Skip to main content

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?

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

Dat Two Hundred Thirty One (Year Three)

So, apparently the new Airborne EP that came out yesterday is MP3 only!  Downloaded that as soon as I figured it out this morning, but didn't have time to sync the ipod after doing so.  Therefore, I naturally had a ton of time to listen tonight that was away from my computer. On the plus side, though, I was able to spend some of that extra time with a guitar in my hands, working on the chord progression for this month's song.  I've got an opening chord change that I really like, and the flicker of a two guitar approach, with one of the two parts capoed up the neck dancing somewhere in the back of my brain.  If all goes according to plan, it could work out really well. Also, finally over halfway in the Grohl bio.  Considering I was hardly home at all today, I feel like I got a decent chunk of that read. Tomorrow should (hopefully) be another decent day for music, with a chance to play in the evening, and enough time for a few runs through the Airborne EP....
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more