Skip to main content

Day One Hundred (Year Two)

Three things I'd like to touch on today.  No particular order to them, really, so I'll just dive in.

1) Tomorrow is the 1st of November.  A year ago I started in on "Stairway To Heaven."  This time around, I'm debating between two songs:  "Classical Gas," by Mason Williams (the solo acoustic version from Handmade), and Laurence Juber's version of "Maybe I'm Amazed."  Both are acoustic showpieces.  If I really wanted to get adventurous, I'd add the acousitc version of "Layla" to that potential mix of songs.  And, just for the record, if you made me pick an electric song, it'd be "Red House."  I've wanted to learn that fully for years.  I guess I'm really picking between four songs then, aren't I?

2)  After the rah rah nature of yesterday's post, I did get serious about working on the Vai Workout.  I started in on what will make up the 1st, 11th, and 21st hour of his 30 hour workout.  Not that I will do the entire 30 hours straightaway, but still.  Worked it through in small chunks at first, knowing that the best way to learn is not to have a monster session, but to work in smaller amounts and do more sessions.

3)  The third thing I want to mention tonight was just something fun I ran across online tonight.  It's billed on YouTube as the "Greatest Song Ever Written."  The girl who plays it (Beth, is her name) takes about 40 songs that all have the same chord progression, and ties individual lines from them into a single song.  It's brilliant in its own way, and it proves once and for all how many hit songs are written with the same 4 chords.  It's oddly inspiring, actually.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day One Hundred Forty Two

So, I haven't been sleeping much lately, and I've been staying up late. listening to music, doing a bit of playing, and watching old episodes of Behind The Music on the internet. It's funny, you know, because I never met the rest of my "band," I've become the critic. It's all right, don't get me wrong, but for a decade now I've always hoped that I'd find a way to release something. It'll happen, I know it will, but it's continually happened slower than I expected it to. I've gotten close to getting something released, as I've documented before here before, but with the winter coming and the cold closing in, I'm facing another chance to make something musical of the winter. I'm going to start by finishing up the old things that have gotten pushed to the sides in the last few months. With the buildup of everything since the summer, it should be easier. Even if all I do is spend the winter writing lyrics, trying to g...

Day Three

Short one today. I've got a bunch of the DVDs that Guitar World has put out. Waded through those to see what I had, worked off of the lead guitar one. Just basic scales , but still a light place to begin. It was nice to just start loosening up my fingers again. Off from work tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get a lot of playing done. Said I'd mention the other project I'm hoping to finish this year. Back when I was living in WI, I started a hard rock band with a friend of mine. She was heavily influenced by Evanescence, and so, with her as vocalist, we started writing songs. We had written and demoed almost a full album's worth of music by the time I moved to IA, and had even purchased a P.A. in preparation for eventual gigs. We never did find a permanent drummer or bassist, so our demos sound very rough (and not nearly loud enough). I'd like to finish those songs, and make an EP of the 4 or 5 strongest, just as a way to put a cap on that project. More tom...

Day Two Hundred Sixty Six (Year Six)

One of the biggest advantages of not getting all that much done this week is that it clues me in to what I need/want to take on vacation with me.  It's basically everything that went along with me when we left to go and dog sit on Monday night.  Granted, there are a few extra things I need to pack (the notebooks with the first two recording projects in them, for example), but that shouldn't be too hard to fit in. Most of the day tomorrow is full already, but there might be a bit of time in the evening (like there was today) to get into the studio.  Then, possibly a few hours on Sunday morning before we hit the road around noon. My shoulders have started to loosen up a bit from all of the insanity the last few weeks.  I'm ready to finally have an extended chance to focus on music next week.