Skip to main content

Day One Hundred Four (Year Three)

Taught after work.  The lesson went really, really well.  My student is really picking things up quickly.  She's working on melodies for simple songs right now, but I planted the idea of chords going along with those melodies today.  Within the melody discussion, we're also working on getting her through all of the notes in the first three frets.  After focusing in a lot on specific songs the last few weeks, today's lesson was more on notes and chords, which will be okay.  The way I see it, if we can get her comfortable with all of the notes in the first three frets, most of the major chords, and almost all of the important early minor chords will be covered.

Finally held firm to my vow from last week and put the new Wallflowers disc back into rotation in the car.  Got through the first couple of songs driving home from work/teaching tonight.  Still really digging it.

Didn't make much progress today with either the organizing of the music stuff or "Stairway."  Both of those things are extremely frustrating. 

Did, however, get a bit more reading done from the pile of guitar mags that I started going through last night.  I teach again tomorrow, but it needs to be a better music day for me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Three Hundred Fifty Seven (Year Seven)

Today was okay.  It ended up being quieter than I wanted it to be, but I got in a few things. 1.  I got the music from the car hauled in and sorted out in advance of my road trip to Dubuque for a little longer than a day.  I'm taking the Radiohead reissue with me for that, since I haven't gotten a chance to sit down with it yet. 2.  I'm also taking an empty notebook along with me, in the hopes that I might start to get some lyric ideas down on paper while I'm gone.  I watched some cool videos early this morning about the idea of writing all of the music before writing lyrics, and the way things are going that is looking like what's going on with me. 3.  I wish there had been more playing today, but I'm still feeling good about where things are sitting.  This next week needs to include a lot of writing.
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Ninety Three (Year Six)

Today was an interesting day. On one hand, it wasn't a day where I spent a ton of time in the studio, but on the other hand, it was a day where the time that I did spend in the studio was probably the most productive time I've had in a long time.  In short, even though I didn't spend all that much time working on the EP tonight, I feel like I got a whole lot closer to finishing it. I've been frustrated with myself lately for not finishing things a bit quicker, and struggling with the fact that, while I have been successful at finding a whole lot of kernels of songs, they haven't seemed to want to sprout into completed works.  Tonight, instead of freaking out and making myself more stressed out, I sat down and looked at a few favorite songs to see if I could sneak a peek behind the veil, if you will. The answers jumped out at me immediately.  I haven't been doing enough with the kernels.  Mostly, I haven't been facilitating the chord changes that will a...
Post a Comment
Read more