Skip to main content

Day Eighty Three (Year Four)

Today was another good day.  Spent time in the studio with both the guitar and the ukulele, and stopped off at Moondog Music for the first time in a long time.  Couldn't pass that up on a pretty heavy new release Tuesday, but more on that later.

Didn't make it into the studio until about ten tonight, but I made some good (and fun) progress when I got there.  I pulled out the book of Dylan songs for the uke, and started thumbing through, looking for a fun and easy way to dive in.  After trying a few things, I finally settled on "You Ain't Going Nowhere."  It's a 3 chord song (G-Am-C) with a steady rhythm, and I've got a few different versions of it (Dylan's, Counting Crows, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), which gives me a few options for tempo and style.

Actually, I think learning ukulele is going to help my guitar playing.  Starting with a new instrument will take me back to all of the fun 50's and 60's music I grew up with, stuff that only has 3 or 4 chords, and get me to learn the progressions... which I can then translate to guitar.

And speaking of guitar, tonight I:

1) worked my way through the second lick of week 3 from Guitar Aerobics
2) jammed out to the Dylan I learned on ukulele first
3) took a quick glance through the Jim Croce book I picked up yesterday.

As for what I picked up from Moondog, the list looks like this:

Lightning Bolt - Pearl Jam
Negativity - Deer Tick
Unplugged (Deluxe re-issue) - Eric Clapton

I also ordered Lucy Wainwright Roche's new record, There's A Last Time For Everything, which should be in on Friday.  When they call me for that, I'll head over to pick it up and use that as an excuse to snag the two records I left without today: The new Paul McCartney disc, and the new record by The Head & The Heart. 
Labels:

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