Skip to main content

Day Two Hundred Twenty Three (Year Four)

After taking a look back at my goals for the year yesterday, I wanted to not only enjoy getting back in the studio again, but also look to make some gains in what was really my first day where I felt like I had a substantial amount of time since the end of last month.  I feel like I was able to accomplish that today.  I,

1) Dove back into the Acoustic Goldmine book a little bit.  I stepped back a lesson or two in the stuff I had been working through, to the lesson on block chords, just because I wanted an excuse to stretch out my fingers a little bit, and get them reacquainted with some of the key concepts in this run of lessons on finger-picking.

2) Listened back to a couple of the demos for the songs I wrote last month, and was pleasantly surprised to still be happy with what I got done.  It's always a true test for me to step away for a little bit, and then go back to something and see if my opinions change.  Definitely looking forward to working on getting those songs cleaned up and sounding the way I want them to.

3) Lastly tonight, I wanted to at least touch on one of the things in my list that I hadn't even looked at yet.  The building of a set list made the most sense in that regard, so I grabbed a notebook and my iPod, and started jotting down songs that seemed like they would be fun to learn, but that would also make some sense in an acoustic setting.  I found almost a page full of songs in a short period of time, so that's cool, and it also means that I can say I've started in on another one of my goals for the year.

Tomorrow, I really want to do a little bit of electric stuff.  Find my way back into learning those 100 Riffs, that sort of thing.

Comments

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...

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.

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...