Skip to main content

Day One Hundred Ninety Six (Year Two)

So, last night I promised more on "American Pie."  I've scoured the internet in year's past for an explanation of the many details present in that song, who the characters are, etc.  Here's a link to a site I found tonight that does a pretty decent job of covering the basics, at the very least.  The link is amazingly original too, don't you think?: understandingamericanpie.com

Stopped at Half Price Books tonight.  Mom's been in town, and it's a ritual.  Cool thing was that I found the first 2 books of Berklee's Guitar Method (the first of which contains a DVD-Rom that has 14 HOURS of lessons on it!  How amazing is that?  Considering that the be-all, end-all goal of this blog is to get me to the point musically where I can audition and be accepted to Berklee School of Music in Boston, I figured that having the first two books of their guitar method can only be a good thing.

Now that I'm 5 days into February, I'm thinking that I'm going to try and do the RPM Challenge thing.  I'm not going to officially register with their website or anything, I'm just going to try and do it on my own.  I figure, if I can at least get the songs written, that would be a victory.  That would mean finishing one song every 2.4 days.  That's not too bad, if I work on it every day.  SL challenged me to write one song by the end of the month, and I know I can pull that off.  She didn't say whether it also needs to be recorded by the end of the month as well, but I kind of figure that the recording of it was in her thought process, so we shall see.  If I end up somewhere in between those two extremes, that'd be all right too, as the other criteria for the challenge is 35 minutes of music.

All told, I was pleased that I was able to fit at least something musical into my day.  Still haven't cracked open the Ritchie Valens record or the Buddy Holly rarities collection, but that can happen tomorrow.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Six (Year Four)

Today was the first official day of the second half of my "album-in-a-month" challenge. As for today's goals, I wanted to see what I could get done in regards to track order, and get at least a little bit of a start on the lyric writing process. I spent more time working on the track order question than I did on the lyrics today, but as a result of that, I ended up with something that I think will work in terms of order. I did sit with the notebook for a few minutes at the very end of the day, and got a solid starting line of lyric and some other ideas that I hope will be jumping off points for lyrics. What I'm thinking I might do, however, is switch my focus from the lyric writing part of the process directly to the recording part of the process.  That way, if I can get the music recorded and burned onto a CD, I can take the music with me in the car, and listen and try to see what images and thoughts the music brings up.  It's a tactic that has worked for...

Day Two Hundred Ninety Two (Year Five)

Today was the last seminary village cookout of the year. While we were all sitting around the picnic tables eating dinner, I got a chance to talk with a few of the Mrs.'s classmates about guitar related stuff. As it turns out, more than one of them wants to be more proficient on guitar. I'm not saying that this will lead to more teaching opportunities, but I told one of them that I would throw a folder together for them. Essentially, anytime I get a chance to talk shop is a great chance for me to reinforce some of the things I have been focusing on. If nothing else, it gets me thinking ahead to tomorrow's day off and a chance to get into the studio for a decent amount of time.

Day Three Hundred Forty Two (Year Four)

Tonight was a slightly unfocused night in the studio. It was a night of acoustic stuff, but most of what I got accomplished involved tinkering with different songs by Jackie Greene and Johnny Cash.  If nothing else, I set up the next list of songs I want to figure out. Tomorrow night I need to start getting back to the Acoustic Goldmine book, as well.  Every time I sit down with the acoustic for an extended period of time, I reconnect with the emotional side of that instrument.  There's so much to learn still in that book, so much information designed to improve my playing.  I need to take better advantage of it. I know it's crazy, but I'm already looking forward to Friday.  I really need to spend a lot of the day in the studio.  Getting a weekday off of work is such a rare commodity.  I need to do a good job of using my time wisely.