there a hotel? Are there any restaurants? Do they have cars and trucks, or is it all snowmobiles? Do ships visit there? What do the people do there? How do they support themselves? How many people are living there? Are they Inuit or white people? Do they fish, or work in a mine? Or are there geologists and scientists measuring the various natural aspects of the place? What does it look like? What does it smell like? Are there trees, or is it tundra?

Growing up in Toronto, there is a sense that all the developed civilization is in the south and the further north you go, the further you are from civilization. At least that's how it was back in the years before the internet came. 50 miles north of Toronto, you would find small towns that were perhaps behind the big city by a few years, in terms of clothing styles, sayings, music they listen to, knowledge of recent events, etc.. 100 miles north, you would meet people who were generally 10 or 20 years behind in some ways, but still modern in others.
As a musician, when I was young, I used to travel to some small towns in northern Ontario such as Timmins, and Hearst, and Thunder Bay, etc. These are many hundreds of miles north of Toronto, and it was like a whole different world up there. You weren't quite at the edge of civilization, but you could see it from there. In fact, I distinctly remember driving west along the highway into Hearst and checking the map to find that there were no more roads north of there. It was the end. That was as far as civilization and development had reached so far. What a strange feeling for a guy who had grown up in a big city, surrounded by a world of established developed infrastructure and society: to literally be at the edge of connected civilization. As I drove along, I would look at the tall, dense, untouched forest on the right and think that it's possible no one has been in those very trees right there. Ever.

So the extreme north carries a certain mysterious quality to it in my mind. An undiscovered, unexplored, distant place, very sparsely populated with tiny, isolated settlements that you need a bush plane to reach. I always wondered why people would live in a place that was unreachable by road, disconnected to the rest of civilization.

Now, it's a bit different, of course. With the internet reaching almost everywhere by satellite, everyone has the opportunity to be up to date on all things regardless of how far away they are from the nearest big city. The internet has been the great equalizer in the world in many respects.
But still, there is the simple volume of civilization that slows down to a trickle any more than a few hundred miles north of the Border with the US.

Here in the U.S. there seems to be a town every couple of miles. And roads seem to lead in all directions. The north is no more mysterious than the south. It seems rare to drive even 10 miles without seeing some sort of town, or settlement, or buildings or SOMETHING. But Canada has 226,000 square miles more land than the US,(an area larger than California by 40%, and almost as large as Texas) and yet only contains about 30 million people compared to the 300 million people in the US. So in Canada it is quite common to drive 100 miles and see virtually no sign of people or civilization. Much of Canada is still unspoiled and undeveloped, and since most of the population is very concentrated along the US border, that means that the north, and far north is extremely sparse, unspoiled, and ideal for visiting the earth as it really is away from the effects of human civilization. So when there IS a settlement, my curiosity is piqued. It's almost like a tiny outpost on another planet. Some of these places, (like Alert, on Ellesmere Island) are over 1,000 miles further north from the northern shore of Alaska! It seems as far away as another planet in some ways.
My curiosity about those far away islands has continued for all these years. When I think about these places, I don’t think about them covered in snow in the winter. I think about them in the summer months when the sun shines 24 hours per day and the snow is gone. In my mind’s eye, I see the land.
Further south, near the arctic circle, down in the mainland portion of Canada, there are certainly trees, but once you look up into the islands, Baffin Island, Banks Island, Victoria Island, etc. the trees are left behind and you see the more barren landscape. Mountains and grasses. But it is spectacular to look at, and I can only imagine how breathtaking they are to see and visit in person.
And there is life there. The largest population of Muskoxen in the world is on Banks Island. There are Reindeer, polar bears, artic fox, arctic hare. Hardy birds. I look at pictures of these places on the web. I see what it is like there to some degree. I see the little villages, and the houses, and buildings. I start to get a sense of the places. Canada, as a country, has only existed since 1867, and it was settled as a colony of Britain since the 1600's, and then a member country of the British Commonwealth, but there have been people in the arctic for well over 4,000 years. The history of this vast place is long and there are legends from that deep past. And here, as in other places where the people live so connected to the land, there is mysticism and spirituality. My mind seeks those deep, mysterious places hidden in the distant past. I feel a pull to the far north on multiple levels

This is different from Antarctica. Antarctica is not a country, it is merely a landmass permanently covered in ice at the bottom of the world, and there are scientists stationed there for conducting experiments, but no one actually lives there. It is not a sovereign nation. But in the far north, that is not the case. This is part of Canada. These modern, but simple settlements have been there for decades,some older ones have been there much, much longer. These people are Canadian citizens. These people actually live here permanently. They hunt and fish, and work in mines, and fly planes, drive boats, teach schoolchildren, sell supplies, and deliver mail, etc. They are civilians and this is their home. It’s different. It's not a science experiment.
In the summer, when the ice is mostly melted, These tiny little towns are actually connected by flights on a daily basis from Inuvik, which is actually a decently-sized little town with a modest sized but modern airport, etc. It is located on the Mackenzie river delta near the Beaufort Sea. So they are as far north as you can go and yet still be on the mainland. Beyond that, it is a series of islands from there to the north pole. And now, since they opened up the Dempster highway to Inuvik, you can actually drive there, and then take a small plane to get to the other tiny settlements up in the islands even further north. In the winter, there are roads ploughed across the iced-over waterways to actually drive to these little towns. Aklavik, Tuktayuktuk (Tuk), Sachs Harbor, Cambridge Bay, Grise Fiord, Pond Inlet, etc.. And that brings accessibility and lowers the cost of food and other goods in those communities because they can now be supplied by trucks instead of planes.

