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Guitar Goddess (Day 518)

I had the chance to meet one of the legends today! A guitar goddess--Teresa Topaz--who performs blues and rock with guitar heroes such as Steve Vai! (Steve Vai is my favorite guitar hero, and I've wanted to own a Steve Vai signature for years!)

Check out her bio here: https://teresatopaz.com/bio

I met Teresa as she was helping me to fix my Brian May Red Special. She opened up the panels and inspected the connections, and everything looked fine. She said maybe some wires have grounded, causing no sound coming to the amp, and she needs to trace all the signals to find out. She also explained how the frets aren't aligned in some places and the rough edges on the frets. She also explained how cobalt strings sound different, how to keep the guitars in good shape in general, etc.

I saw many guitars hanging in her studio as she was checking on mine. She is like a biker who assembles her bikes--she is a guitar goddess who knows how every part of the guitar works. And she's certified as an authorized repair person for Martin and Taylor guitars!

Teresa also shared with me that she was working on her third single as the pandemic hit. COVID took live performances away from most musicians, and that has been tough. And she told me how platforms like Spotify pay very little to indie musicians and how most "middle-person platforms" favor the big labels, etc. Facebook did something similar, changing their search algorithm that forces her to spend money on ads to reach out to the users who used to find her music organically. I heard similar stories from content creators on YouTube all the time, too.

I tried to explain to her how that may change in the future with blockchain projects like Rocki or Audius. I have spoken to Rocki's founder, and they have plans to liberate artists from these middle-person platforms and let artists control their content and distribution, keeping most of their revenue.

If I have a chance to bridge my interests in both guitar/music and blockchain, that'd be a fascinating project!

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