Project Recap: March 2008

March was the month that I had planned to kick things into high gear, but, in reality, The Project was starting to stall. Pressure was building at work, I had no time to play and the WAES course came to an end, leaving me high and dry. My half-hearted attempts to use sites like 'Join My Band' only led to frustration as I was clearly over the hill as far as the youf market was concerned. Something had to happen soon to get things moving again... but it seemed like I was running out of ideas. Little did I know that the hand of fate was around the corner, waiting to give me a hard shove in the right direction...

In present-day-land, my new valve didn't arrive so practice time last night was a low volume affair. I rechecked the invoice and saw that where I had thought delivery was guaranteed within 4 days, in fact, processing of my order was guaranteed within 4 working days. In other words, the damn thing probably hasn't even been mailed out yet, so I may not even have it in time for the weekend. I'm certain the neighbours didn't mind the reduced noise levels. I have no doubt they're sick and tired of me playing through "Supersonic" at full tilt.

On a whim I signed up for 6 months of "Lick Library"... 6 months seeming to be the minimum subscription at a cost of £1.50 a week. Some of the lessons I was interested in cost £2.50 or so to purchase without membership so I figured 'what harm' to just sign up for a bit.

I don't know whether it'll be a worthwhile investment or not, but I certainly had fun with it for a couple of hours last night. It's much easier to be taught a song than to learn it by yourself. From what I've seen the teachers actually know what they're doing, too, which is unusual! I'm not big on these pay-for-play sites at all but I've been getting seriously tired of searching through YouTube for anything worthwhile that doesn't feature a spotty 13 year old prodigy.

I guess I was interested to check it out, not only because it had a few songs I want to learn, but also to get hints and tips on riff writing and to push me towards genres I wouldn't normally consider. We'll see how it pans out.

The only negative I'd say about the site right off the bat for me is that the song choice veers towards the heavier side of rock. If you're interested in joining then take time to look through the track listings to see whether the style you want to achieve is represented... Also, for no apparent reason from time to time it seems to log me out so that I have to re-login to view paid-for material. I wouldn't suggest it for a beginner guitarist, though. I think it's more aimed at someone who knows what they're doing and who wants to learn songs.

I've not really checked out all the jam tracks, but it's interesting to me that there seem to be more backing tracks than lessons. For example, if you search for Eric Clapton you get:

Tutorials:
Cocaine
Crossroads
Hideaway
Layla
Wonderful Tonight
Tears In Heaven

Jamtrax:
Bad Love
Badge
Before You Accuse Me
Change The World
Cocaine
Crossroads
Hideaway
Layla
Layla (Unplugged)
Old Love
Tears In Heaven
Wonderful Tonight

That's not a bad thing... it just surprised me.