May 29, 2006

I'm going to make an apointment with my Dr. this week to have my shoulder checked out. My nerve problem is quite minimal, but I don't have room for it in guitar playing. At worst, it's a little numb and can cause my hand to shake or not respond the way I would like it. So, to the doctor I go. I assume it's because of overuse at the computer (extending my right arm for the mouse) and lack of any physical development in my upper body.
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My gig yesterday went okay as far as pain goes. I was fortunate enough to switch back and forth between the nylon and the klein. If I'm in the right chair and have the right posture I think I can continue to play without any major issues.
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ddd

My right hand isn't feeling to well today. I think part of is the way the nylon guitar contorts my right shoulder and I think another part is use of the computer. It's probably more of the computer than the guitar. Nevertheless, I'm going to try a little less computer and a little more Klein just to keep everything together.
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i spent some time just playing some solo guitar with the loopstation. I came up with a couple ideas and just kept trying to improvise for about an hour & a half. My right hand has gotten better, but there is still something wrong with it. It feels like there is a kink in my back. Everyonce in a while my r.h. doesn't do what I want it to do. I'm sure it's just some overuse related to the computer. I spent a lot of time the past couple days doing traces for the new webdesign.
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I gave my right arm some rest in the afternoon till evening. Ironing and seeing a Tim Miller concert in Natick helped me wait out my healing process. I'm glad I took a break from computer and guitar. A lot of my issues with my right hand have been aleviated. After the Tm Miller concert I came home and transcribed Wolfgang for another 45 minutes. I was really looking to Tim for some inspiration tonight. I don't really know what I was looking for, but from past experiences I had a feeling I would be inspired and leave with a clearer direction for my music. I was right, but surprised in the direction I was sent. Watching Tim play (and play fast) made me want to come home and transcribe licks all day and night. Listening to him tonight made me think of all the things I don't understand about be-bop, approach tones, and just generally playing fast. I really haven't played fast since high school. For some reason (probably looking at Frisell for years) I haven' had any need to be blazingly fast. But watching Tim reminded me how fast the fingers can travel on the guitar. Wolfgang's got it too. I've been slowing down and playing with this transcription for days now, and hes' still light years ahead of me. Somehow, watching and listening to tim made me want to come home and write down what I've been looking at and get biiger chunks of the tune down before I start memorizing the piece. Previously, I had been listening and transcribing the tune, piece by piece, memorizing each phrase allong the way. Tonight I wrote out everything I had transcribed before and then jumped into a new section, writing out what was played before really learning how to play it. This process is much more satisfing and exciting than the previous way. Maybe it just works better for me.
Either way, the licks I was looking at tonight were phenomenal (the reminded me a lot of Tim's from earlier in the evening; go figure). Most of what I transcribed tonight was an extended line that lasted for several measures jumping up and down the guitar. It was just what I needed. I used to do this kind of stuff wiht my rock n' roll studies back in the day. Transcribing the piece, writing it down and going over the fingerings, really empowered my left hand. And all the rest I was giving my r.h. must have kicked in, because I was crusing back n' forth with the pick. They are good licks and I'm sure they will take me a little while to dig into them, play them up to speed and understand what I'm doing.
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I finished up the day by just playing through some tuens. I'm feeling really good about my sound and my playing. I've been observing that I need to play softer and more relaxed, and i think that kicked in tonight. I'm sure listening to tim miller helped out as well. he's such a clean player.
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ssktmgp

So I woke up on the early side of things today. For some reason 4:30am seemed like a good time to get out of bed. I worked on a Grateful Dead tune while the sun came up. It wasn't as magistic as it sounds. I did find the "lick of the day" from Jerry Garcia or the other guitar player (I can't remember his name). It's a nice countryish lick: 1 2 b3 3 4 5 6 b7, and then an octave higher. Pretty cool to me.... oh those country hippies.
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16 hours later I sat down with the guitar again and went over some standards in my book. I"m just getting used to playing with the amp and using my right hand again. My sound has changed a little bit since my holiday gigs. Some parts of my playing have changed, others are still there. My big observation of the day (and I hope to remember it) is to play softer. Often I play really loud and then have to maintain it. That's tough. Playing softer gives a lot of room for development and is a cleaner sound.
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Finally this evening I came back to my Wolfgang transcription. My licks are so stale to me. Wolfgang show me the way....

