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Post by bluesbruce on Jul 11, 2021 7:51:00 GMT -6
Not a lot to show for my first full week of retirement . Spent the week at the lake and had company (my daughter and her boyfriend), so not as much guitar time as I had envisioned. At least I ate and drank too much! Did work some on our next BLYCU challenge, and am re-building some calluses.
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Post by Phil on Jul 11, 2021 8:03:52 GMT -6
Nothing exciting to report this week. I've been trying to come up with a halfway decent solo for the Jazz standard "Autumn Leaves." I think I finally came up with the 1st 8 bars that I'm happy with. I need to record it and listen back to see if it actually sounds OK. It's easy to deceive yourself while you're playing. Listening to a recording of yourself reveals the cold, hard, often ugly truth.
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Post by jack1982 on Jul 11, 2021 8:21:25 GMT -6
I probably got in 5 or 6 hours of practice last week. My eye was good enough to start reading tab by about Tuesday, but it was the usual busy week on top of that. Just working on Stranglehold by Ted Nugent. Spending most of my time on the intro and first bit of verse 1, as it just repeats after that (for quite a while anyway). I'm trying to get a guitar sound somewhere in the ballpark, and although the rhythm part itself isn't terribly difficult to play, getting the right sound and attitude will definitely take some time. I used one of those vocal removers to strip off the vocals from the original song and then added them to the backing track from Karaoke Version; the vocals don't sound too good when you remove them from the song like that, but better than the guy singing on the Karaoke version lol. I just barely started on the solo(s), those will take a lot of work I replaced the ear pads on my headphones - like Phil I was walking around with bits of plastic stuck to me head. "Oh, is your ear bleeding? It looks like you've got dried blood under your ear! We better take you to the emergency room!!!" Uhhhh...go away, leave me alone Took the Jackson in to have it looked at - there was a creaking sound coming from the nut when I'd use the tremolo bar. The guy took the 3 string clamps off the nut and there were two more screws under there that hold the nut to the neck. He just tightened them up and wha-la! No more creaking noise. Didn't even charge me anything. Dave's Guitar in LaCrosse Wisconsin - highly recommended
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Post by joachim on Jul 11, 2021 10:12:59 GMT -6
Not a lot to show for my first full week of retirement . Spent the week at the lake and had company (my daughter and her boyfriend), so not as much guitar time as I had envisioned. At least I ate and drank too much! Did work some on our next BLYCU challenge, and am re-building some calluses. Bruce, the next licks are also killing my fingers - they've gone soft pretty fast. But I am glad we got started again!
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Post by cunningr on Jul 14, 2021 11:12:03 GMT -6
Hey guys sorry to go missing but did a quick trip to the USA. Last night we played our end of course concert was awful I was so nervous I got my fingers caught in between chords 1 and 2. Will try post some short video was fun though
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Post by grampalerxst on Jul 16, 2021 11:02:26 GMT -6
Hey guys, sorry I'm late. Was on the road last weekend and this week has been hectic. All my guitars and amps and music toys save my #1 pseudo strat are safely stored at a relatives home in Illinois. Practiced just a few minutes per day most days last week. Just going through BLYCU 52 and 53 a dozen or two times each session, mostly just to keep my callouses from vanishing completely. Gave official notice at work Wednesday, although all "stakeholders" except HR were aware it was coming. Nervous about it all but I'll survive. Finding the effort getting ready to leave my current house a little melancholy, kids did most of their growing up here.
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Post by bluesbruce on Jul 16, 2021 20:25:54 GMT -6
Rich, looking forward to some video of your concert!
Grampa, giving notice is great news! If my first two weeks of retirement is any indication, you'll never look back! I can relate to the house thing. We had the very unusual situation that we moved into a house a few weeks before our first child was born, and lived in that same house for almost 23 years... So our kids did ALL their growing up there. I remember when I first told our daughter (our youngest) that we were going to sell the house, she became rather upset, and told me that all her memories were there! In what I still consider one of my most inspired parental moments, I told her that all her memories were inside her head and that they would always be with her, and that there really wasn't anything inside that house... Of course, I had also told the kids for years that when they moved out, that they were NOT to come back to that house, and that their mother and I would move and leave them a cell phone number where they could reach us, but that the people living in that house would likely NOT be happy to see them...
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Post by grampalerxst on Jul 20, 2021 2:36:51 GMT -6
Late again, but still around. Last week I only picked up the guitar a few times over the weekend. All I've been doing is breaking down BLYCU 52 and 53 into smaller chunks and working on those. It's mostly about working on strength, but some on reach too. Especially 52 I'm not able to play the repeated part without alternating between thumb-over for the bend and thumb-behind for the pull off. That's a lot of hand motion to try to tame for a fairly fast lick and is definitely keeping me from getting it up to even the ballpark of tempo. Another variant I've been trying is for each lick doing the intro portion, then one cycle of the repeated part, then the ending. That way more time is spent on those transitions (the ends, especially, are bedeviling me) and less on repeating the repeated part 6 times or whatever. That keeps old-fashioned lactic acid fatigue at bay, and the condensed versions are decent little phrases in their own right.
I believe I've now sorted through my whole collection of guitar books. Less than 20% went into the recycle bin. Many I don't even remember where/when/why I got them. A few moved up in my cue for when "I really get serious about guitar right after ________". In theis case the fill-in-the-blank is get settled after retiring/relocating.
My company is still making me go through a "mid-year evaluation" today even though I'll be done in less than 2 weeks. The corporate wheels are very rigid and Heaven forbid a box on an HR form goes unchecked. They also "forced" me to complete an exit survey which was basically a bazillion questions on why was I leaving to take a job with someone else (which I'm not doing). The mindless dronery reinforces that it is time for me to bow out of that world.
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