Amanda Palmer Concert Review

I am vindicated.  Amanda Palmer played "Call Me Maybe."  Instant four stars on that alone.

Not really.  But sort of.

Solid concert experience.  It dragged on a little more and was a little overblown in its own artistic self-importance, but entertaining and engaging.  The level of musicianship was pretty much top notch, especially for the whole goth punk cabaret thing they've got going on.  But while Steve Vai's (far superior) musicianship was numbing, the Grand Theft Orchestra's musicianship was enthralling.  Probably because they were fun, witty, and musically concise.  But then, brevity soul wit, so that's redundant.  It shows that you don't really need the thirteen hour practice sessions for forty years to be an amazing musician though, so that was inspiring.

On the other hand, I think they were somewhat over distorted - the harmonics were often difficult to hear over the muddy layers - and Amanda is certainly not the best technical singer, though she is quite charismatic.  She's a pretty good song writer when she's not being overly serious though, and her band carried the rest of the show. 

"Pictures or It Didn't Happen" was the highlight for me.

Not paying her string or horn section was definitely the low point.  Pay your f*&%ing musicians, lady.

Guitar Practice Week Six

We're already up to week six.  That 's almost a month and a half.  I didn't have a lesson last week due to surprise Amanda Palmer concert, which I might try to review at some point this week, and this week I had to cancel for Gordon Webster and Rosh Hashana.  Gordon's probably worth it.

So where am I at today, a month and a half into my guitar adventure?  I've got all the natural open major chords down and most of the natural open minor chords.  I'm pretty darn close to getting barre chords down, and I understand their theory.  I've begun my first forays into power chords and single note lines, and those are coming along.  I'm fairly confident with the major scale, though I will continue to work and work and work at it.

More importantly, my ear training is drastically improving.  I'm beginning to reliably hear major seconds and thirds, perfect fourths and fifths, and octaves quite reliably - at least going up.  Going down, I've only gotten major thirds down so far.  The secret: hearing songs that start on that interval in my head.

• Major Second - Do Ray Me, this one is easy.
• Major Third - When the Saints
• Perfect Fourth - Here Comes the Bride, Chariots of Fire
• Perfect Fifth - So Far Away
• Octave - Somewhere Over the Rainbow
• Descending Major Third - If I Were a Bell

Now I just need to add songs to my head for other intervals.  I'm also becoming better at distinguishing between major and minor third, but I still tend to make mistakes with either very high or very low root notes.  I'm going to keep practicing.

I've decided that ear training is the single most important thing I could be working on, so my progress there is really heartening.  I might become a real musician yet.

Side note: I've been pretty much exclusively using my electric guitar at this point.  It looks and feels so much better than the old Epiphone.

No Lesson this Week

Amanda Palmer concert instead.  Two lessons next week though, so hopefully that will make up for it.

It will also give me more time to practice.  I bet I can get "Where is My Mind" totally aced by next Tuesday.  Which means I'll have time to work on other things.  I'm thinking scales, singing, and ear training.

Ear training is going super slowly right now.  I can do it all easily enough from C, but as soon as we take away the anchor note, I'm practically clueless.  I'm going to work on this as my primary project for the week, though, and I'll report back my findings here.

My lesson next Wednesday is focused on ear and voice work, so that will hopefully help.

My other main project: making my strumming very even and clean.  I want it be able to sound exactly the same every measure of the strumming pattern.

Weekend Practice Wrap Up

So Saturday ... I played for six hours.  That's right, six.  The results were palpable.  You could literally palp them.

"Where is My Mind" is like almost working.  The lead part and chord parts are 95% there individually, and I'm about 80% there to stringing them all together.  Since this is by far the most difficult material I've tackled, I think that's pretty good.

This means that my barre chords are coming along.  The F Major shape is no longer a challenge.  Like at all.  And I can hold it much better than before.  I now have the strength to do two or three choruses of "Creep" before having to quit, instead of just one.

Finger exercises are coming together.  By focusing on relaxing, I was able to blast through the first couple finger exercises Tony had given me.  And I've almost aced the G Major scale already, thanks to LOTS of practice.  My technique: learn it one note at a time.  Keeping it simple and mastering the first three notes, then the first four, then the first five, etc., made learning it cleanly far more manageable.

I've almost got the problem chords in "Autumn Leaves" working.  I'll be able to play the chords all the way through at tempo in a week or two if this keeps up. 

I need to watch out for repeated use injuries.  My wrist was fairly sore by the end of the marathon session.  That shouldn't be happening and is not a good thing.  Also, my fingertips were WAY too sore to even touch the guitar on Sunday, though I tried anyway.

I'm excited.  I think I'm on my way to becoming an actual guitarist.

Unfortunately, I need to cancel my lesson on Tuesday due to surprise Amanda Palmer tickets.  I'm okay with this.