dd

I worked another bit forward on the Wolfgang transcription. He has so many different sounds. Sometimes he sounds like Pat Metheny, then he sounds like Al Di Mela, then he sounds like Keith Jarrett. Transcribing this tune is helping me with my speed and hopefully my phrasing.
After about an hour of transcribing, I moved on to the loop station and tried out some ideas. I'm still a little shaky with the ear/singing thing, but once I get it, my whole sound cleans up. It's tough for me to get to right now, but I think (and hope) it will get easier, the more I access it.
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I came back to the wolfgang solo for a bit and worked forward on it. Nothing spectaclar. Learning a solo by ear and memorizing it without writing it down is helping my ability to focus. focus like a muscle.

I also spent some time, just playing through some tunes. I'm thinking about them differently than I used to. I'm going to try to have some recordings up here in June/July.
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I changed my strings on the nylon today, so I had to bring out the klein. Wow, did I miss that guitar. It's just so easy to play! I'm going to have to get another one like it, but with nylon strings.
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cptd

I spent a good two hours looking at Wolfgang Muthspiel's composition "Air Love & Vitamins." It's a beautiful tune and it's something that I've been wanting to look at and trancribe for a while now. At first, I examined his chord voicings. He's playing a lot of open-voiced triads built off the E major scale, kinda like the Allman Brothers "Mellisa." He's using very nice chord voicing but doesn't give a strong sense of the root of the chords. Somehow the melody, which is played by the bass puts it in context. I'll have to look closer at it to be sure.
After getting the voicings down, I moved on to the melody, which was surprisingly tricky for such a simple melody. I think my fingers just might be sluggish or something. I took a break from that after a while, resigned to the fact that it would be in my grasp tomorrow.
Finally I started looking at his solo. This solo of his has been one I've been wanting to look at for a long time now. It's exciting to transcribe it because the process demistfies the solo instantly. Wolfgang is such a wonderful player and some of his lines are very simple and elegant.
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I went back to my random chord exercises and didn't do as well as I did yesterday. It took me a while to get back in the groove, but even then I felt like I was loosing my balance.

bisd

My design project is officially on the back burner now. I spent last night transcribing and arranging some tunes for this weekend. This morning I was reviewing the tunes and putting some fine touches on the arrangements. As a challenge I went back to my random chord exercise and I fell into a nice experience.
I haven't experiemented with the random chord drill in a while and I haven't been signing what I'm playing as much as I used to. Today when improvising over the chords I had a much better connection that I had previously.
First off, I started with only triads, major & minor. The chord progression I came up with was several bars long; maybe 12-16 chords. When things were going well I began to hear what my next note would be. I was mentally testing each note before I played it. At first I thought I was playing the note very softly to hear if sounded good or not, but in reality I was just thinking about the next note. The more I tought about it the worse it got. I remember coming close to this experience before. For me, I feel like I'm learning what "voice" to trust. I'm learning on how to listen to my ear and not my intellect. My intellect seems to always steer me wrong. It's got good intentions, but it's not the ear.
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corn

I spent a lot of today cleaning house and prepping for next week's launch of the wedding season. It's been a while since I've done stuff like this (really only since december) and I'm feeling good about coming back to it. I've changed a lot as a player in the last few months and I'm excited to see what I'm doing to do this weekend.
I noticed a difference when I was playing some of the tunes that I have to learn, and was surprised at how fast I was learning them and embellishing them. It's really quite a fluid process now. I remember it used to take me a whole week to prepare a tune for solo guitar, and now it takes a few moments.
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gf

