Sep 11th 09
10 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
It seems my new instructor, Kit, is a bit like Mr. Miyagi and right now he has me waxing cars and painting fences. I trust it’s all going somewhere.
First off, he had me stop practicing scales all together because of my picking motion. He told me not to do one more scale until he tells me. Somewhere along the way I apparently picked up the habit of “economy picking” rather than strict alternate picking. My previous instructor, Bruno, also suggested I try to stop economy picking but he wasn’t quite as fanatical about it as Kit seems to be.
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Sep 4th 09
2 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
I decided to try a new instructor. A friend of mine (who appears in my Jam Session post) is taking bass lessons from Kit Ruscoe who is also a guitar instructor. I’m not switching because I have a problem with my other instructor, Bruno Pelletier. I actually think he is a great instructor. I’m switching for a couple of reasons. First, since I’ve only seen one instructor, I’d like to get an idea of another instructors style and see if it’s a better fit for me. And second, even though Bruno is a great jazz guitarist and instructor, he’s not quite as up on the current rock/blues scene (he didn’t know who The Black Keys were). And as much as I would like to play jazz, playing blues and rock is what I’m after. Admittedly, at first I was specifically looking for a jazz guitarist as an instructor because I thought they would make better instructors when it comes to music and guitar theory. But Kit seems to have a good mix of theory (he’s actually classically trained) and rock expertise.
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Sep 1st 09
8 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
I just got done practicing for the last hour or so. I was mostly practicing the Jazz progression in F I posted last week higher on the neck. I mentioned in that post, I wasn’t doing well with chord positions higher up the neck. It’s frustrating since I can play them fine lower on the neck. Actually, it’s not that I can’t play the cords higher on the neck, it’s that I don’t know the cord locations on the higher frets. Once I have the locations memorized for the particular chord progression, I can play them just fine. But at that point I’m just going through the motions for that progression and don’t REALLY know the chord locations.
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Aug 31st 09
8 Comments | Posted in Featured Articles, Gear, Gibson, Guitar, Keeley, Videos, Vox
If you watch HBO’s True Blood, then you know the opening song, Bad Things by Jace Everett. Actually, if it weren’t for True Blood, I wouldn’t know the song at all. I thought it was a cool sounding guitar song, so I thought I’d give it a try. I thought it might be a bit more advanced than my current level and I was right.
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Aug 28th 09
5 Comments | Posted in Dunlop, Gear, Guitar, Keeley, Lessons, MXR
A new feature I’m going to have here is a lesson recap every time I have a lesson with my instructor. These my vary from every week to every two weeks depending on my schedule. In these posts you’ll get to see what I’m learning in my lessons. For me, it will be a great re-cap and force me to get a grasp on what I just learned. My lessons are on Thursday, so I’ll make these posts of Friday.
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