I started this week figuring I would have to cancel the next two lessons because money is just too tight right now. I called Sal up on Monday to let him know and he insisted I come anyway. "Don't worry about the bread," he said. "It's more important to me that we keep this going."
That meant more to me than anything I could put on here. That definitely signaled to me that I wasn't just a half-hourly pay.
That coolness aside, we immediately dug into Beyond the Sea. That song really moves
Alright, I am back meeting with Sal after a couple if missed weeks.
We jumped right in with learning All of Me and then later in the lesson picking up on Beyond the Sea. These were songs of my request as they are in constant play in the ol' iPod.
I got a bit of a jump on the lesson as I get there early. He gave me the sheet music for All of Me and let me use a teaching room not in use to get familiar while I wait.
This song is another great example of how chord tones can make the li
Sort of a bummer of a week on a couple of fronts. Mainly because the boy - 6 month old son- got an eye infection which babies are prone to get but also, and leastly, I had to cancel my meeting with Sal to tend to his needs. Don't regret it, just a bummer.
Anyways, the upside on both counts is that the boy is better and the week off from Sal I have seen as HUGELY beneficial.
How? Well, it gave me a couple of weeks to practice what I have picked up and not having more piled on every week.
As posted last week, Sal and I weren't getting together this week. Still thought I would post anyways as I am still working on it regardless. This time without a get together with Sal has proven helpful too. I am able to really play around with what I have learned and beat it into my head a bit more as opposed to learning it just a little before I get a mess more crammed in there.
So, it is more of the same. Autumn Leaves played all kinds of ways. Doing some minor improv stuff. Very, very mi
Alrighty.
Week 5 was great, but I will get to that. I figure I should put more in detail what I am doing with what Sal teaches me for those interested so..... here goes.
Since my week 4 meeting with Sal, I have been using Autumn Leaves as my playground a bit as I am more familiar with it and using Georgia on my mind as more theoretical study. Which is proving just as helpful.
On Autumn Leaves, I have experiemented a bit on that one like I mentioned. I would play it straight the way I
While on vacation this week, I realized that I had strayed a great deal from the intent of the blog starting with the ending of lessons with Sal. From there, I got more and more into learning songs than practicing theory (although I still do this fairly regularly). Throw that in with engineering school starting for me and I just simply don't have the time to invest in this as I want to and once had.
Thanks to all that followed it!
Been a couple weeks. I have a ton going on now. Between work and the baby and the girls, I have school now. Yep, back at college for my BS in mechanical engineering. Very good school for it, too; so, I am excited. I was seriously bummed when I heard they didn't have a jazz band anymore. Oh well.
I do have a jam prospect coming up though. A dude who is a Berklee grad says he'd like to put something together for small cafe gigs and what not. I am nervous at the prospect for sure but I know thi
This one had hardly any blur to it at all. That was nice. Still a boatload more info than I can take in for a session, but still very productive. Some of it was reinforcing what I knew already but tons of new info and things I can do for study and practice.
Lots of sub work. Dim7/7b9 and I/III sub'ing.
We used Georgia on my Mind for working lead melody into chords and sub practicing.
At the end of it, I as looking at his Super 400. He has owned it since about '78 and, from what I saw
Been a couple of weeks. Been playing a good bit.
Of course, still playing All of Me but I also picked up a new tune: Why Don't You Do Right as made famous by Peggy Lee.
Simple changes: Dmin7 (4 beats)- Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Dmin7 (4 beats)- Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Gmin7 (4 beats) - Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Dmin7 (4 beats) - Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Gmin7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Gmin7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) .... and repeat.
I added a bit of rhythmic fl
Still messing with All of Me. Getting to know the song better and better. I am up to being able to do a more learned improv up to the first Dmin from there... I just noodle.
Wound my first coils for pickups. Here is how it went. The first coil did GREAT! I got 3.92k on it! For what I was wanting, that was ON IT! Second coil.... not as well. Got a 2.7k out of it. Put the two together and I would be only slightly more resistance than a Fender single coil and would lose a noticable portion of t
Good week for me musically.
Still playing around with All of Me.
What I started to do was play along with a nice
.
I graduated from playing just the chord changes, to the chord changes with the melody included in the lead tones and then just just the melody.
After playing with the melody for a bit, I started to add little notes, sometimes just neighbor tones but others being from the scale.
For instance, the first part of the melody that has the lyrics, "All of me,..." is R-
Alrighty. What a week!
First off, I am registered for school. Good news is that I am starting as a Sophomore. So... only about 4.5 years to complete the degree as opposed to the 6-7 year track I was looking at. Very pumped.
Next, and many of you reading this on the Heritage Owners Club forums may already know, I got my first new guitar that wasn't a 'scratch and dent' that was heavily discounted and required some amount of work from me or some of my friends to get it functioning again. I
Sorry I have missed so many entries. I have had a full couple of weeks. I am preparing for starting school in August for my bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. On top of that, I had a nice lake getaway for the Fourth of July weekend. Been reading books on pickup making and so on. At work, they let go of everyone in what was our Toronto office so we are having to pick up their work load as well as shoulder what we already had.
