Skip to main content

Day Ninety (Year Four)

What a day!  Training started for the new job.  I expected to be exhausted when I got home, and I was... at least a little bit.  Then, late tonight (10:30ish), I realized I was wide awake and brimming with energy, so I did the sensible thing:  I headed into the studio.

I haven't entirely sorted out practice routine stuff yet.  In a perfect world, I'd like to have a few of them set up, so that I can change it up a bit with different materials or different lengths of time.  In reality, it felt too late in the day to start in on a project of that sort, energy or no energy.  So, instead, I used the music for relaxation while also dragging out "Yellow Ledbetter," which I hadn't done in quite a while.

One of the cool things about going back to something after a bit of time away from it is that you tend to focus in on some of the smaller details of the song.  Tonight, it was the fills and note choices within the chords that were highlighted for me.  The solo is coming easier, as well.  I was a little worried about that after my time away, but it seems to be in need of improved study in only a couple of places, so that felt good today, too.

Oh yeah, and I got the Guitar Aerobics lick of the day squared away, as well.

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 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.

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.