Weekly Update 14-09-07

Hope you get your guitar back before you lose your callouses.

Recently I've been hearing a bit about the value of rehearsing tunes mentally. That is, actually picturing in your head exactly where your fingers go on the neck. 

You're being way too hard on yourself about Chord On Bleu Phil, I thought it sounded just fine

I mostly worked on Jumpin' Blues in More BYCU this week. Don't seem to be making much progress though. I memorized it about 3 days ago but until I play through it 15 times in a row I keep forgetting which lick comes next. And if I come back to it a half hour later I need to play through it another 15 times to get it going. I dunno, feel like I've got a touch of the flu or something so maybe my brain isn't working at full capacity.

Still working on Sixties Dance Music in the R&B book, that's coming along pretty well. I think I've finally got all the offbeat chord strums in the rhythm part figured out, and I had it up to within 5 BPM of full tempo the other day.

I kind of dropped the Beginning Fingerstyle Blues project, there's some really cool sounding music in that book but I just don't see how it would really fit in with my own style of playing.  Think I'll find some other side project to work on instead.

And I did some improvising along with backing tracks and practiced some bass as always.

Got my Seymour Duncan '59 and installed it in the neck position on my Ibanez. I love it. Very natural balance between bass, midrange and treble and a nice bit of character to it too. It has the perfect sound for Jumpin' Blues (though Sixties Dance Music is definitely a Strat song.) Installation was pretty easy, just write down where the wires on the old pickup went and attach the new ones to the same places, using a wiring diagram to figure out which one goes where. Had to uninstall and then re-install the bridge pickup as the wire for the neck pickup goes into the bridge pickup cavity and then down into the wiring cavity. Hardest part was probably installing the pickup into its mounting plate - you've got to put the screw through the mounting plate, put a spring over it and compress it so you can get the end of the screw lined up with the hole in the pickup mounting foot - requires about 4 hands Also, after you unplug them, soldering irons stay hot a lot longer than you might expect, as the little blister on my finger will attest. And pickups sound much better if you adjust the height so the high E string isn't actually vibrating against the pole piece 

Practiced a lot this week but like I said, just don't feel like I accomplished much.  Oh well, better luck next week I guess.

Hi All,
I didn't get much solid practice time in this wek either, we are in festival so we are out everyday. I did start trying to lay down a recording of Bending the Blues, I did get one recording that was almost passable, but deleted went for a better recording. I also restrung using .010s because I broke another e string in like 3 days of practice. I did a jam session with my son on drum, little Sweat Home Alabama and Smoke on the Water which was fun, learned acoustic piece to Boston's. piece of Mind and Also More than aFeeling. Otherwise pretty laid back.