Weekly Update 26-07-15

I got in 5 days of practice for a total of 5 hours. Most of this time was spent on "True Trem Blues" and Tremblin' Tremolo."

I was going to take a crack at recording "True Trem" yesterday. I realized that I hadn't recorded the rhythm part yet. So, I opened the book with the intention of running through it a couple of times and recording it. Well, I got a rude awakening. It is way more complex than it looks at first glance, and I had never even tried to play it before yesterday.

It took me about 45 minutes to get the hang of what's going on, and I spent about 30 minutes practicing it with a metronome. It's going to take at least another hour to get it smooth and memorized. The only reason I was able to get it down so fast (fast for me at my current level) is that it's very similar to the rhythm part for "Jumpin' Blues" which took me a long time to get down.

Note to self: spend some time on the rhythm parts before jumping into the lead.

Here's a suggestion. If you are at least half way through BYCU jump into the rhythm parts of "More BYCU" instead of working on "Blues Rhythms You Can Use." Why? Because you have a purpose for learning the rhythms in MBYCU now - your are going to put them to use soon. Work on BRYCU if you have extra time, or put it off till later on down the road. If you want a real workout on using 9th chords in different voicings check out "Jumpin' Blues" and "True Trem Blues." They'll have you jumping all over the neck.

I got in 9 1/4 hours on guitar and 6 1/2 on bass last week. Worked a lot on Rakin' in the Funk in More BYCU. I think the rhythm part is about done, just need to make a video. I've got the bass line figured out (more or less  ), it's a funky one playing its own thing, not following the rhythm guitar around at all - that'll take more practice to get in the groove.  I thought the lead was sounding pretty good until I recorded myself and listened back to it    Needs work lol.

I spent some time with Delta Mood, I've kind of got one chorus of my own written, subject to numerous future revisions.  On bass, besides spending quite a bit of time with Rakin' in the Funk, I also worked on week 22 in Bass Aerobics a bit.  Only did 1/2 hour of improvising this week but that's cool, I get a little stale sometimes and I feel it's good to take a break and come back to it with fresh ideas.

Put a set of .011's on my Strat a couple weeks ago, I like them.  Now the .010's on my Sheraton II feel like spaghetti noodles in comparison.  Probably have to switch those too one of these days.
 

I only got 6 hours of guitar time in this week but I did get "Slow Dance Dreams" signed off   . Rest of time spent on "Drivin' Blues". 
I have now moved into the world of the DAW!!!!  All set up with Focusrite and signed up for an introduction to Ableton Live on Coursera.
My next aim is to get Drivin' Blues recorded, I am about 90% there for the lead part, I can play it at full tempo for most of it but there are a few bits I stumble over, I'm not going to spend loads of hours trying to get it perfect so one more week at most then its move on time.