Feb 1st 10
23 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
Well, as you can see by the lack of posts in a while “real life” has yet again gotten in the way. Add to that an injured left wrist that makes it difficult and painful to play means I haven’t been playing and posting here as much as I would like.
But, I can’t blame everything on the real world and a bad wrist. Since this blog is about leaning the guitar, I should write about the good and the bad. The truth is, before life and limb got in the way I had grown frustrated with my guitar playing. In particular with my guitar lessons. And even further in particular with economy picking. As I posted about in a couple previous posts, my instructor Kit really wants me to break the economy picking habit and I seem to be having a problem doing it.
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Oct 31st 09
15 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
As I posted a while back, I was learning Eric Clapton’s version of Hideaway using a Lick Library lesson video. Of course I was doing this on my own so my technique was less than perfect. My instructor Kit is a stickler for technique, especially when it comes to picking. So, we set out for me to re-learn the parts of Hideaway I already know and then learn the rest of the song properly. And for anyone who’s learned something improperly and then needed to re-learn it properly, it’s not fun. My muscle memory is already set for my improper picking and fingering, so it’s going to be tricky re-learning the parts that I already know.
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Oct 26th 09
9 Comments | Posted in Gear, Gibson, Guitar, Keeley, Videos, Vox
In honor of the new Wolfmother album Cosmic Egg, I’m doing a cover of their song Dimension found on their self titled debut album. I actually saw Wolfmother live this weekend at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit concert. It was an all acoustic set, which is a bit different than you’d expect from Wolfmother (the entire concert is acoustic). I’m also going to be seeing them next month at the amazing Oakland Fox Theater (if you haven’t been there, its a great venue).
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Oct 20th 09
18 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Videos
As I learn my scales, chords and try to learn a some easier sounding songs that I like, I start to wonder if you either have it or you don’t when it comes to playing the guitar. Just when I think I’m starting to make some progress I head over to youtube and see a 12 year old belting out some amazing guitar. Clearly, that kid has it. Then I look at my videos and think, clearly I don’t.
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Oct 9th 09
5 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
Today’s lesson was mostly focused on my picking technique. As I mentioned in a previous post, somewhere along the way I picked up the habit of economy picking. Upon seeing this my instructor Kit had me stop doing scales all together. In last weeks lesson he started me back on scales with the Pentatonic Scale. With the Pentatonic Scale, there are only two notes per string, so you’re pretty much always alternate picking.
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