I now live in a middle-class suburb of Dallas, Texas. It is immaculate, spotless, clean, safe, comfortable and warm, and I don't truly want to live anywhere else, at this point. But, I sometimes get frustrated when I look around me and think of all the rules about living here, where the Homeowners Association won’t allow me to have exposed air conditioners on the side of my house, so I must either build a fence to hide them from the street, or else put in bushes to hide them, when they demand I must have at least 3 trees in my front yard, and they must have trunks at least 3 inches in diameter, and they must be one of 5 specific species…I think about the over $9,000 per year I pay in property taxes for this tiny little 100ft wide patch of land that my house is built on. I think about how the neighbors are only about 10 feet away on either side. I think about crime down in the city, and taxes, and electric bills of $350 per month, and the telephone bills, and the gas bills, and insurance bills, and credit card bills, and about the political, and social issues, and I think about work and all the problems and issues there and the politics, and the endless, mindless complaining around me that NEVER stops, and the television with endless commercials screaming at you to spend all your money to buy their stuff, and I hear all this noise and static and confusion, it sometimes gets to be too much. It is easy to get just overwhelmed by the vast noise and complexities of it all.

Then I think about the far north. I think about Ellesmere Island, the northernmost island. I think about how without the snow and ice, in the summer, you have the bare ground. The small rocks and soil and the arctic grasses on the low, ancient hills. Warm enough then that a light jacket is all you need as you explore. There is no confusion. The whole noisy mess of civilization and modern life is gone. No cities, no traffic, no noise, no trees or forests. The incredible stark beauty of the Canadian arctic islands. Mountains and seas that seem out of a fantasy story, or a dream. Huge mountain ranges – all there to be discovered and remembered.

