5 July 2020 update

Had to work the long weekend, so between that and some family in from out of town, last few days have been kind of bust guitar-wise. I just got home, so probably won't post the BLYCU Lick 7 challenge until later tonight or tomorrow. I really enjoyed the Lick 6 one, where we've moved beyond the first four bars of the 12 bar progression.

Lousy week for me, my back was stiff as a board all week. It was getting better but being an idiot, I decided to mow the lawn yesterday so now it's worse than ever. Hardly any practice time, the July challenge at that other site is to come up with your own arrangement of "In The Sweet By And By". I actually bought a lesson on it from a site called Banjo Ben Clark, which is really beautiful, but that's um...kind-of-sort-of not really my own arrangement lol. I found a YouTube video of a simple piano version, with the basic melody in the right hand and the basic chords in the left, so I suppose I can try building on that. Trouble is that even though it's a hymn, if you want to do anything the least bit fancy with it, it goes straight into country. I'm not a real country guy. Ah well, I've got until the end of the month so maybe something will come to me. Yeah, that's a good plan 

I was working on licks 5 & 6, even had a few ideas for how to fill up the rest of the chorus, but like everything else I'm afraid that will have to wait a while.  

In other news, baby bunnies were getting into my garden, right under my fence I put up to keep the adult bunnies out.  So I fixed the fence - no way they can get past that any more!  Little did I realize one of them was hiding in the garden the whole time I was doing that    Lucky they're so cute, that's all I've got to say lol.

Recording has been on the front burner for me, mostly because of Bruce's efforts to keep the Challenge going. Much appreciated.

This morning I listened to all 6 of my challenge entries in reverswe chronological order. There's some indication of improvement over the 12 weeks (3 months, time flies!) but not tons of it. The most interesting aspect was reminiscing how physically hard some of those bits were to perform at the time, especially the bending. Too much time away from "Bending the Blues" I suppose. My overall impression is that I still struggle with finding the pocket at times. Mentally I feel like I've made some progress in that regard during the Challenge, but I'm not sure I'm hearing it on the tape.

I mentioned I've been listening to Tom Bukovac's little webcasts. Whenever he plays anything it's apparent from his body language he's completely absorbed. A viewer asked him about it and he said that's one of the things a session guy has to be good at. Whatever's going on, when the count-in starts you've got to be 100% "there". What he said was more-or-less, "When the count starts I jump right in and swim as deep as I can possibly go." So of course I've spent the last week prefacing anything I do with a guitar with that image. Can't say it helps, but a little ritual never hurt anyone.

So my SiL suggested ditching my virtual instrument bass track in the prog wallow in favor of a "real" bass track. I told him I liked the idea but I'd misplaced Geddy's number and I didn't have a bass. He said he had one and his dad had a few at the studio, and that he could learn what I'd written and track it in a couple days.

My instinct was to go into Cartman mode ("I'm Geddy Lee and I'll play whatever bass line I want"). SiL's not a bass player but is so freaking efficient at DAW jockeying he can play just a handful of notes at a time and string it all together in what to me seems like impossibly short times. In comparison if I had a bass it might take me a year to learn to play the part. To do the note-at-a-time approach would likely take me several weeks. The smart thing to do is have him track the bass but I'm struggling with giving up control. My inner toddler is obviously alive and doing well, haha. But since I've sunk a lot of time into the project, I should probably do whatever will give the best musical result. The only action I can think to take is put buying a bass on my list of things for the little micro studio I want to put together once I retire and get settled.

Interesting side note is while I was putting down the guitar bed tracks there were a few sticky spots that took a while to nail. SiL suggested I come over and do the note at a time approach. I thought he was joking and said I'd feel like a fraud if I "recorded" something that I couldn't play at all. He said "you'd be surprised" how much of his time with clients is dedicated to note-by-note recording (and how often he waits until they leave then just does it himself). Rick Beato has alluded to similar things. One of the things the DAW revolution has caused is a very piecemeal way of recording music I guess, and an expectation of perfection. I'm a dinosaur in that the rhythm tracks I've put down were end-to-end live takes (not the whole 4+ minutes, I made each major section a chunk that was recorded in one go). It will be interesting to see if he tries any trickery to make them closer to perfect.

Anyway, I'm getting far afield. But I'm doing a lot of recording these days so getting a lot of self feedback listening with fresh ears. I'm always pleasantly surprised that along with all the clams that start to be a spike driven a bit further into your ear with each listen, there are some good things too. I think it's just as important to learn how to listen for what's working, as listening for what's not.

I've been working on the CAGED system lately, and using it for playing off the chords. It made me dust off Rhythm & Blues You Can Use again - I always loved the songs in that book. I played through the first 3 studies, and I really enjoy the ideas presented in the book so far; having a better understanding of chords and scales makes this second time much more rewarding.

I did a recording of the first study - I plan to go through all of them.

Joachim, very nicely done! I absolutely love your two clean guitars-only recording of "Easy Rhythm"! You got really beautiful tones for both guitars. I loved the tunes in that book, too.

Bruce, yeah, one thing I remember Bukovac talking about is that old school studios and the tradition of name performers bringing a crew of studio guns to cut a record together is nearly gone. Still a few places in Nashville and LA that operate with that template but more and more that's fading away. Sadly guitar as a mainstay for pop music is fading with it. That's something else you hear from Beato and other guys close to the recording business in days of yore.

My interest is a little bifurcated out of necessity. I have a desire to create original music but completely lack what it takes as an instrumentalist to transcribe what floats around in my head using one. Where guitar comes in, for example, it's usually the last thing to get worked out. So to that end "by any means necessary" is about my only choice.

For stuff I do here and any other stuff aimed at learning to wrangle a few extra notes out of a guitar I'm a bit more of a technophobe and keep things constrained to what I can actually play (assuming the charitable reader/listener counts my efforts as "playing"). 

I'd like for guitar playing and music creation to dovetail one day, but I'm not sure they will. Ultimately I'll probably go with a both/and hybrid approach with a little "real" guitar and maybe keyboard playing to go along a double handful of digital trickery.

So you're correct it's a function of particular musical goals, and some of mine stretch a little beyond where a guitar will take me.

I loaded up all the BLYCU demos on my little mp3 player and listened to them today. Some of them coming a little ways down the road sound downright intimidating. Luckily they'll take a year or two to get to, and maybe by that time we'll be ready for them.

There are 75 licks altogether I think, which will take 150 weeks at 2 weeks each, or almost 3 years!

LOL, don't worry about it a bit - I'm actually kind of happy to hear you're not making much progress because then I don't have to feel so bad about not making any progress either    Hey we'll get it done, it wasn't like we were in a big hurry about it to start with.  

Sounds like you have already spent half the morning chasing kids off your lawn again Jack! I pretty much agree, though. People worry about changing climate and viruses and asteroids, but I think computers are what will ultimately do us in as a species. It will be interesting to see how my sil copes with my guitar tracks. For my ability level, they are pretty good, but as he listens to them as much as I have he'll start to hear the little bugaboos I hear. Part of me wants to hear what they would sound like with the "full treatment" he'd give a paying client. But part also wants to keep the grampa in Grampa's guitar tracks, if that makes sense. Luckily with digital it would take all of 10 seconds to restore the originals if it gets to sounding a bit too divine.