"Muse" - ings on Rock & Life

So, tonight was a better night in the studio than either of the nights this past weekend.  Not sure how that happens, exactly, but I'll take it. There was a bit of acoustic stuff tonight.  Some better work on figuring out "Santa Fe Girl," by Jackie Greene.  I'm fairly certain there's a capo at the fourth fret, and that the song is in C (or, in E without the capo).  I don't have it all down yet, but it's a much better start on figuring it out than I got the other day. As for the electric side of things, it wasn't the blues that caught my attention tonight (although that was the original plan).  Instead, I worked through some theory stuff, and finally drilled some of it into my head enough that it ought to stick, which means that I can start adding a bit more information soon. Pretty good day, if you ask me.

Another decent day today. I spent some time in the studio tonight, part of it with the electric, and just a little bit of time with the acoustic tonight as well. What I had wanted to do was play along with some of the blues stuff on my iPod, but when I went to work through some Clapton, my mini-speakers were dead and in need of charging.  Instead of working through blues stuff tonight, I picked up the acoustic while charging the speakers. I've been listening to a lot of Jackie Greene lately, so I went there with the acoustic in my hands.  He uses a capo frequently for his guitar parts, so tonight I briefly attempted to figure out "Santa Fe Girl" from his 2003 release Rusty Nails .  Didn't make a whole lot of progress on it tonight, but I think tomorrow will be a better day for that.  I did , however, double check the Soundgarden riff from yesterday and discover that I wasn't dead on by any means, but I was pretty close, so I'll take that as a win.  It ha...

Today was okay. I got some housekeeping stuff done in the studio that had been on my list for quite some time.  I got a few posters put into frames, and finally got the space heater moved out of the studio from this past winter.  Now that it's almost July I'm mostly convinced I won't need it for a few months at least. On the playing side, I worked on a few different things today, most specifically, I: 1) Went through some of Soundgarden's "Fell On Black Days" by ear.  The full tab is in the latest issue of Guitar World , so I'll have it for more focused learning, but it was fun to play around with it a bit on my own before I go back and see how close I came. 2) Worked through some of the stuff on the posters I framed.  They're crammed full of information, and one of the reasons I wanted to get them into frames is so I could study from them.  There's scale and chord information, including patterns and chord construction info.  Both posters h...

Wow, did this week go fast!  I didn't get as much time in with the backing tracks during the work week as I hoped I would going into it, but that said, I felt like what happened  tonight was a good way to get myself ready for the weekend ahead. I got into the studio a bit on the late side, but with enough energy that I was pretty confident of getting something solid done, or at least putting in a bit of good work before I crashed for the evening.  I wanted something to loosen up my fingers, something that would provide a bit of a warm-up for tomorrow and Sunday, when I would have more time and energy to devote to practicing.  Knowing that, I went for one of the booklets that came with a DVD I had gotten from Guitar World , one of those things with pages and pages of lead/scale exercises and small snippets of rhythm guitar.  Just enough to push you down the path of improvement without giving you too much to focus on. I keyed in on a couple of the scale exer...

Tonight didn't feel quite as crisp, playing-wise as last night did, but it was still a good night.  Tonight it was the major scale's turn to be run all the way up the neck.  The patterns I've been focused on from The Guitarist's Guide To Scales Over Chords are feeling better underneath my fingers.  For sure the major scale patterns and their corresponding pentatonics.  I'm okay with the minor scale (but not as comfortable as I wish I was), but am fine with the minor pentatonic stuff the book highlights.  I still come back to the fact that my scale knowledge and my lead playing are the biggest aspect of my playing that is lacking right now, and I'm determined to change that by the end of the summer. I didn't do anything with backing tracks tonight, but a lot of that it definitely on the list for the weekend.  Instead, I took a quick look at the first workout that Steve Vai did for Guitar World back in 1990, and had a bit of fun with that.  One of ...

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 la...

Not really a whole lot to report today.  I got home fairly late tonight, and didn't have much time in the studio, so most of what I got a chance to do today was run notes for scales in my head between calls at work.  It's more a question of dusting off old knowledge than it is learning anything new, in that regard. I really need to start picking one scale each day, and playing it in all twelve keys.  Even if it's just one pattern of one scale each day.  We did that sort of thing in classes in junior high and high school, and it really helped me then.  I've said it before, but it bears repeating, if only to get it through my head that it's a good idea.  I need to incorporate some of those approaches to my studying/learning/playing now. Picked up the new issue of Guitar World , and the new record by Ed Sheeran tonight. Tomorrow needs to be an awesome day for music, because today didn't have enough of that in it.