It’s been a while hasn’t it? But then there was the Holiday season and the horrible time before then which just takes you away from the important stuff that is playing the guitar. Alright so it wasn’t that bad, I’ve just not been able to play as much as I would like. Thankfully it’s now slowly coming back to normal.
I’m now on week 11 of the Guitar Aerobics program and it’s going pretty well so far. I’ve made some pretty radical decisions to really not overstretch it when I can definitely see my limits and I think it’s important to recognise the benefits of just the right amount of practice instead of trying to go the extra mile which might just break everything. What’s more is that I’m starting to find short licks I can apply to my playing that make things just a bit nicer and different so I’m hopeful that it will definitely have benefits in the long term.
Yesterday during our first lesson of the year I had a good chat with Mark about progress and basically what I discuss above and it made me realise how much beneficial it would be if only I could find people to play with. But I’ve mused on this before and I’m not really sure it’s the right time yet. Part of me feels like I ought to seize the opportunity when it presents itself with people I already know or people I’m likely to meet in the future rather than actively go seek out other musicians for the sole purpose of playing but we’ll see what it’s like in the upcoming months. I know if I wait until I feel that I’m ready to play with others, it’ll just never happen because I’ll always find some excuse to tell myself I’m not yet ready for it. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge. So folks, if you’re playing and live in Auld Reekie give me a shout. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be free having a family and all but I can keep an open diary 🙂
Anyway, we started looking at suspended chords, which are much easier to understand than I feared and sound pretty cool too. That too made me think about sitting down and working out my own chord progression I can then feed into Guitar Pro and play some solo over. I’m just not entirely sure where to start. This damn analytical mind of mine means I can’t simply pick up the guitar and start strumming, it doesn’t work like that for me, I have to sit down and work it out, then play it back and tweak it as I go, so it’s a longer process.
Finally, I’ve made some time to properly practice Mighty Turtle Head which I’ve been not so much ignoring but unable to find time for in the last month or two so it was nice to loop through the solo and just practice it at manageable speeds. It’ll take a while to get it faster but once it’s under my fingers I can just take it in steps and hopefully become more comfortable with it. Then perhaps I can go back to earlier tunes and do the same for parts I’ve never quite worked out properly.