Hey there Fiddle Jammers!  I hope this finds you all well and safe.

A few quick things:

1. New Course!  I just opened enrollment in my new course “Bucket List Fiddle Jam!”  I know, that if you are on this list, then it’s a pretty good chance that you are NOT a beginner, but if you know someone who envies your playing, and wishes they were YOU! 😉 …pass it on!  I think it will be a great and fun course for adult beginners to be treated with respect in the different ways adults need to learn, and have a very do-able goal of playing one (kind of cool) song in one month, with good tone, intonation and rhythm… while also NOT HURTING YOURSELF!!
2. Scholarship Program: Also something that could be of interest to you, is that I’ve started a scholarship/charity program around this course.  Customers can buy a second course access to be gifted to someone else for only $20.  I am also taking applications to find folks in need who would benefit from this course, in case you might want to donate but not have a recipient in mind… I’ll hook them up with your gift!
3. Missing Videos! With help from new members Sadie and Carol, we discovered a problem with some of the older FJi lesson posts, where the video portions of the lessons have disappeared leaving only a “ghost box” behind!  With some excellent sleuthing by my webmaster Kumquat (Patrick), we found that YouTube had changed some of it’s video coding practices (some tech gobblygook about how the video addresses work within social media platforms I think it was).  Thankfully, the videos are NOT gone, but I have to go back and individually retrieve the new bit of code for each video and update it in each post again.  It’s not an impossible task, just a bit tedious and time consuming.  Patrick found about 70 lessons, with over 200 videos that need the updates!! Yikes.  I’ll be getting to them as fast as I can.  If you find one with this problem, please send me the info in one of the comment forms and I’ll try to bump that one up the to-do list for you.  Thanks for any help you can give!  Fixed in the last 24 hours: “G Jam“, and “Blackberry Blossom“

Happy Jams!

Fitz

PS: I also recently took the plunge and invested in a neat CNC router machine to help make accurate parts for my Outlaw Fiddle EV3 electric violins, with the goal of having them up for sale in early 2021.  If you dream of rocking out like an electric guitar, this will be a great instrument for you!  My prototype is sounding just like I’d hoped …and heard in a dream a few years back!  I’ve been on the hunt for that sound ever since… and think that I’ve nailed it!  With help from FJi member and attorney Jose Medina, we’ve got it to Patent Pending status with plans to apply for a full design and utility patents shortly.  I’ll be taking pre-orders soon. Here’s the first quick video of it in action: Let me know what you think!

<<::>>