Skip to main content

Day Three Hundred Thirty Six

I got up late this morning, but still had time to sit down with the acoustic before work. Something tells me that B.'s songwriting adventure last night may have inspired a small journey for me today. I didn't get a lot done, but I did find chords for a small bit of lyric that had stayed with me for the last few years. It's a quicker progression, and one that feels a bit different for the band (and take it from me, we write some pretty different stuff). It's only a three chord progression over a couple of lines, but I like it.

I tried to work on recording that guide track this morning, too, and found that it was quite tough for me to not throw in all kinds of embellishments as I played the progression. I didn't get the track laid down, because I worked on that second, and when I went to listen I discovered that the original track was in a different tuning, and I didn't have enough time to re-tune and record before I left. I did, however, peel back all of the layers we put on the original demo to find the acoustic heart of the song, and in so doing, make the guide track easier for me to lay down when I finally do get around to tracking it (hopefully tomorrow). I'm really liking this idea of stripping everything back to the bare bones before we build it up. To go from demos that all started to run together/sound the same to songs that feel whole because they have drums and bass behind them has been amazing. Having the drums & bass & acoustic to hand off to B. will be an exciting moment for me. Thought I was supposed to Skype with J. tonight, but nothing ever came of that... which is probably good, since it'll give me another day to try and have a guide track to send him. We shall see what happens 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 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.