I’m now on week 15 of the Guitar Aerobics program. I’ve not really reported much on it lately because it’s mostly been same old, same old so nothing inspiring to share. Having said that there was an interesting bit of acoustic playing at the end of week 13 that still gets my fingers tangled up but sounds pretty cool, something to get back to when I have spare time (which in guitar time means “not terribly often”).
Of the new things I now try to incorporate in my playing, unison bends is probably the most prominent one. I’m still waiting for this shift in my head of seeing all those things I can play instead of the regular pattern I always seem to fall into. Today I did exercise 100, which means I theoretically know 100 licks I should be able to play. Since the majority are blues / rock types, there’s plenty of experiments to try. Sadly it’s a bit like spending hours learning Japanese and having conversations with your anime collection, the progress is still very slow. Still tonight was rather fun, as the 100th lick was the first country music lick and it also introduced hybrid picking which I’ve never tried before and though it takes a bit of getting used to, it’s actually really fun to use.
I’ve also had more time to try and strengthen my knowledge of Mighty Turtle Head and although the fastest I’ve been playing some bits is still just at 90% speed, it’s getting there. Last lesson I’d had so little practice I could barely remember what I was supposed to play. Speaking of lesson, we started looking at sus 4 and sus 2 chords which are really quite nice chords and got me thinking into trying to compose again, but there’s just one problem.
(yes this is the part I start moaning so you can stop reading now if you want)
I want to write music, my own music, I really do. I’m not looking into doing my own version of Sisters or Fives or I Cannot Tell A Lie but I would like to work out a simple chord progression of my own and a melody over that. The problem is more that I can’t find any inspiration anywhere. Part of me expects that by listening to all sorts of things eventually music will start popping in my head but I don’t think that’s how it works, at least not for me. On the other hand I don’t want to write formulaic music where you know certain pattern works, you’ve seen some styles of picking, mix the two together and you’ve got a basis. This might work in principle but it would only produce some dry instrumental piece.
On a positive note, I have really enjoyed a particular backing track lately which has led me to think that I can really do something with 9th and 13th notes in the minor scale as those are the ones that resonate the most so I#’ll have to do more exploring with those and see where it leads me. It might be another dead end but it might also be the start of something.
So it’s not all bad, maybe when I have some free time for long enough next time, I’ll do another video as a check in to see where I’m at…