Skip to main content

Day Two

Tonight's goal was a sitmple one: go through all of the stuff I've collected over the years that I thought would help me tap into the music. It seems like each time I move, I both acquire more stuff AND weed some of it out of the final plan. This time around, I'd managed to put most of it in a single place. So, I essentially sat in a corner for a long time tonight, going through stuff, taking some things out, and re-sorting what remained into piles. Essentially, here's what I discovered.

1) Lots of Articles on Practicing, Technique, & various Styles of music.
2) Transcriptions of specific Songs, some of which I wanted to learn, some of which I didn't.
3) Books on specific topics (mostly Chords & Scales).
4) Lots and lots of blank forms, most of which were either filled with Chord Diagrams or The Notes on the Fretboard.

5) Lots and lots of half written Songs (Both Chord Progressions & Lyrics).

All in all, not the biggest of steps, but definitely one that was necessary. Not a clue in the slightest yet where all of this is going to take me, but the beginning steps feel good.

Also, having promised a bit of info on the project I was currently working on, the basics go like this: I was hunted down on the internet by someone I used to write music with (10 years gone) who expressed an interest in rekindling the old band and making some fresh recordings of the old songs. Problem being that he lives in New Jersey, and I'm taking up space in Iowa. Thanks to the power of the internet, we are swapping files back and forth, an have made some good progress in the last six months or so. Moves and vacations have gotten in the way of progress this summer, but that will change this week (I hope). Who knows, maybe as things progress, I can post some stuff on here.

It also dawns on me that it'd be fun to include what I'm inspired by/listening to as I go. We'll see. That's all for now. Next time, maybe a bit of info on the other project I'm dying to finish.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Twenty Seven (Year Two)

So, the new Springsteen disc is amazing.  There's enough of a mixture of his upbeat rockers, his ballads, and his message songs to make this his best record since The Rising .  And speaking of that record... Buying The Boss the day it comes out always takes me back to a specific moment in life.  It was July 30th, 2002, the year after 9/11, the year after someone on the streets of New York told Springsteen "we need you now."  I had driven to Oshkosh, WI to visit some friends, when I remembered that Springsteen's disc was scheduled to come out that day.  I drove downtown to The Exclusive Company, but had to park a few blocks back.  At the time, there wasn't much going on downtown, but when I got out of the car, I could hear this music coming from up the block somewhere.  The closer I got to Exclusive, the more it began to dawn on me, they had set up a giant set of speakers in their upstairs windows, and were blasting the new album out into the streets....
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Twenty Six (Year Four)

So I dove back into 100 Riffs tonight, going into it with the hope that the hand written tabs I did last night would help me unlock the issue I was having transitioning from the first half of the riff to the second half.  It worked.  With both halves clearly written in front of me, I was able to work through the transition that had been tripping me up when the screen cut off was happening on SoundSlice.  That's going to be a nice thing to have in my bag of tricks for the times when I get stumped figuring these things out. I played a little bit of acoustic tonight as well, trying to be better about finding the balance between both instruments.  Late 90's-early 2000's rock has come up a lot in conversations at work of late, so in that spirit, I picked a song from that time period out of my set list notebook ("Your Winter" by Sister Hazel), and took a quick look at it.  Admittedly, it's a song I had mostly learned a long time ago, so the essential parts of it w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Thirteen (Year Five)

Finally!  A really good day.  And one that I really needed after the frustration with the rest of the weekend. I took a step back from a few things today, and got what I hope will be a bit of clarity in the process.  Instead of worrying about the progress I really haven't been making on the EP, I told myself that I needed to be happy with the few bits of lyric I stumbled across today, and that maybe I needed to focus my attention elsewhere, at least for today. I had picked up a really cool book on music theory as it applies to guitar last Tuesday when I was out and about, and having spent a little bit of time paging through it over the last few days, I focused in on it tonight and started reading, taking notes, and reinforcing some things.  It felt like progress.  It was great. When I had worked through some of that, I moved on to the whole "100 Riffs" thing, and got myself moving on that again.  It's astounding how much I can get inside my own head a...
Post a Comment
Read more