Skip to main content

Day Three Hundred Thirty (Year Four)

Tonight felt productive in the studio.

I started where my brother and I had left off in our discussions on Tuesday night, taking the time and starting to go through the lesson on classical harmony from this year's February issue of Guitar Techniques.  It's always good to talk about theory with my brother, and listening to him explain something helps me out, but what really drives it home for me is coming back in the next day or so, and tracking through the material on my own.

After that, I played through some of the scale patterns that I've been going over of late.  Not only are the patterns getting easier, but I'm getting faster at picking a random spot on the neck and knowing which key I'm in.  I know I need to be smarter about my approach to studying, and the order I work on things, but I also know that I'm getting more comfortable with things that have always just barely eluded me.

After that, I gathered up a few of the GT CDs that come with the magazine, with the intention of importing the 20 minutes of jam tracks they advertise as coming with each CD into iTunes, so I could sync them with my iPod.  For whatever reason, the tracks don't show up when I pop the disc into my CD drive.  Not sure why that is.  Getting those jam tracks all in one place would be really cool for my plans this summer.  I'll have another go tomorrow and see what I come up with then.

I'm already starting to develop a pretty distinct plan for tomorrow's practicing.  Should be a good start to the weekend, I hope.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Three Hundred Nine (Year Seven)

Well, it happened.  We came, we saw, and we (sort of) conquered.  I'm not sure how great we played all the way through, but there were definite moments that went really well, and all things considered (from my side anyway), it was an absolute blast and I hope we get to play again for something that's not church related. The set list, as it was, went like this: 1.  I'll Fly Away 2.  From This Valley 3.  Crazy 4.  My Church 5.  Jolene 6.  Long December 7.  You & I 8.  Can't Help Falling In Love 9.  Hey Jude It was an interestingly eclectic group of songs, with more bluegrass and country than I would have expected. It definitely took us a little while to get our feet under us, and on some level I felt like we were just getting warmed up by the time "Hey Jude" ended, but it was a start, and I'll take that any day.
Post a Comment
Read more