Well, here we are in March and seeing as no one saw fit to mention this I thought I'd "take there lead" and post these 2 birthdays. Vivaldi's was earlier this month (on the 4th) and J.S. Bach's is tomorrow. Both of these fine composers pre-dated Niccolo Paganini so ,as violinists, let's not forget our "founding fathers". Off topic (and not NEARLY as interesting or newsworthy as the 2 birthdays): I started these courses the 1st week of Oct, 2025. The fretboard dot markers fell off back in early January and I never replaced them so I've been totally going on sound and the "octave frame" since. I just finished the GTAR lesson. (Pretty much got it mastered as well as a musical novice such as myself can) so now it's on to Auld Lang Syne. (though I won't be donning any Scottish attire or headgear though due to the fact that I'm an old Dutch - American guy so it'll just have to be my Dutchboy hat (or as one of my Native American Indian friends calls it :"Tiny Tim Hat" ) and I would just like to state that, to me, GTAR isn't a dark, creepy song. It's just a song I learned as a little boy in Christian grade school in the simpler, halcyon days of the mid 60's. It's also one of the song lessons in the Mel Bay Merle Travis guitar syllabus that I study so I associate w/ folk/country music and farm nostalgia. Fiddle on good people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bachhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vivaldi