Skip to main content

Day Fifty Six (Year Four)

Yesterday was a great starting point.  In its own way, it almost felt like a new beginning.  Today's vow was to spend more time in the studio than I did yesterday.  All told, a fairly simple goal to accomplish, especially having only clocked about a half an hour of actual practice time yesterday.

Today, it wound up being about three times that.  I'd say that an hour and fifteen minutes of that hour and a half were spent with nothing but the 12 bar blues progression.  I ran it over and over, until the 7th chords that were rusty last night had about 95% of the rust knocked off of them.  Every so often, the slide backwards from the V to the IV still catches me, but I think that has more to do with wrist placement than anything else.

I just really wanted to feel like I had the progression down cold before I started messing around with the licks and turnarounds.  This way it will be easier for me to work on the other thing I made mention of last night: switching back and forth between lead and rhythm.  At some point in the next day or two, I either want to go in and lay down an extended jam of the 12 Bar progression, or find a backing track online, so that I can get some work in with the turnarounds and other blues licks.  With any luck, I'll have enough time to lay down tracks for all of the keys.

Today was a great day.  More tomorrow, and better.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Three Hundred Forty Two (Year Four)

Tonight was a slightly unfocused night in the studio. It was a night of acoustic stuff, but most of what I got accomplished involved tinkering with different songs by Jackie Greene and Johnny Cash.  If nothing else, I set up the next list of songs I want to figure out. Tomorrow night I need to start getting back to the Acoustic Goldmine book, as well.  Every time I sit down with the acoustic for an extended period of time, I reconnect with the emotional side of that instrument.  There's so much to learn still in that book, so much information designed to improve my playing.  I need to take better advantage of it. I know it's crazy, but I'm already looking forward to Friday.  I really need to spend a lot of the day in the studio.  Getting a weekday off of work is such a rare commodity.  I need to do a good job of using my time wisely. 
Post a Comment
Read more