I love learning about almost everything, which would help explain my taking time to earn a bachelor's degree in chemistry, a master's degree in chemistry, and a doctorate degree in analytical chemistry. 

I have immensely enjoyed studying chemistry, mathematics, physics, law, literature, history, religions, philosophy, art and music, Koine Greek, computers, audio electronics, and many other topics which I found interesting over time.

I also enjoyed doing scientific research for a time related to the biomarker chemistry of porphyrins, which are the molecules at the center of the respiration processes for all plant and animal life, and it was fun learning about the inner workings of life.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry giving our project team an award for the Belle II detector project at KEK in Japan.

I served as an US Office of Science program manager, program administrator, and federal project director for 25 years, where I was involved with so many scientific research projects over time - tens of thousands - that I have lost count, and I loved learning about every one of them! 

Award presented to our project for the US Belle II project from the Energy Secretary.

I really enjoyed being the Office of Science Federal Project Director for the US Belle II detector upgrade project for the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan, and I learned a lot about the next generation of high-energy physics experiments that will be coming, and the likely Nobel Prizes that will result. Exciting stuff!

The three-story tall Belle II detector at KEK.

I enjoyed being a program administrator for fundamental science programs related to chemistry, biology, and scientific supercomputing, and it was fascinating to learn all about the research in these areas.

MIRA supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) at Argonne National Laboratory

It was exciting to be a part of the review teams for the selection of the next-generation supercomputing resources for the Office of Science's Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) organization, and learning about all these exciting supercomputers and the people that use them for research.

I enjoyed being a part of the oversight for projects related to the human genome, proteomics, climate change, catalysis, chemistry, physics, supercomputing, and too many other topics to cite here, and learning about how each of those could contribute to advancements in world civilization.

I also really enjoyed being a program manager for the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program (LDRD) for a US national scientific laboratory, and I learned about many thousands of exciting cutting edge research projects during that time and met a lot of amazing people. 

During a LDRD review we had a nice visit to the "underground" where the scientists told us about making a neutrino beam that's sent over 500 miles through the Earth to a detector in Wisconsin.

Neutrino research in the underground at Fermi National Laboratory.

There's an abundance of extremely intelligent and talented scientists & engineers funded by the US Office of Science working in multinational teams around the world, and together they have yielded 115 Nobel Prize winners to date for Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine. 

That's learning at the cutting edge, and it is nice to know there really are a lot of people out there that are laboring every day to make our world a better place. It was a cool place to work!

That's pretty heady tech for sure, and it was a pleasure to work with and get to know those remarkable scientists and engineers during my career with the US Office of Science over that last 25 years, until I retired a year ago.

Collings Eastside Jazz LC guitar.

I'm a lifelong learner, and I still intend to keep on learning until the end of my life, best I can.

A major focus for my retirement learning is related to learning how to play jazz guitar, and thanks to the talented jazz guitarist David Gitlen that I have the privilege of taking lessons from, I am taking steps towards that goal.

Another focus for my retirement learning is related to travel - I love to travel and have learned so much by doing it!

Cappadocia is a historical region in Central Anatolia in Turkey.

I love meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, sampling the local music scene, food, beverages, theater, and seeing the local sights - it's an awesome way to learn!

Traveling in Turkey!

Visiting Reims, France.

Visiting the Netherlands!

Visiting Sicily!

Visiting Germany!

Visiting Slovenia!

Visiting Croatia!

Staying on an island in Istria on the Croatian coast. The photo is a view of the village across from the island.

Jeff being a dopey tourist at Stonehenge.

Between my Westminster's and 3 pairs of vintage Altec's I have enough gigantic loudspeakers that I could almost recreate a miniature Stonehenge in my living room!

Chad with the Westminster's and Stokowski Altec's.

Another focus for my retirement learning is audio, and I have greatly enjoyed learning about audio and writing about it over the years for you - what a great hobby to have and share with others!

I'll continue to learn and tell you about new as well as vintage hifi gear as my audio learning adventure continues, and there's some exciting things to share with you about as they get a little closer in the schedule.

However, the actual point of this post is to muse about a "learning path" for you related to audio and music to enrich your joy in experiencing music and audio.

As part of my geeky life-long learning goal I subscribe to the excellent The Great Courses Plus streaming service so I can continue to learn about subjects as diverse as history (a current favorite), astronomy & space, art & music appreciation, language, religion, philosophy, biology & chemistry, politics, and economics. 

One of the cool resources The Great Courses Plus provides to their subscribers  is "learning paths" that helps learners focus on developing a broad knowledge base of a particular subject area.

I mentioned that one of my current favorites for learning is history, about which the description for the learning path says,

"Hearing the stories of our past, spanning thousands of years, makes for one of the most thrilling and rewarding learning experiences the curious mind can have. This series of history courses survey dramatic adventures—and how they have shaped our lives—in a way that’s comprehensive and unforgettable."

For example, The Great Courses Plus makes recommendations for foundational courses like The Foundations of Western Civilization, Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World, and the Foundations of Eastern Civilization.

They also make recommendations for electives from U.S. History, European History, and World History that cover just about every thing that would interest an aspiring history buff, with one of my favorites being the relatively new field of Big History:

"Big History is an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities, and explores human existence in the context of this bigger picture," to quote Wikipedia. 

As I was reading about these learning paths I thought about what a learning path for audiophiles and music lovers might look like.

Foundational courses like The Big History of the Origins and Evolution of Audio Equipment, An Introduction to Understanding Live Music and its Relationship to Recorded Music, and the Foundations of the Recording Arts would make for a nice group of core courses to introduce music lovers and audiophiles to the origins and evolution of audio equipment, appreciation for live music performances, and the foundations of recording arts that allow listeners to hear great musical performances in their own home over their hifi systems.

Recommendations for interesting electives to supplement The Big History of the Origins and Evolution of Audio Equipment could include elective courses on The Origins and Developments of Vacuum Tube Amplification, The Origins and Developments of Solid-State Amplification, The Origins and Development of Loudspeakers, and The Origins and Evolution of Recording Playback Sources, for example.

Recommendations for electives to supplement An Introduction to Understanding Live Music could include courses by Professor Robert Greenberg, like Understanding the Fundamentals of Music, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, or How to Listen to and Understand Opera, for example. Other electives like Jazz (A Film By Ken Burns) and The History of Rock & Roll from the 1950s to Today (doesn't exist that I know of), would also be excellent choices.

Recommendations for electives to supplement the Foundations of the Recording Arts could include the film series American Epic about "how the people of America were given the opportunity to make records for the first time (borrowed by a "friend" and never returned - you know who you are), and The History of Sound Recording in the the "Acoustic" era (1877 to 1925), the "Electrical" era (1925 to 1945), the "Magnetic" era (1945 to 1975), and the "Digital" Era (1975 to the present day).

What do you think, would further information on the topics of The Big History of Audio & Music learning path be of interest to you for your musical and audio lifestyle? Let me know what you think.

If so, maybe I'll continue to map out a little adventure for us along those lines. Some of the cited references already exist, others don't, so there would be some research and creative writing involved to make it happen. 

Thanks to Garrett Hongo for his encouragement to me to give more thought to writing a book related to my humble audio adventures & scribbling, which resulted in the above "learning path" idea. 

In case you don't know, "Garrett Kaoru Hongo is a Yonsei, fourth-generation Japanese American academic and poet. The work of this Pulitzer-nominated writer draws on Japanese American history and own experiences (Wikipedia)." Garrett's also a music lover, audio enthusiast, and audio writer, and a person whom I greatly admire - he's one of us!

As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!