I Will Never Be Steve Vai... and That's Okay.

So I Saw Steve Vai Friday Night ...

And boy, what mixed feelings.  It's amazing to watch and be impressed by his technical mastery of his instrument, but it's just not as easy to care.  Some thoughts:

• If you start at eleven, where do you go from there?  Vai's playing lacked the dynamic range to make the virtuosic work exciting.  It was like listening to a Bach piece - the whole thing is so complicated that you never truly realize it's complexity.  Unfortunately, Vai's music lacked the melodic appeal of Bach's music.  As Vai's appeal is essentially as a virtuoso musician, he should be doing everything in his power to emphasize his virtuosity.  This includes playing like a normal person sometimes.
• Keep It Simple, Stupid.  He said a lot, but there were multiple place where even I realized that he could have said practically the same thing in a more concise way, and I think I would have enjoyed it more.
• Keep your playing human - he was at his most interesting when he was singing along to the notes he was playing or when playing simple clear melodies.  The shredding?  Totally not that interesting.
• I have a new found respect for Eddie Van Halen.  His more melodic approach to the same style made for far more memorable guitar work.  Whilst Vai is undoubtedly more technically skilled, it's obvious why Eddie is the one who attained superstardom. 
• Very few musicians have enough ideas to single-handedly carry an entire two hour concert, no matter how proficient they are.  This is why you have supporting musician.  The concert was most interesting when Vai was interacting with the musicians around him.  Unfortunately, these moments were too few.  He has a truly all star backing crew - his failure to utilize them was his undoing.  It's why his instrumental porn grew stale and the Flecktones, Maceo Parker, John Coltrane, etc. remain consistently fresh.

The Number One Thing I Learned:
I can be the amazing musician I want to become without needing to exhaustively master my instrument.  What I do need: A good sense of dynamics, harmony, rhythm, and melody; a moderate technical proficiency; an ear for music; and the ability to play well with others.
I can do those things, possibly with only a few years of diligent study. 
I will never be Steve Vai, but I don't have to be.  Which is great, because I don't really want to be him anyway.

A Wild Steve Vai Appears

So the bad news is that I probably won't get my intended practice time in today...

The good news?  I see Steve Vai tonight.  For free.  Because Kate is a bamf and spent all day hanging out with him making a music video.

Sometimes, life is awesome.

I imagine I will be extra motivated to practice tomorrow.

Effectivizing Guitar Practice

That's probably not a word.  I don't care.

The Dilemma:

As you may have noticed from my previous blog entry, the list of shit to practice is ever growing.  However, as I return to dancing a bit, my time is becoming more scarce, so I'm going to need to manage my practice time significantly better than I have been. 

My practice in the last week was unfocused and meandering, often involving switching between random things whenever I hit a wall.  It's probably not a coincidence that this week's lesson was the first time I felt like I was under-prepared.  And now that the material I need to practice is growing every week, I can't afford this sort of lackadaisical practice.

It's Time to Get Organized.

This is obvious.  I've done some reading on building guitar practice schedules, and I think I've figured out my methodology for building one.  The keys are to focus on what needs work for extended periods, but not so long that you get frustrated, vary your focuses within a session, and vary your focuses between sessions.  And most importantly, practice at least a little bit every day.  This last bit will be difficult with dance, but I think it's doable.

My Solution: Modular Practice Schedules.

I'm going to build a bunch of blocks that I can string together.  I will figure out what blocks I'm working on before my practice session begins.  I will then practice them for five or ten minutes, before moving on to something else.  I will log my practice times somewhere.  Maybe I'll finally get to use Evernote.  I knew there was a reason I downloaded that.

Modules Ahoy!

• Scale work.  For now this is only the G Major Scale, and thus will probably not extend over five minutes.  Metronome required.
• Finger exercises.  Moving up and down the neck.  Metronome required.  Could be done whilst watching tv or doing other things, but focus on accuracy is encouraged.
• Barre Chord to Barre Chord switching.  Use song "Creep."  Metronome required.  Probably five minutes max now, because this is going to be hard on my fingers.  Use "One Minute Changes" method to work on speed.  I might explain this in a later post, where I talk about how this experiment is going.
• Open Chord to Barre Chord switching.  Use "Where is My Mind" and, later, "Should I Stay or Should I Go Now."  Use "One Minute Changes" method to work on speed.
• Power Chord Practice.  Use "Where is My Mind" for this.  Not much here to work on, shouldn't be longer than five minutes.
• Open Chord Practice.  "Autumn Leaves" changes.  Again use "One Minute Changes" method. 
• Teacher Assigned Lead Guitar Work.  "Where is my Mind is the focus here, obviously.  Metronome required.
• My Lick of the Week / Month / Whatever.  "Surfing U.S.A." for now.
• Aural Training / Transcription.  Five minute blocks initially, using justinguitar.com till I'm able to actually do this to real music.  
• Singing and playing.  Do this only with songs that I have down, like "Closing Time."  This is a good break exercise, and should only be five minutes for now.
• Song of my choosing.  Should only be done when I have longer blocks and have already accomplished at least five or six of the above.  This could involve learning the song or putting everything together.
• Theory Exercises.  The focus here is on figuring out theory things on my own.  This includes moving scales around, moving chord shapes around, and naming notes on the neck.