I'm not sure if I've marked my surprise yet about how design has influenced my playing. I really thought this process would take away from my playing and musicianship and it's really been quite the oppisite. Some of the great structural and precise traits of design and code are enriching my playing and listening experience. For a while now I've exclusively been workign on music because when I was doing photography & music I felt I was limiting myself too much. Photo was almost getting in the way of my practincing. I thought that would happen with this design project. Surprisngly, just the opposite has happened.
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I spent some time this afternoon looking deeper into the dimished scale and harmony thanks to my Guitar Player magazine arriving and having a lesson on just the thing that I'm looking at. That's such a good magazine. Getting a lesson like this one gets me excited to go back and look at my GP archive.
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Wednesday, 5/17/06

I'm spending a lot of time still on the design project and thusly have to keep up my fundamentals work on the guitar. My upcoming gigs are bringing geat focus to my practice time. I have specific tunes that I need to learn and I have re-build my stamina for 4 hour gigs.
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I continued with my scale exercises. They are become a nice warm up. They get my fingers centered on the guitar and in good time (the metronome helps). I'm primarily working on the chromatic, whole tone, half-whole dimished scale and ocassionaly the melodic minor scale. The soudns of these scales are getting really solid in my ears. Some of the sounds that I thought of as dissonacnes before are now charataristics of the sound. For example, b5 sounds like it belongs there.
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My Charlie Parker exercise is a lot of fun. The harmonic scructure on Blues For Alice is just a blast to play with. It's such a rich sounding tune.
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forget everything that i wrote before. My fingers are back! I dont' know what happened, but my fingers really connected today. All of these exercises are really paying off. the parker licks and the scales that I'm working on are all coming together.

tete

I got a nice little slice on my index finger yesterday, so I stayed away from the guitar mostly. I'm really itching to play today, so I'm working on it, but I'm very weary because it's still quite an open wound. It's not bleeding, but it's open.
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I'm refreshing on my Charlie Parker stuff that Tim was talking about. I've got a little bit of finger-mechanics that I'm working out as well. I haven't been practicing as much lately. I've been really focused on the design project and not so much on guitar. I've got to make sure not to neglect the instrument because in a couple weeks I'm back to my 3-4 gigs. I've got to get my fingers in shape.
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rainy rainy

Somehow without my knowledge, I was able to get the charlie parker tune up to tempo (at least the head). I was playing along with it when I when to see if I could play it any faster and then realized that I hadn't slowed it down in the first place. It was a good feeling.
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Tim really helped me put the whole tune into perspective. He showed me how to put some of the licks into familiar grips and some neat ways to think about improvising over the changes. When I shake this cold, I'll take a look at it again.
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Chp

Some more Charlie Parker today. I'm up to 90% of the tune's tempo. It took me a little while to get synched up to it. It's such a tricky melody or tricky style of playing for me. After a while I really found the groove.
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fri

I had a good chunk of time dedicated to practice today and a prepared for it by listening to "Blues For Alice" while I was doing the morning dishes, breakfast & shaving. I sang allong with the head as often as I could.
When I sat down to play the tune from the Omnibook, I took off like I never have before. Charlie Parker's rhythms are very intricate and complex when they are written on the page, but when the are sung, played or just heard, they are managable. Listening and understanding the tune helped me to just focus on the notes and let my intution and memory take care of the rhythm. I also slowed down the tune to 75% and played along with it, bit by bit until the whole head came together. Once I had that, I played the chords and sang the melody. How's that for thouroughness?! It was a good experience, and I'm going to try it working on his solo either later today or tomorrow.
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Blogging Note: so I just found the date button again on Blogger, so I'll be able to date these on the appropriate date. Also, I'm prepping for a revamping, relocation, merging of 2 other blogs and a new navigation system for this whole blog experience.
I would like to have one blog to encompass the three I'm tyring to deal with. I would like that blog to contain all of my personal and professial whimsys. And I would like to categorize it so people can find their way through it and get the contact they want. That should be fully functioning by June or July or August or sometime in the realitve near future. I've still got some things to learn and not that much time to devote to learning it.
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to work on my ear, I'm transcribing lines from a Wolfgang Muthspiel free-improv. I find a lick that I like, sing it over and over until I've got it and then see if I can put it on my guitar.
I did pretty well for a while and then I wanted to throw the guitar through the computer screen. That's when I took a break. A lot of his licks are bebopy and unfamiliar to me. I can listen to his licks, and because they are such a new sound I have trouble understanding the notes he's playing. As frustrating as it is, I'm excited about the experience, becuase frustruation usually means I'm learning. Progress is good.
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King Size Candy

So, I'm on Day 4 of my Al Di Meola lick and it's coming together very nicely. All of this work with chromatic & whole tones scales (with the metronome) has been very helpful. My fingers are moving faster than they have in years.

