Skip to main content

Day Three Hundred Thirty Six (Year Four)

Know what's hard to believe?  The #STARTexp, which I spent most of last summer, and a good portion of last fall working on in a musical context, kicked off a year ago today.  I won't say that I've killed it at every opportunity since then, but I will definitely stand by the statement that working on those three songs in 24 days was the event that pumped some life back into my musical exploits.  Any time you work on something every day (and write about it) for as long as I've been documenting my journey to regain my musical chops, there are bound to be some times when the energy level and the progress are at low-tide.  I'm never terribly proud of those moments, but even in the low moments, the Start Experiment  has helped me to understand the level of consistent dedication it is going to take to get where I want to be.

Sometimes I think that my blog really began a year ago, that all of the work I did before then was just prep work for what has started in the last twelve months.

That said, I got in studio tonight and followed through on my plan from last night, running the box pattern of the minor pentatonic scale in all twelve keys, all the way up the neck, and then started in on some major scales, calling the notes out loud as I played them.  Somehow that helps, seeing that the sharps are spaced out in the way they are, that they fit into the formula.  I'm definitely improving.  More tomorrow.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day One Hundred Eleven (Year Eight)

Okay, so Dave's voice was kinda shot last night and the show was still epic.  Here's what they played: Run All My Life Learn to Fly The Pretender The Sky Is a Neighborhood Rope ( with solo's ) Sunday Rain My Hero These Days Walk Under My Wheels / Jump / Another One Bites the Dust / Blitzkrieg Bop ( w/ band introductions ) Big Me Congregation Breakout Times Like These This Is a Call Under Pressure ( Queen  cover) Monkey Wrench Breakdown ( Tom Petty  cover) Best of You Dirty Water Let There Be Rock ( AC/DC  cover) Everlong   And here is a little bit of "Big Me," just for fun:    

Day Three Hundred Forty (Year Six)

It's done.  Well, okay, so it's 99.5% done, but that's close enough for me. The stereo and the turntable got set up this morning, as I figured they would, and the two bags of randomness (picks, my slide, tuners, etc) and the few small piles of notebooks got dealt with tonight.  I even managed to get the iMac set up, if not fired up. And yet, the studio remains only slightly unfinished.  Somewhere in either the house or the garage, there must be a box or a bag that has a couple of studio-related items tucked into it, because there are at least two things I can't find.  As fate would have it, they're important things, too.  And something tells me that they're all in one place.  I'm missing: 1.  My looping pedal 2.  The power cable for my Marshall 3.  The foot switch for the Marshall They're all things that would have been in the same general area in the old studio, but given how much of the house we've gotten set up already, it really surpris

Day Two Hundred Forty One (Year Eight)

Holy shit.  I knew it had been a good number of days since I'd posted, but I didn't think for a second that it had been NINE of them... the last week and a half has been a blur, so let me see if I can catch myself up: 1.  It was spring break week last week, so in theory I should have been able to get a lot of good work in, but there was family here all week long, and staying with us.  It was great to see them all, but it didn't leave an awful lot of time for hiding away in the studio. 2.  My Dad and my Brother were here at the end of that time, though, and we got a chance to talk through a bit of the plan for the hootenanny that Dad wants to throw this summer, so that was good. 3.  New Decemberists record came in the mail today.  I'm listening now, but am hoping to spend a lot more time with it over the weekend. I've felt disconnected and off for great parts of the last week, even with people here.  It's no wonder, considering I haven't posted here.