What Am I Like!?!?

I told myself that I was going to wait a few months before looking for new bandmates... I was forming a plan. I was going to write out starter notes to give me direction and to get everyone aligned from the get-go. I was going to have everything mapped out.

I've already posted an ad!

I have absolutely no self-control these days, I tell ya.

Weekend Transcriptions

Well, finally got the time to sit down with the guitar and transcribe some of the tunes from the new band's songlist.

Obviously "Wild Thing" (The Troggs) and "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (The Stooges) were pretty much no-brainers. "Lola" (The Kinks) wasn't too hard once I'd pulled out a YouTube of the band playing it. I'll admit that I didn't manage to get a good sound from the electric for the strummy bit, though. Sounded much, much better on acoustic.

"Hungry Like The Wolf" (Duran Duran) was surprisingly easy to get some decent licks going with. Let's face it, most of the song relies on the vocalist doing his/her bit.

Of course, it wasn't all playing with the guitar. I did have some other household duties to take care of... such as making sure The Boss was happy...



I actually did spend some time on my WAES Rockschool homework, such as practicing 'rigid pentatonics' with the metronome (which felt good) and learning the notes on the A-string. I don't know why I waited so long to get those down. Pretty much I figured out that the three first dots were C, D and E and that F and G straddled the one on the 9th fret. Bingo. The rest just falls into place. I need to keep reinforcing that by playing chords in E-form, A-form and open, but it's really not hard to learn the notes!

What else? After learning the songs I was 'supposed to' for band, I spent some time with "Sunshine Of Your Love" by Cream. I remember learning the first bit of the intro years ago, but I never bothered with the bit where Eric starts playing barre/power chords rather than single notes. It really isn't difficult and it sounds good when amped up.

Oh, and the other thing that suddenly clicked at the weekend was how you could get a warmer sound and more sustain by rolling off the tone controls. Eric did it. Slash did it. Now I'm doing it...

Rockschool Week 1

So, what do I think?

Well, first off, it seems that the curriculum may not actually follow Rockschool as I'd originally thought it would. The direction of the course seems to be in a state of flux and no one really knows which way the cookie will crumble.

Week 1 was all about assessing where each guitarist in the group was at, what they wanted to achieve and so on. I don't think it's going to be bruising any egos to say that five of us were intermediate and up, with one player being a relative new-comer to the instrument. How's that going to work out? No clue. Two more students are supposed to join next week. We'll see. It seems that it's still possible that the course may not run due to lack of interest. We'll find out in a couple of weeks.

First thing to say is that the students all seemed like a good bunch, mostly self-taught. "Teach" is very confident and clear. He burned through a lot of material in the session but the pace seemed about right to me for now. Most of it was stuff I already know, but it did highlight a couple of minor gaps which I need to fill.

The two bits of 'homework' that I think are going to be useful for me are:

1) Learn the notes on the A string. I already know E, so why don't I know A yet?! I think once you know one string you get lazy as you figure you can work it out. Slow. Stupid. Just learn the damn string, already.

2) Get my speed up on the first position pentatonic (two notes per string). Number 2 may sound like pretty basic stuff, but he made it clear that we should be practicing in two ways. First off, spend 50% of the time being very rigid, practicing scales strictly up and down, in time, really paying attention to the working of the left and right hands. His view was that for the 'rigid' part of practice you should aim to 'walk' the two fingers you're using over the fingerboard, so you don't spend much time with both fingers fretting at the same time. I tend to struggle when I get to the high E as my index finger naturally wants to anchor itself to the fingerboard. Teach's assertion was that this was fine for certain licks but at other times could contribute unwanted notes. So... rigid form... scales (not music)... 50% of the time. Metronome, obviously. Tick, tick, tick.

The other 50% of the time he suggested still using a metronome but try to noodle around and make licks etc, sticking to the beat or breaking to triplets for accent.

Now, I've obviously done a lot of this stuff before, but 'rigid practice' has fallen by the wayside lately, so I need to get back into it. Teach really did emphasise that both types of practice are essential for progression.

And on top of that I need to work on stuff for the new band. Our proposed playlist has burgeoned slightly and I think we really need to get our heads together and choose three songs, say, so play around with at our first rehearsal... even if we just got down to one or two, really. It's a 3 hour session, which isn't that long!

I expect us to sound awful the first time around. I mean, none of us have played with each other before, or even heard each other play. We don't know who's going to be good on lead, whether the drummer'll be up to speed or laid back. Nothing.

It's heartening to see that everyone actually seems really psyched about getting on and doing this. Right now I'm concerned that our enthusiasm may cause us to lose focus. I've suggested that for the first rehearsal we pare the list of songs we thought might be fun to start with down to, say, three tunes. Three hour session, three easy tunes? Does that sound about right for a first jam? I mean, I have loads of stuff I could bring to the table if we get bored of those songs... y'know, just get the drummer to pick up a beat then start a groove and wait for things to kick off.