Wednesday:

My chromatic studies over the past couple of weeks have been paying off. I've been looking at that Al Di Meola lick this week (w/h dimished scale) and it's coming along better everyday. The whole w/h dimished scale is also coming along better. I used have trouble with the scale because there were so many options or different ways to play it. But now with all of my chromatic studies, the scale is easier for me to handle.
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From Tuesday:

I spent some good time with the metronome today. I'm still in the mindset that I have rebuild my fingers in some way. I don't think that is really the case. I think I've still got a good feel for the instrument, or least as good as it was before.
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I revisited my Omnibook and switched tunes to spice things up a bit. I'm working on "Blues For Alice" now. It's a nice tune and I'm relatively familiar with it. I have two other tunes that I would like to be working on, but the ipod isn't feeling very well right now, so I'll wait for to be "restored"
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I also took a 2nd glance at the Al Di Meola lick from yesterday. It's coming along nicer today.
After my class at Newton last night, I was walking through the halls and I think I passed some students learning how to speak english. The trick was the students were deaf. Their experience of repeating a phrase "how are you" over and over and over again reminded me of my guitar playing experieince. When I learn licks I learn them over and over and over again. The thing is, I rarely ever get right the first day. After I'm done practicing and my brain is making sense of the whole experience, does the lick sort congeal. Then or maybe the next day the lick will be reading. It's kinda funny when you think about it, yet also very simple. The thing that all this guitar playing has done for me is really instilled a sense of patience for development. Things don't happen over night. No matter how much we want them to.
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Chromatic scales were also my friend. They are turning out to be a nice warm-up. I haven't had a warm-up in a very long time.
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adm

At first glance, my hands really aren't as bad as I thought they would be. My hands & arms hurt when/from typing on the computer. When I play guitar, everything feels fine.
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On second glance, my left hand is a little sluggish. I have fast ideas, but not fast execution.
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I spent some time reviewing an Al Di Meola vid I got from Netflix. He's got a nice diminshed line that I took some time to work on.

I also spent a little time working on the ear/guitar/voice connection. I still need some work.

It felt good to be back in the practice saddle again, but I still got caught up a little on my design project.

In da house

All right, I'm back. The past two weeks I've been working on learning XHTML & CSS, and I'm proud to say that for the first time, I now validate in both. That's a big step for me. The whole site should be completely overhauled in this new more flexible mark-up by June(ish). But this really isn't the place to write about such things.
With two weeks of intense computer work, I've increased my typing speed and wrangled my body up a little bit. For the most part I didn't do much guitar. I most certainly did not do any formal sit-down "practice session" where I "work" on something. The occasional times when I picked up the instrument I was just getting my fingers accustmed to the neck and sometimes running a couple of scales or arpeggios. The chromatic scale(s) kept me busy here and there. I also found myself going back to improvsing over "All The Things You Are."
During this break my finger strength/stamina has noticably decreased. I expected it would. Surprisingly, my voice has gotten better. I'm able to hit notes with more authority than I ever have and when I sing and I can visualize where it would be on the fretboard. I haven't really sat down with the guitar and see how much of this is really connected, but something has gotten better.
Improvements while doing nothing at all are always amazing. It's quite incredible how long the brain has to process information in order for it to be understood throught one's whole system. I worked really hard on this voice/ear/guitar connection and for weeks it wasn't coming together. Who knew all I had to do was step away for a bit?
So, back to the regular routine tomorrow. Until then.....