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Day One Hundred Thirty Three (Year Two)

I got my brother's Christmas presents picked up today.  Cross that off the list of musical things to do before what, in all reality, will be the first week of January.

The coolest thing happened tonight.  I got all of the piles of magazines and other musical resources off of my living room floor!  Granted, some/most of that is now being sorted out on my kitchen table, but hey, sometimes the starting of a project involves shifting resources from one point to another, right?

I discovered something tonight, as well, the process I had started way back last year, which at least partly involved finding all of the notes in each key, and the subsequent spots to play them on the fretboard, had been started, but never finished off.  I had gotten about halfway through the circle of keys before giving up, though, so at least some of the work has been started.  That, to me, seems like the place to begin.  Finishing that small bit of the project is almost like finding closure from an earlier failure, and giving myself the chance to dream big and follow through again.

So, like, two weeks ago, during a rare moment of clarity in an otherwise musically messy month, I sat down and started thinking about some of the things that would need (in theory at least) to form the basic layer of the binder.  I went back tonight and found that list.  Here it is:

1) The Berklee study criteria
2) Vai's 30 Hour Workout
3) Zakk Wylde's Guitar Bootcamp article, and the other tips from GIT & Berklee that are also included in that issue of Guitar World.

4) Some song transcriptions ("Little Wing," "Red House," "Have You Ever Loved A Woman") that I really want to learn from an electric perspective, and a few ("Layla," the ever pesky "Classical Gas," and maybe "Fur Elise") on the acoustic side of things.

5) Richard Lloyd's Alchemical Guitarist columns from GW.
6) Any number of the DVDs that I've picked up of late, either from Guitar World, or elsewhere.

What I've already got on the table are the 30 Hour Workout and the Guitar Bootcamp article.  The Berklee criteria are already printed off, and just need to be placed somewhere in the binder.  I haven't squared away all of the song transcriptions yet.  Nor have I hunted down all of Richard Lloyd's columns yet.  I know I've got them all (or maybe all of them, minus the one issue of GW that I missed in the last few years).  Either way, finding them all, which will likely happen Monday, will force me to go through my closet full of guitar magazines.  In short, I'll likely find more resources to use, and hopefully come out the other side of it with a better organized closet too!

I'm really excited about this whole process.  It feels so much better, healthier even, than November did.  Probably because it should have been the very first thing that happened a year and a half ago.  Better late than never, though, right?

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