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Post by wannaplayblues on May 3, 2015 1:54:26 GMT -6
Well, it's been like a ghost-town around these forums - so I presume everyone has been busy practising?  I've spent this week working on a blues rhythm piece that accents the upstrokes and plays a mute-strum on the down strokes and has a standard shuffle feel. It's been a good learning lesson by getting me to play the muted strums with my strumming hand thereby creating a different sound than playing it muted with the fingering hand. This week is slightly unplanned, but I intend to make a start on the final BYCU piece. |
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Post by cunningr on May 3, 2015 2:18:27 GMT -6
Well I haven't been practicing as much as I should, just too tired after work this week however I still managed a good 5 hours. I am still working on Hard Rocker, and have learned a couple ZZ Top songs. I have been working a bit in my BRYCU book also. I feel like I have lost some technical practice focus, so I need to refocus a little. Hopefully will get hard rocker recorded this week.
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Post by mikeherb on May 3, 2015 2:25:16 GMT -6
I just got a black box recorder thing and got it to work with Audacity. It just records clean and I want a dirty sound... So I also got Reaper today (Sounds so evil). Won't record anything til I catch up on that scale theory stuff up to Lesson 6. I memorized shape 3 but memorizing where each root note is will take more time. 2 More shapes to go and get that bloody Delta Mood down. I'll slow it down in Reaper tomorrow and figure that out.
This is nice. It is stopping me from wanting to buy more guitar gear and focus on getting better.
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Post by Phil on May 3, 2015 4:21:24 GMT -6
I only got in 4 days of practice this week for a total of 4 hrs. Didn't do hardly anything I had planned to do, but all was not lost. I did review "Delta Mood" which I hadn't played in well over a year. It was easy. That's not bragging. I'm just saying that it is good to know that the skills you acquire from focused practicing are transferable. The extreme string skipping in MBYCU "True Trem Blues" that I've been practicing has apparently paid off. The most difficult thing about "Delta Mood" for me was the string skipping. And it continued to be a problem even after I finished the book. The most important thing I did, however, was to work on transcribing Dicky Betts's solo in the Allman Bros. Band's version of "One Way Out." I got through to the 11th measure of the 1st chorus of a 2 chorus solo. This is very good ear training, and I'm convinced that the more you do it the better you'll get. So far I've successfully resisted the urge to look for a youtube lesson on this. I want to do it myself. When I'm finished I'll post a recording. I'm going to redo my practice schedule. I'm all over the board on the Jazz stuff. I need to get focused and stop looking at everything that's available online. I'm also going to dedicate 1 practice session a week to transcribing stuff from records. I haven't done this with any regularity before because it cuts into my other practice, but I think it's well worth the time dedicated to doing it. It will just take me a little longer to finish MBYCU.  |
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Post by blackcountrymick on May 3, 2015 4:38:44 GMT -6
I've done loads of bass playing and recording this week, I've basically done 4 grade 3 bass pieces which as it turns out is at a level I am pretty comfortable with, I have just started a grade 4 piece "White Room" and immediately hit a lack of speed problem so I will be working on this and hopefully will get this done this coming week, its a great tune to play and develops some skills so win win for me  Nothing to report for 6 string.  |
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Post by bluesbruce on May 3, 2015 5:20:21 GMT -6
This is nice. It is stopping me from wanting to buy more guitar gear and focus on getting better. First off, welcome to Mikeherb, good to see somebody new post here. I think we all have to fight the urge to buy something rather than practicing and becoming a better player. Along these lines, I did finally post a video with the new Ibanez I got for my birthday. Been really busy with work, having to work this weekend. I think I had two days this week I didn't touch the guitar at all and one other where is made myself go play for about 10 minutes. Not a banner week by any means. Bruce |
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Post by jack1982 on May 3, 2015 5:38:12 GMT -6
Well golf season is in full swing here so I only got in 11 hours on guitar and a whopping 1 on bass. Guess I'll have to get used to practicing later at night if I'm going to get much accomplished this summer. Worked on the lead for Groovin' Easy in More BYCU but didn't spend enough time on it to make much progress. Still working on the hard part (bars 10-16) in isolation at slow tempo and then once I've got that up to maybe 90% tempo, working on the whole song. Spent a little time on the rhythm guitar and bass for that too, I'm still not quite satisfied with those. Spent some time with my improvising, still working on using the notes from the chord I'm playing over as target notes, that seems to be helping with improving my note choice. Worked on my solo for Got The Drive in the Rhythm book, still need to come up with some stuff for the outro which is the last third of the song. And need to do videos of the rhythm guitar and bass parts too. And I worked on a cool song from one of my TrueFire courses as well. I hope to post videos of all these things...some day  Managed to get a few bucks stashed away for my eventual purchase of a semi-hollow body guitar too...maybe by July or August assuming no household catastrophes in the meantime |
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Post by mikeherb on May 6, 2015 23:17:29 GMT -6
Thanks Tbone! Guys I just did something cool. I made an excel sheet called Practice Schedule... I play Delta Mood for 10 minutes... 5 min of pattern 1, 5 min of pattern 2, 5 min of pattern 3, then 10 minutes of them all together, then Delta mood for 20 minutes.... And then the next column I just put the date and what speed i played them on (MEtronome for scales and % speed for the song.) I timed them with my phone so I don't go over. Even though I'm still on delta mood at 50% I am putting vibrato in and adding some string slide when I'm done playing a note. Sounds better even if it's taking forever. Who cares! We are probably too old to be rock stars but it is never too late to give the world another cover of Smoke on the Water. |
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Post by jack1982 on May 7, 2015 5:43:39 GMT -6
LOL, even my neighbor who plays country music does a cover of Smoke on the Water (and Puff the Magic Dragon too) I use a practice schedule as well, I've got a column on the left with the various projects I'm working on and then the days of the week listed across the top, and then I write in how much time I spent on each one each day. |
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Post by Phil on May 7, 2015 10:13:11 GMT -6
Mikeherb,
A practice schedule/log is probably one of the best things you could do. I started mine in Feb 2014. I really helps to keep me focused and to track my ever so slow progress.
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