Skip to main content

Day Two Hundred Fifty Five (Year Two)

First things first, SL sent me a link today to a free advance streaming of the new Counting Crows record through AlternativeAddiction.com.  The record drops on April 10th.  (Only 6 more days!!!)  Normally I don't listen to those sorts of things in advance, because it kills some of the suspense/excitement of buying a new album, but I was in a Crows sort of mood today, so I gave the first few tracks a listen.  I'll refrain from commenting on the record until I've listened to the whole thing, but suffice it to say that Adam's voice is one that has been missing from the pop landscape for far too long, and it's good to have it back.

The other thing I did tonight was drag out the two definitive versions of the "Red House" tab that I have.  One was from the same issue of Guitar World that has the Vai 30 Hour Workout.  The other is in a book written by one of the guys closely associated with Guitar World, who has played on some of the Experience Hendrix tours in the last few years, Andy Aledort.  The book I have is part of Hal Leonard's "Signature Licks" series.  It's Volume 1 of the Hendrix ones.  Of which I believe there are 2.

The coolest part about the Aledort book?  It comes with a CD that has performances, some at full speed, some at half speed, of the songs in the book.  "Red House" is one of the ones that has the half speed performances.  I think this means that, between the CD and my guitar trainer, I might be able to slow it all the way down to 1/4 time without changing the pitch, or something close to it at least.

Either before bed tonight, or tomorrow after work, I'm going to do a bit of re-tooling when it comes to the studio area.  Try to make things a bit easier to use.

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.