And then there is that secret place at the very top of Ellesmere Island. The place where the trees are gone, and even the mountains are no longer. There are only those low hills, the deep sea at rest, and the sky. That quiet stillness. The hushed, surreal moment as if suspended between reality and dream.
The world is calm. Those gently rolling, ancient hills that have been there for timeless centuries. Millions of years. Billions of years. And they remain unchanged in all that time.
Where I walk, I may be the first to put footsteps there. It’s almost like walking on another planet.
Moving slowly, looking around, feeling the earth directly without the interference of all the things found south in the world. With the shell of life removed and the underlying ancient surface revealed, there, the ancient Earth is naked and exposed. There, I can actually feel the planet, and the closeness of the stars, and the connection of one to the other. And I can finally get clarity as I listen to that profound silence at the top of the world.

~~~
p.s. Since writing a blog is not an income-generating enterprise, people freely visit each other and since all the words, and pictures are open to the public, I usually just go to the internet to find whatever pictures I can to illustrate the points I make in my posts and don't worry too much about where each one comes from. I, myself have a music website full of well over 100 original songs that I have written and recorded, and I am happy to let others enjoy them, and use them as long as they are not making money from them. That is at valserrie.com. In the case of this post though, because they are so beautiful and interesting, I just want to point out that many of the photographs here are by Dave Brosha, a photographer who spent 2 years living in Frobisher Bay, and now lives in Yellowknife, NWT. He has done some excellent work, is a very talented artist, and deserves some notice and attention. Here is one of his several websites: http://www.arctic-photo.com/. I'm sure he would appreciate your visit.

A Better Democracy, Perhaps?

No discussion of the merits or evils of democracy can be complete without at least a passing nod to that famous quote from Winston Churchill who once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

In it’s favor, democracy is a somewhat participatory form of government where the general population seems to have a hand in deciding how the country is run by voting the people who will represent their interests into the positions of power where they form the policies and laws that govern the nation. But absolute power corrupts absolutely, so, to keep the politicians honest, they are restricted to a set term, and then must step down, and a new leader must be selected. At least that is how it is supposed to work. But this system does have it’s flaws.

One of the flaws is that the potential leaders spend most of their time in office trying to position themselves to get re-elected. It sometimes seems like their whole job is merely about getting elected and then dealing with the aftermath of that, (paying back favors, etc.), and then they are focused on preparations for re-election. It seems like very little time is actually spent on the business of running the government. In other words, it seems that politics is not about managing the country – it’s merely about “Politics” itself.

When it comes to politics, there are always those who will show up and try to change things and make things happen, and then the vast majority who do not engage – except to complain.
There is nothing any government could do that would make it exempt from complaining. People will ALWAYS complain. This is because, although people never admit it, most people are generally NOT interested in fairness. What they really want is to have more than everybody else. More than their fair share. This is not universally true, but it is true of the majority. So, since people want more for themselves than for others, their desires are, by definition, mutually exclusive. If there is one pie, three people cannot each have half the pie. Therefore someone always has less than they want no matter how the pie is split up, and so it is with government. If they spend as much on defense as some people want, then there is not as much to spend on education. If they spend as much as some want on roads, there is not as much to spend on parks as others want, etc. If they open up the immigration doors to allow cheaper labor in, then employers are happy because they operate more efficiently and more competitively, and consumers are happy to pay less for their lifestyle, but workers are unhappy because of perceived competition for jobs. There is no amount that is right for everybody.
So, no government is immune from criticism. Nevertheless, someone has to show up and try to make it work for most people.

But there is more to it than simply “showing up”. In a world of jerrymandering where politicians get to re-draw districts, etc. in order to effectively pick their voters (instead of the voters picking their politicians), simply showing up to vote has less power than it once did. The electoral college eliminates the effects of all the dissenting votes in each state, for example. Every vote does NOT count, because the politicians got ‘clever’ with how the votes are counted. With the Electoral College approach, if 45% of a state votes Democrat, and 55% of the state votes Republican, then the state becomes a “Red” state, and only Republican representatives are sent to Washington. And since the representatives vote according to their party policy, this means that 45% of the voters will NOT have representation and their wishes will be ignored.

So the only real way to effect change is to become a politician and join the system and work within it. But for that there are steep entry fees. It costs a lot of money, a lot of favors, and a significant piece of your soul.

Ironically, I suspect that many of the people who go into politics go into it for the wrong reasons. They may want power, they may want influence, they may want fame, or historical significance, or to simply use a position of office to leverage their financial and business interests. I wonder how many politicians really are there simply to try to represent the interests of their constituents? In fact, in a party system such as we have, most of the members of each party vote for every issue according to party philosophy and doctrine and goals – NOT the wishes of their constituency. They are not representing their people, they are representing the party they belong to.

I think this is a fundamental flaw in the political system that runs this country. This system is effectively broken.

A Better System
I think the interests of the people would be better served if the PEOPLE voted on the bills and legislation rather than the politicians. The politicians should be the ones to draft the bills for consideration, but NOT then be the only ones allowed to vote on them. Special interests can easily sway the votes of a few senators, but not so easily the whole population. Also, it is far more likely that legislation and policy that is decided and voted on by 3 million people is far more likely to be fair and sensible than that voted on by a few politicians looking to line their pockets or build and protect their power base. So this new approach has a much better chance at having our laws and policies represent the real wishes of our population.
Back in the 1700’s when the constitution was written, it was a time when the average common people were uneducated, uninformed, and incapable of making intelligent choices on complex issues. So they simply voted for someone smarter to make the decision for them. That is how our current form of democracy was birthed.
But people have changed. We, as a population, are better educated and better informed now. We are more capable of making informed, intelligent decisions. Sure people will still have special interests and will vote to support their personal interests, but that’s fine. Because each single vote won’t have an inordinate amount of sway, but the overall direction will follow the true will of the people – and THAT is a TRUE democracy.

How would we do it? We could make it online for one thing. Almost everybody now has access to a computer. Either at home or at work, or even at airports, internet cafes, and other public places. Even little children have access to computers these days. But even if they don’t – at LEAST everyone has access to a phone. Votes could be taken on issues the same way people vote on American Idol, by calling a number and then pressing a number to indicate their choice. If they can poll tens of millions of people to pick a favorite singer, they can certainly do that to make important choices about our country.
To make informed decisions, the information about the decision needs to be available publicly. Every newspaper could have a “blue pages” section at the back that contains the facts and details, and arguments about any piece of legislation up for vote. And the information can obviously, easily be available online, for the vast majority to look up at their convenience.

This system would mean that politicians are still needed and still useful – but their expertise would be used for drafting legislation, not deciding it. That means that they would definitely have a hand in helping to form the future of the country, but they would no longer be open to corruption and being paid off, since their vote would no longer count any more than any other citizen’s vote would.

I think THIS would be a fair system, finally. It uses the expertise of the skilled people where it is useful, but takes away the source of possible corruption and undue influence. And best of all, it allows the actions of the country to truly follow the desires of the people of the country. The original constitution was fine for the times of the founders of the country 200 years ago. But they didn’t have the technology and infrastructure that we have today. After two centuries, we’ve learned a thing or two, and we should leverage that to our modern advantage. This system better reflects the needs and abilities of today.

The problem then becomes one of getting politicians to adopt this plan. Since it effectively reduces their power, they are not likely to introduce it themselves - especially since many of them went into politics for the power it gave them.

It's hard to get people to participate in their own demise.