New Name

I was never happy with the name fo the blog, but it's so hard to find a name that wasn't taken.  Yesterday I thought of this great new name for the blog, (or at least a better one than I had), so I put that in to action.

Had a great lesson yesterday.  It was one of those days where you leave thinking to yourself "THIS is why I pay for lessons!".  Keith finds and identifies for me the problems in my playing that might take years for me to identify and fix myself.  Yesterday's issue was how hard I was fingering the strings.  When I strum harder, I push harder, but even when I strum softly I was pushing pretty hard on those strings.  Part of the problem appeared to be that my fingers were too far from the edge of the fret.  I moved them as far over as I could without actually being on top of the darn thing and lo and behold, it required much less pressure to make a clean sound.  (Or what passes for a clean sound when I play...)  =)  I also noticed immediately that I could play faster.  Amazing.  Who knows how long it would have taken me to pick up on this if I tried to teach myself from a book, or by ear?  Great stuff!

12 Bar Blues

So...  I've been very active practicing guitar.  Not so active on the blog.  Keith taught me to play the "12 Bar Blues", first with single notes.  The way he taught it was very similar to this:

At any rate, it was really easy to play with single notes... I=G, IV=C, V=D.  He added a swing rhythm and it sounded pretty cool I thought.  ("doooo de-doooo de-doooo de-doooo..." is kinda what it sounded like.)  After practicing that for a week(amongst other things), we played it together, only he went off and played a blues solo so I could hear what we were doing.  I think it was the first time I felt like I was playing music for real on my guitar.  It was cool.

The next week he added power chords to the mix.  (I think that's what they're called.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.)  I is now GDG, IV is now CGC, and V is now DAD.  But he didn't stop there.  He had me mute the strings at times.  So it was more like "doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/".  Honestly, this was hard for me at first.  Trying to do the swing rhythm, whilst playing the new notes, AND mute the strings... my brain fumbled a bit.  But I could see where we were trying to get, and I was excited.  Keith told me this is great practice because the constant string muting(a big part of guitar playing) would be like finger push-ups for me. I like the analogy.  =D

So I've been practicing this often this week.  I have trouble moving from the I and IV to V.  I need to focus on that.  It's a lot of fun though... =D

More Scales, More Chords...

Hasn't really been much to report...  Hence the lack of posts.  I continue to work on chords and scales, strengthening fingers, listening to good guitarists, etc...  I did learn about harmonics recently which I found somewhat interesting.  At any rate, I'm still at it.

My Fingers Can't Play The Sound In My Mind... Yet.

I worked the blues scale hard last night.  At first I was still playing a wrong note here and there, but as practice went on I got better and better.  I moved my fingers up and down the fretboard so I could get used to playing it starting on different frets.  About halfway through practice, instead of just playing he notes one after the other, I started giving the scale a blues cadence...  "DUM di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM".  After a couple minutes of this something awesome happened.  I started wanting to repeat parts of the scale, or reverse direction.  I then remembered that my guitar teacher said that often in blues music(not just blues guitar) the artist rolls up or down to the next note instead of just going to it(I can't remember what the musical term for that is, but I remember there was a term and a musical notation for it from my trumpet days.)  I started pushing or pulling on a string to bend up to the next note and skipping actually fingering it.  I also figured out that I could do the same thing going down if I skipped a note, but bent the string before strumming the note after that one, and then "un-bending" the note.  (I'm obviously going to have to get the proper terminology for this stuff, but this morning is too busy for me to go look it up on the net just yet.)

I was very happy with the results, but was a little frustrated that my fingers just could not keep up with the sound I was hearing in my head.  That will come with time, I know.  At the same time, when I was getting it right, I started to get so excited about what I was hearing, the I invariably would screw up the next note.  I finally just laughed out loud at my predicament.  I guess this is progress though.  I'm happy with it. =D

The Complete Blues and Pentatonic Scales

So, things went well at the guitar lesson.  My instructor has now given me the complete Blues Scale, as well as the complete Minor Pentatonic Scale.

                           Blues Scale                                 Minor Pentatonic Scale

  I'm really going to practice these scales hard this week.  I received a new Chord(B7) to work on as well, and some homework involving memorization of note positions on the guitar, so I'll have to do that as well, but most of my work will be on these two scales.  I want to be able to move quickly between strings and frets.  I'm really unhappy with how slow I am and how often my finger or pick ends up on the wrong fret/string.  There's no special tool to learn this stuff.  I think you just gotta practice practice practice.

  I found it fascinating to learn more about the origins of Blues and Jazz and how to identify a true Blues song and a hybrid Blues song.  I hope my teacher talks more about this sort of thing. =D

Picking

I was practicing with my son last night, and was trying to get him not to pick so deeply with his pick.  You can hear the pick tap the guard of the guitar when he strums sometimes.  It's that bad.  After we were done, he went upstairs and I kept trying different ways of using the pick, and different picking depths.  I discovered that even I was picking too deeply as I could obtain the same (or better) sound with just the slightest contact with the string.  I did notice there were differences in sound, and perhaps a better guitarist could make use of that, but for me right now I think the best thing is to get used to plucking as shallow as possible.  I found I could strum much quicker with the reduced resistance of a shallow pick.

I put my son to bed after that and when I came down to do "my" practice, oddly enough, I just wasn't feeling it.  I did a few chords but ultimately put the guitar down a few minutes later.  I guess some nights the brain wants to do other things.  Now I have a LOT of work to do tonight to make up for it, but  think I'm better for taking a day off. =D

Changing My Mind On Clapton

I must have listened to the wrong songs when I first tested the waters with Clapton.  I have since found some of his music really good.  It's clear he's a gifted guitarist.  It's also clear that some of his music leaves me flat, but some of it is super.  Now to figure out which is which.  =D

There never seems to be enough time to practice as much as I'd like.  Tonight I need to go over my chords again, and memorize the new chords.  Then some more finger drills and blues scale practice.  I'm hoping to get in 60 minutes of practice tonight.

Alex is starting to finger his notes faster.  It's fun to see him coming along.  Oh, and I finally got the second electric guitar.  We're all set now!  =D