Practice and Drills

Image by Charlie Antonio via Flickr

As of today, my next jam session is scheduled for Thursday evening in Willow Street PA. Thus far only myself, and our bass player have confirmed that we will be attending. Hopefully we can finally get this thing going, and try to turn this thing into something resembling a band.

I know that I need to show up with a solid game plan, so we don't waste time standing around and looking at each other and saying "okay, what do we do now?". I am actually going to go so far as putting a few bullet points on a note card so we can have a clear agenda. Hopefully, I can get the other guys to buy into my game plan.

First off, I actually want to avoid writing songs during practice until we become tight as a band. Everyone already has some material they have already been working on anyway, so we can spend some time teaching each other those songs and riffs. Also, I eventually want to agree on a practice time where we can get together for at least 2 hours every week. I also want to see if everyone is one the same page with our goals. Personally, my ultimate goal is to quit my day job and tour.

If I can't get everyone on the same page, I will just have to keep my involvement limited to occasional casual jam sessions, so I can allocate my time and resources elsewhere. I hope that is not the case, but I am not going to try to push my dreams on other people who don't really share the same goals. In the meantime, I am just continuing my practice routine by myself at home.

As of tonight, I am starting a program of drilling with scales, modes, and arpeggios. Right now, I have a guitar exercise book that uses 25 different scales and 25 arpeggios. This includes 5 major scale positions, and 5 each of natural minor, melodic minor ascending form, melodic minor descending form, and harmonic minor. The arpeggios include 5 patterns each of major, minor, dominant seventh, minor seventh, and major seventh chords. I realize that this is only the tip of the iceberg in a sense, but this should give me plenty to work on for a while. I want to memorize and become fluent with all of these pasterns, and then practice applying them in various real life situations, so they all eventually come naturally to me.

I have definitely been getting into a rut when it comes to composing lead guitar melodies, and I think these exercises will help alleviate this problem. My goal is to break the monotony caused by only knowing a couple scale positions, and not really knowing how to effectively apply my knowledge of most of the scales I do know. I will let you know how this goes.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Greatest Rock Guitarist - Who is He? (psychedelichippiemusic.blogspot.com)
• Win A Squier Bass Guitar From Green Day (therockdose.com)
• playing bass... (audiot.eu)
• Online Bass Guitar Lessons: Be Your Own Teacher (wealthyways4you.com)
• The Aeolian Scale in Jazz (5min.com)
• Willie Nelson's 4th of July Celebration: The Movie (1979) (stillisstillmoving.com)
• Les Claypool Summer Tour (jambase.com)
• Les Claypool: Of Fungi and Foe (joshspear.com)
• Jack White steers away from 'perfection' (cbc.ca)
• SEPULTURA - A-Lex (idiomag.com)

Another Week Without Band Practice

Image by ♫axime via Flickr

Band practice on Saturday got cancelled because my bass player, who was going to be providing the practice space, had to work. I am still having trouble getting everyone together at one place and time for practice. I am not to worried about it at this point though.

Ounce I have all the money I need to provide my own practice space, transportation, and equipment, then I will really start buckling down. At that point I want to set up a steady practice schedule that everyone must commit to if they want to be in the band. It's just not time for that yet. I don't realistically expect people to re-arrange there lives to accommodate a project that has gone no where thus far. It would just be nice if we could get some where.

So tomorrow it is back to my day job. I am going to have to take a look at my schedule and my bass player's schedule, and try to co-ordinate a practice yet again. Hopefully this time I will have better results.

Related articles by Zemanta

• playing bass... (audiot.eu)
• Beez: Is Newsted Coming Back A Good Idea? (idiomag.com)

Another Day Off

Image by The Bazddha via Flickr

Part of me feels like I didn't get enough done today, even though I was able to finish a couple loads of laundry before hosting game night. I guess it is just because I didn't work on any music, which is a rarity for me lately. I also never got around to calling some people I have been meaning to call.

I will probably still pick up the guitar for a few minutes here before I go to bed, so I guess it's not a total loss. Yesterday, I had a fun practice. Instead of my usual drills and video lessons, I just picked up my guitar and jammed, playing whatever I felt like playing. I feel like you need to do this every once in a while. After all, this is why we really play the guitar isn't it? To have fun. It is good to take the chops I have been working so hard on, and just let loose and have fun. Grab my processor, and dial up some effects I don't usually use. This is also a great way to help break a song writing rut too. I came up with some really fun stuff last night that I can't wait to record. I will probably record this one riff tonight before I go to bed.

As for the people I was meaning to call, well, it's to late for that now, that will have to wait. Maybe I will just send out a couple of texts. Well, times a wasting, time to go pick up my guitar.