Guitar Practice Log – Stuck in a Loop

Once again I come to report 3 consecutive days of practice as each of them individually aren’t worth a post of their own. I guess practice tends to be like that, when you get keen on something new you found new perspective and things to ponder over but after a while it becomes a routine like everything else.

On Sunday the rhythm exercise was a little different from previous weeks as it involved adding flourishes to the chord progression. Well that wasn’t too bad until, again, I reached a certain tempo. You see, this chord progression though simple in nature G-D-C-G does involve a transition between C and G which has no pivot finger. And believe me transitioning chords at high speeds without anything to hold on to is difficult, regardless of how stupidly common those chords may be.

Yesterday the alternate picking exercise was similar to the one from the previous week, except it involved groups 16th notes instead of triplets. So of course that means more notes to the beat and as they all have to be picked, you find your limits pretty quickly. In my case I managed until 96bpm but beyond that my hands just weren’t responding. And that’s an interesting thing because although at this limit speed, things can get shaky depending on how focused you are, once you cross the line it’s like pulling the block too many in a game of Jenga, everything falls apart, quite literally.

So today when I was out thinking things through I decided to take a different approach to the daily practice and try to combine it with learning how to better use Guitar Pro by entering the lick in Guitar Pro and playing over it this way as opposed to over the provided drum loop which only lasts so long. Of course, today’s exercise was also over a new rhythm, which was interesting since it meant I had to figure out how to map that drum loop in GP6 as well. It took me a wee while to work it out, no thanks to the fact that I know virtually nothing about drums, what parts are called and so on, other than if you hit them hard, they make a lot of noise 🙂 I got there in the end and was able to set out to practice with Guitar Pro at my own pace, which was great. Essentially it meant, not being stuck to a 90 seconds routine where you constantly try to work out how to play the lick over the drum loop. With the guitar playing with the RSE, it’s almost like you’ve got another player playing alongside never making a mistake. You can take a break, pick it up again when you’re ready, it’s brilliant 😀 The best part is, I managed to pace myself to play up to the final 160bpm loop, which I’m quite happy with, though as it involved a few bends, by fingertips don’t quite agree. If I keep going like that I’ll have scales on my fingers … pun intended 😛