settling down

I'm trying to settle down on the equipment front. Last night I put the tube amp that's been making me mad into the garage. Instead I pulled out the PA, and set up my PC laptop with Band in a Box, along with the GuitarPort. This gives me a pretty darn complete practice setup that can get LOUD if I want to, but has a minimal number of parts to configure. This will let me work a lot more easily, and hopefully focus a lot less on the tech and equipment.

Vai.com > Little Black Dots > Martian Love Secrets

Vai.com > Little Black Dots > Martian Love Secrets is a set of articles written by Steve Vai and originally published in Guitar Player magazine. It's not s set of exercises, it's more a way of thinking about playing.

What can I do? What can't I do?

I need to take stock of my current skill set. Sometimes it's easy for me to say "I can't play guitar" when it's not really true.

What am I able to do?

* Play common folk and rock chord voicings, both open and barred.
* Use a capo to quickly transpose.
* Read chord charts
* Read standard notation when played in 1st position
* Play major scales in two or three different forms
* Struggle through arpeggios
* Play solid rhythms
* Play many worship tunes by memory

What am I unable to do?

* Play arpeggios fast
* Play many different minor scales and modal scales
* Play more "interesting" voicings of chords
* Play REALLY solid rhythms
* Play many jazz tunes by memory

I think I'll try to edit this post regularly. It's good to keep an inventory of current progress.

Too many choices

I'm still practicing, and I'm becoming happy with the results.

However, I have too many choices when I practice. Should I use my amp, or the GuitarPort, or the RP300? Should I work out of the Leavitt, with Band in a Box, or with Aebersold? How many scales, which ones, what positions?

I'm losing focus. Over the next week, I'm going to start narrowing my choices so that I can work on what matters for improving my playing, not just practicing all over the map.

Yeah, I'm still practicing

I'm doing really well, actually. I've allowed myself to get a little distracted by some tools (new guitars, stuff like that), but I'm doing pretty well.

I now have 2 new guitars this year, which should be more than enough for anyone. I've got an Epiphone Dot Studio, which is a semihollowbody, and an Ibanez Artcore AG85, which is a full hollowbody. I'm firmly in the jazzer camp, I guess.

Nothing like some hardware reinforcement to what I was thinking anyhow.

Unfretted

Unfretted is a website devoted to the fretless guitar. Now, I've played fretless bass and loved it. After a year or so of developing some chops, I can honestly see the possibilities of getting an inexpensive guitar, ripping out the frets, epoxying the fretboard, and playing an instrument that is completely unlike what anyone else is playing. That could be really cool.

Early morning practice

I slightly made up for last night's silliness by practicing for fifteen minutes this morning. It wasn't much, but it did help some. One nice thing about the Dot is that I can practice without plugging in. I just started up a metronome and began working through my stuff.

My speed was a lot slower than normal, though. I realize now that I warm up unintentionally every evening before practicing by running major scales and scale patterns for a half hour to an hour while sitting with the family watching TV. I will not consider that "wasted" practice time any more. It's very valuable for getting my fingers up to speed.

Another night without discipline

At least there's a little bit of an excuse.

I didn't stay on target for the method book, but I at least got in around 45 minutes of various play using Band in a Box. There's just too many tunes available in BiaB to easily put it aside. I also didn't feel like playing my exercises with headphones on, so it was either practice without a metronome, or play along with BiaB. That turned out to be an easy choice.

I'm kind of worried about the intonation on my Dot. I seem to feel some slight intonation issues in the lower frets, but I can't really pin it down. It might be due to my play with a death grip (instead of lightly touching the strings), since the guitar is almost perfectly intonated according to the best tuner I have available. With the tiniest bit of overdrive, it sounds really great. When it's completely clean, though, there's the faintest bit of trouble. I don't know if this is normal or not.