Skip to main content

Day Two Hundred Fifty Four (Year Four)




So, tonight I sat down with the electric, determined to work my way through at least one of the 100 Riffs. What's funny is that, the riff I ended up working on was one of the ones I had myself convinced I knew already.

The intro riff to The Beatles' "Day Tripper" was one of the really early things I learned when I bought my Strat, way back in the day.  I've seen a lot of other players approach the riff the same way I learned it initially, so it was interesting tonight to listen (and play along), and have it not sound quite right.  Finding that, I did what any person in my situation would do, I grabbed my copy of this:

 
 
off of the shelf, and looked up the song.  Sure enough, there's a slightly different way to play the intro that, when worked through for a bit, makes more sense, and is more economical in terms of movement.  

It's always cool when, at the end of the week, I can sit down and learn something new about something I've known for a long time.  Those small victories, and the fact that my ear is picking up on those subtle tonal differences again is really exciting.

What a great night in the studio.  It has me wanting to go through all 214 songs in that book, just learning and studying.  Makes me wonder how much more advanced I'd be coming out the other side of that experience.

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 Three Hundred Fifty Nine (Year Three)

Finished up last night's project for the Start Experiment tonight.  It feels awesome to have the drums laid down for this first song.  It's amazing to me just how much more like music this progression sounds with a drum track behind it. Tonight's project is recording the bass line, which should go pretty smoothly, considering that it's already written... I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  Granted, it took me about an hour to get the drums set up so the patterns were recorded in the right order.  Even with notes, these things take a lot of time, I guess. Two things dawned on me today that need sharing: 1) I haven't done much listening at all this week, except for what has happened in the car.  It's still Drive-By Truckers right now, but that needs to change tomorrow. and 2) There hasn't been a whole lot of work on the Buddy Holly tune in the last couple of days.  That needs to change tomorrow and Saturday if I'm going to feel good abou...

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.