Despite feeling rather tired, I’ve been wanting to grab my guitar and play pretty much all day, so tonight, as soon as I had the chance I did just that. First I dug out one of my Steve Vai picks, which are nice and pointy, but also quite stiff. I figured they work really well for fast work (which I can’t really do anyway) and strumming. I was strumming chords to my little girl earlier and she was trying to help strumming with her little fingers it was very cute.
Anyway, I thought I’d take the chance to record another jam over that nice Bm Blues from Guitar School Garden, so I fired Audacity and recorded a few tries. I did 3 takes and deemed it good enough but really they could be a lot better, have a listen to the 3rd take to give you an idea of where I’m at:
The main thing I’m noticing is just how many notes are picked instead of using legato to play them (mind you the sound setting I used wasn’t too prone to good sounding hammer-ons) and so it sounds very rigid. Trouble is I’m still not too confident to use legato in a smooth way so I really just keep it for grace notes and certain positions on the neck I’m comfortable enough to try.
I’ll keep trying. In between recordings I had a listen to a few Blues tracks, among them B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone” on which the backing track is based. A very nice track but I think I’m gonna have to start building up a library of blues licks that I can adapt and re-use as I need them.