Skip to main content

Day Two Hundred Fifty Four (Year Four)




So, tonight I sat down with the electric, determined to work my way through at least one of the 100 Riffs. What's funny is that, the riff I ended up working on was one of the ones I had myself convinced I knew already.

The intro riff to The Beatles' "Day Tripper" was one of the really early things I learned when I bought my Strat, way back in the day.  I've seen a lot of other players approach the riff the same way I learned it initially, so it was interesting tonight to listen (and play along), and have it not sound quite right.  Finding that, I did what any person in my situation would do, I grabbed my copy of this:

 
 
off of the shelf, and looked up the song.  Sure enough, there's a slightly different way to play the intro that, when worked through for a bit, makes more sense, and is more economical in terms of movement.  

It's always cool when, at the end of the week, I can sit down and learn something new about something I've known for a long time.  Those small victories, and the fact that my ear is picking up on those subtle tonal differences again is really exciting.

What a great night in the studio.  It has me wanting to go through all 214 songs in that book, just learning and studying.  Makes me wonder how much more advanced I'd be coming out the other side of that experience.

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 Nine (Year Four)

Tonight was one of those nights where absolutely nothing went right, but somehow, some way, I managed to get into the studio for a little bit, and make what felt like good progress, all things considered. I went back through the second half of last night's chapter in The Guitarist's Guide To Scales Over Chords , just to make sure that I had a decent grasp of everything that was covered, and then made the move to the next chapter. After the theory-heavy chapter I had just gotten through, it was a great relief to have the next one be more music (playing) centered.  It was all about putting the scale examples they cited in the early chapters to use in a musical context. I've seen a great number of books try to do this in a successful manner, and end up failing spectacularly, but so far I'm liking what this book is putting forward.  They give you "starter" examples, that don't necessarily make the best use of note choices, etc. and then present you with an...

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.