The key here is to use timed five minute blocks on each of these, with a max of two in a row.  Even if working on the same song, like "Where is my Mind," I can break it down into parts so everything is practiced with hyper focus.  This will allow me to put it all together far faster than my hodgepodge approach. 

I will make a note of which modules I've been working on, to ensure nothing is overly neglected.

Let's give this a shot!

Guitar Lesson Four

Guitar is getting rough.  We're moving at a break neck pace, now firmly in barre chord territory.  I am not a fan.  On the other hand, I think I've accomplished a lot in a month.  Certainly more than I did on my other guitar learning attempts.  Having a teacher is really forcing me to get things done, so that was a great investment.

So I went into this with the ability to play the F Maj shape clearly and to move it down the neck to a limited degree.  However, I do not have the finger strength to hold it, and it falls apart whenever I have to move up the neck.  This is going to take continued practice.  Lots of it.  And I kinda didn't do a great job of that this week.

My calluses are getting callused.  This is great news.

As I might have mentioned, I've started working on my first lead licks - namely the piano line from "Closing Time" and the intro lick to "Surfin' U.S.A."  I am astoundingly bad at lead playing.  I also don't feel very good about those finger exercises.  I need to keep practicing them, and with a metronome.

Anyways, on to the actual lesson:  We spent a few minutes on "Creep," and Tony was satisfied with my progress, even though I wasn't.  I guess it's hard to judge if I'm progressing at a reasonable speed or not, having never seen anyone else progress through this stage, but I feel like I could be progressing faster.  The issue lies in my inefficient practice.

The vast majority of the lesson was spent on learning a Pixies song with a title I can't remember.  The song is tough.  It has three barre chords and an open chord, which means I need to be able to move between the two efficiently.  To add to the difficulty, it has my first real lead line we've worked on in a lesson.  And it's kicking my ass.  This song is going to take A LOT of practice, but I need these skills, so I'm thinking it's going to be the vast majority of my practice time.

Finally, I've been assigned my first real scale.  We skipped that whole pentatonic shit - thankfully - and dove right into the G Major scale.  It's going to take some practice, but it's gratifying that I was able to use a combination of my ear and theory knowledge to work out the notes of the scale.

Things to practice for the week:

• Practicing.  I will post an entirely new blog post with my thoughts on making my practice sessions more efficient.
• That Pixies song.  This is going to be the majority of my practice.  I will work on it every day till I can play it all the way through to a metronome.  Without messing up.  Reliably.
• Creep.  I'm going to use this as a workout for my fingers so I can hold a barre chord.  I'm going to focus on just the C Maj to C min to G Maj sequence.
• Closing Time, Wild Thing, Louie Louie, Call Me Maybe: These songs are down and feel good.  They are to be used to practice singing and playing, clean strumming, and for fun.  They should be practiced only when frustrated or with extra time, as the other pieces are far more important right now.
• Practice Autumn Leaves changes.  This should be a warm up exercise, but serious practice should be put into changing between the last four chords of the song and then back to the beginning, because that needs work. 
• Continue ear training and singing practice.  I think this will merit a separate blog post, as it's something I'm doing independent of the lessons structure.
• Get that G Major scale DOWN.
• Keep working on Surfing U.S.A. lick.  Just keep doing it and doing it till it works.  A little bit at a time every day.  Do it slowly to the metronome whenever frustrated with other things.

Well, the more I learn, the more there is to learn.  Crap that's a lot.  Hence the forthcoming blog on managing my practice time.

Gypsy Jam Recap

Last weekend I jammed all the Gypsies.  Not really.  But I did dance with Alice Mei.  What what.

Thomas and Alice are pretty amazing teachers.  I really dug the first day of workshops, which worked on a lot of cool rotational leads.  I now see why their ILHC spotlights are always so ... round.

Day two was less natural to me.  The problem area - over-rotated swingouts.  Holy crap is this hard.  The main problem with it is the beginning of the move has to be led entirely from the core.  I thought I was getting pretty good about not arm leading, but apparently not so much.

Moral of the weekend: Lots to practice.  Time to go back to the drawing board on the body leading stuff.  Work on being more relaxed with footwork.

And yes, dancing with Alice was amazing.