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Day Eighty Six (Year Four)

Today was a mixture of good and bad, or perhaps more accurately put, productive and not so productive.  On the productive side today were the following things:

1) I went over my notes, and prepped for tomorrow's lesson(s), the first of which happens at 9:30, the second at 10:00.  Got the studio cleaned up a bit too, which should make things go a bit smoother.  That alone was proof that I had been working on any number of things this week.

2) I sat down and watched the Green Day DVD on the making of their trilogy from last year.  There's so much that can be learned by watching a band document their time in the studio.  The other cool thing about the DVD?  Watching clips of Billie Joe making home demos, and discovering (again) that the process is pretty much the same for all of us.  I watched him lay down drums, put bass over the top, and then lay down guitar parts before vocals.  It's just cool to know that, no matter who you are, the process is the same.  I took that knowledge into the studio with me, and put a bit of it to use with my own...

3) Songwriting.  I grabbed my notebook and opened to an idea I've kicked around for a long time.  I like it, but it has always felt like it's missing something.  I didn't spend a lot of time with it, but I spent enough time to be able to see where things need improvement.

4) I made sure that my list of stuff I've been working on was complete and up to date, and started figuring out how much time each thing on the list needs.

As for what didn't happen today, that list looks like this:

1) Listening.  Or at least there wasn't much/enough listening.
2) While I spent some time playing today, not enough of it was bluesy in nature.  Need to get to more of that tomorrow.

I did, however, get around to the Guitar Aerobics lick of the day, and though I can't play it up to tempo yet, I was able to get through it this time, so that's an improvement over the last couple of weeks.
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