Weekly update April 18, 2021

I'll go with the earliest update as well I'm planning on upgrading my PC too - new CPU, motherboard, memory etc. Got all the parts, now I'm just waiting for the external SSD to arrive (hopefully today) so I can back everything up and then get started. The hardware upgrade will be fun, the software re-install, re-download, re-screwin' around will be tedious.

Not a good week of guitar for me, I was busy with a lot of other stuff, also after finishing Hotel California I was deciding what to start on next. I think I'll do Comfortably Numb. The first solo is actually kind of easy but the outro solo is plenty challenging. There's not much guitar during the rest of the song - somebody's strumming chords through most of it but it's barely noticeable, so I guess I'll do that as well.

Hopefully I'll get the computer successfully upgraded and then I can give the guitar a bit more attention. After I mow the lawn, help with spring cleaning, etc. etc. etc.

I didn't see this thread and started another. So I'll try to delete it. Copied my update below.

Slogging along with the BLYCU challenge. The licks in the section we're working dovetail very nicely with some of my worst technique shortcomings. A good thing in the long run, immensely frustrating in the short run.

Today I switch to a new scale sequence. The one from the prior fortnight was fairly difficult in the sense that right up until the last two days I was making a lot of mental errors and never did have much chance to increase the tempo a little. The new one I suspect will be similar. It's hard to gauge the efficacy of working these. They can't hurt. I'm not working them up to physiological mastery at aggressive tempos. My hope is that I'm simply creating/expanding neurological pathways that can be drawn upon later, either when I get to the end of the book and start over, or applied to other material. Not sure if it works that way irl, but that belief provides motivation to spend at least a few minutes with them every day.

In the spirit of random asides, Line 6 just came out with a Helix firmware update that is pretty cool. Over the last couple updates they've retooled their audio engine and were able to do some polishing via expanded oversampling and added an "extra 1%" that's noticeable to people like me who spend a fair bit of time with it using headphones. Gives a bit of that new gear boost to my enthusiasm to pick up and play.

I'm still having a problem getting motivated. This has been going on for a few weeks now. I haven't even plugged in to hear how my new flat wound strings sound through the amp. I out those on a couple of weeks ago. I go thru this from time to time as, it seems, many of us do. Hopefully, something will happen soon to renew my enthusiasm.

I haven't gotten together with the guitarist that I used to play with regularly since last July. He kind of lost interest in what we were doing and is on to other things.

Anyway, I don't want to sound dismal. Things aren't all that bad. I'm still trying to learn a Blues tune by Emily Remler. It's just a 12-Bar Blues head but has some non-conventional tricky parts. She was really a great guitarist especially when it came to Jazz Blues.

Sixteen million views, 800,000 likes. Man are we ever in the wrong business