On a playing note, I have really been messing around with
Today still had a touch of that blur that I have experienced in previous weeks, but there was notably less of it and the lesson was even more focused than it was last week.
We started on Autumn Leaves where we left off last week. It was in this that he introduced me to tritone subs. "You can actually use those things?" Yep. Made a different animal of Autumn Leaves right there on the fly. Just amazing. It was this week that really drove home to the both of us just how musically illiterate I a
Ok. Another late one. So sue me. haha.
Been a busy week. My mother-in-law came in from Detroit. Good visit. She came for my son's first birthday which was this past Sunday. Had family over. Cooked out. Good times.
Musicially, I got very little playing in. With the guest and getting the house together, I just didn't get much time in that way.
Yesterday, however, I did get my book in on the history of pickups. Great, GREAT read. This is the one I got.
Sorry there isn't much info
Hello all.
Bad news on the pickup winding front. The school where I was going to go wind the pickups at got flooded so it may not be this weekend that I get to wind pickups but maybe a couple of weeks out. I should find out today or tomorrow whether or not they could get the water out.
Other than that, another good week. I got accepted into the university I wanted to go to for my bachelor's of science in mechanical engineering. Now it is just paperwork, funding and so on. I start this fa
Busy, busy, BUSY week!
I played for sure. I did a bit of jammin on Autumn Leaves. Always a good tune. More jammin with Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley.
Still working my way through the 6/4 position in the key of C major. I am up to the Fmaj7 arpeggio diatonic to C. As I complete these sets of arpeggios, I work on tying them together. I will go from Cmaj7 in the 6/2 position to the same in 6/4 and back. Dmin7 in between the two and so on. I will also go from, say, Cmaj7 in 6/4 to Dmin
Due to my late entry for last week, this entry only comes a few short days after my last one... but I needed to get back on track.
Since my last and very recent entry, I have been going after the Dmin7 arpeggio diatonic to Cmaj in both the 6/1 and 6/4 hand positions. I have already committed 6/2 to memory.
The interesting part for me is that in the 6/4 position, the fingering pattern for Dmin7 is the same as Emin7 in the 6/2 position also diatonic to C. What this could ultimately mean fo
Sorry for the delay in getting this up.
Not much to report really.
Still running through exactly what I did last week going though all of the arpeggios diatonic to C in the 6/2 hand position. The cool part is I am feeling those runs being committed to habit and am having to think less and less about it as I do it.
Also, of the things Sal taught me, one of them was that the melody dictates the chords and not the other way around.
Taking that info, I went to a song me and buddy mes
This week is just more of the same of last week.
Playing all of the arpeggios diatonic to Cmaj in position 6/2. Still on Cmaj7 and Dmin7 of the 6/4.
Although, I am thinking that I probably ought to make sure that I can play every version of Cmaj7, Dmin7, etc in 6/2 before I really dig into position 6/4. That way I can really move easily between chords and single notes before I move to another position. Once I get that down, I will move to the 6/4 and then do the same. Scales, arpeggios,
Well, today I am out of work due to hurt ribs. I don't know what I did other than get older but boy does it hurt. No playing today but plenty up to this point.
Last week I mentioned I was working the Cmaj scale in the 6/2 position as well as the Cmaj Pentatonic scale in the same position and was starting on the A Aeolian scale also in the Cmaj 6/2 position.
In that theme, I have been playing the arpeggios for Cmaj7 Ionian, Dmin7 Dorian, Emin7 Phrygian, Fmaj7 Lydian, G7 Mixolydian, Amin7
Productive week.
I have still been running the scales as I mentioned in the previous weeks but now I am starting on A Aeolian. First running the normal scale which is, of course, exactly like the Cmaj scale but with the root moved to A. Next, I run Amin7 arpeggio as far as I can carry it in that position. Then the pentatonic scale of A Aeolian.
So far, I am only practicing in the 6/2 position of Cmaj for A Aeolian.
What little knowledge I have aquired in really hammering these scales
Last week I mentioned that I was just beating on the C scale and all of its positions: 6/1, 6/2, 6/4, 5/1, 5/2, 5/4 and open positions.
This week is sort of the same but with a variation: running the CMaj7 arpeggio and the C pentatonic scale. Again, running these in all of the positions mentioned above.The great thing about it is you have an opportunity to really familiarize yourself with the parts of the scale (with the fourth interval being notably absent in everything but the full major s
This past week has really been something! It is amazing what even a little time with a teacher can do! Before I was merely understanding what my theory and practice books were saying. Now, they have context! THAT IS HUGE! Since I discovered this, I went back to the beginning. Going through simple chords and drills.
Before I mentioned that I was going through the C Major scale with the root starting on different fingers such as 6/1, 6/4 and so on. For the past week, I have been playing the C
This one was less of a blur, but still a blur. It all made sense, but the time I was there seemed to shoot by just wayyyyy too fast.
This time, it was more focused as well.
We started and ended on Autumn Leaves. To a powerchord heaving, heavy-metal expatriate, this was just mind blowing. A simple thing to you long time jazzers, but the door into a new world for me.
Learned about the Jazz or Real Harmonic minor where I had only met the regular harmonic minor in passing at a bar once
