Taylor...

I started learning "Taylor" by Jack Johnson in earnest last night. I spent about an hour on it before Valentine's Day dinner beckoned. My approach was to split the intro into bite-size chunks and practice each chunk independently before even attempting to put the whole thing together.

"Taylor" is a prime example of a song that's impossible to play at speed whilst 'thinking' about what your fingers are doing. Instead, you have to teach your fingers what they're supposed to do through repetition and then just let them do their own thing.

It's kind of like learning to type. To start with you have to think about where every key that you need to hit is. After a while, though, your fingers remember patterns and locations all by themselves. There are actually two levels of (sub) consciousness going on. On one level, you start to type what you're thinking, your fingers doing their own thing. On a whole other level, when you come to put in stuff like user names and passwords, because you're so used to that exact pattern, you can enter the keystrokes at high speed. The former would be what's going on when you're improvising. The latter would be the equivalent of learning licks. There is, of course, a crossover when your mental lick-library gets so huge that the line between improvising and riffing becomes blurred.

Back to the song! I'm definitely not there yet, but the patterns in the intro are starting to make a lot more sense. What I have to do is to stop thinking in terms of what notes to play, but instead focus on how they're played. There are a lot of hammer-ons of open strings where you don't actually pick the string first. In theory that simplifies things as far as the right hand goes, but my right hand is so used to working with the left, as opposed to ignoring it, that I tend to pick when I shouldn't, which slows things down. Maybe I should just sit on my right hand and try to play the intro just using the left.

I haven't spent much time on central part of the song yet, but it's just 4 chords and a relatively simple strumming pattern. I may actually take the opportunity to change the way the song's played to put my own stamp on it and make it more interesting as I won't be attempting to sing over it and I don’t have a drummer to help create the right rhythm.

I have 4 weeks to get it down. That sounds like a long time, but I'm not confident that I'm going to make it, yet. I just listened to the original version again and it sounds nothing like what I've been playing. As with most stuff by JJ, the songs are deceptively simple. The key to getting the right sound is to make sure you nail the rhythm, which is no mean feat.

Guitar class again, tomorrow. Last one before the half-term break. No firm networking plans. I just plan on going along and seeing what happens!

Action Plan Update

Okay, so I'm 16 days into 2008. It's a bit early to lay out my whole action plan, but I do have 3 steps. In reality some of these steps will overlap, but I think it's valuable to lay them out so that I have something to focus my efforts.

1) Get Good
As before, I need to start off this year with practice, practice, practice. If I'm not ready to jam with other people and actually sound credible then I'm not going to get anywhere.

2) Record Demos
I've recorded stuff before but I always tend to focus on the detail rather than the big picture. Take the embedded mp3 test file I posted last week for example. It started off as a jam track for me to practice guitar over and I ended up spending hours recording harmonica parts. What I need to do is take a step back and realise that all I need to do is set up a SIMPLE repeating drum loop, add sparse rhythm and then practice/record lead over that. That way I'll actually be spending time refining my guitar playing rather than wasting hours piddling around on the computer. The other side of that is that I fall into the trap of recording what's meant to be a backing track then jump straight into trying to tape the lead on top, usually in piecemeal fashion. What I should do is burn the backing track then go away and spend time polishing the lead performance in its entirity.

3) Get Out There
I'm already on a number of 'find a band' type websites and have been to some open mic's etc but once I've got some material to showcase I need to get it out there and get myself out there more. How? I'll probably set up a MySpace page for 'The Band', but also maybe hand out cards at open mic's..? Find a local music store and put up a notice? Obviously I haven't worked out the details of how to become visible, but it's gotta happen.

Running in parallel with the other action plan steps is another task. I need to get myself an image. Even at the open mic's I noticed that each performer went to the effort of making sure they looked distinctive (with the exception of the blind guy, who obviously got some dodgy pointers from somewhere... possibly a partially sighted or colourblind friend?). Creating an image is going to be a two step process.

First off I have to 'Look Good Naked', that is that I need to lose a few pounds. I'm not at all unhappy with the 210lbs of solid muscle that I cart around each day; it's the additional 20lbs of loose fat gained over the holiday season that's weighing me down. Since coming back to work I've swapped my high-fat, overstuffed foccacia roll lunches for lean turkey sandwiches and fruit. I'm already noticing the difference, much to my surprise. I just have to keep it up to keep it off. I'd settle for the Kenski of 9 months ago on Mykonos island...




The flip side of the coin is that my wardrobe doesn't exactly say 'Rock Star'... it says 'Bloke'. Y'know I could just play stripped to the waist (with the guitar covering my burgeoning midriff) and back-comb my hair, but I think at close to 40 that might not be a good look for me. I ain't Iggy Pop!

Maybe I should start with a new 'do. Something office-friendly by day, cutting edge by night...

A Decent Start

I made a good start on getting back into playing.

First off, I restrung my Ovation acoustic with new D'Addario EXP Phosphor Bronze strings. The tone went from dull and boring to crisp and bright. It's amazing the difference new strings make on that puppy. It's now a joy to play and hence much more rewarding.

Secondly, I pulled out Red Dog (the Les Paul), amped up, and started practicing again. I was surprised to find that despite almost a month of not playing, my finger memory was intact. In no time I was back up to speed on scales, modes etc.

I made a conscious effort to use scales as a warm up but then progress to jamming over backing tracks and playing along to Neil Young & Crazy Horse's "Ragged Glory" album. I actually love Neil's approach to recording in that the performance doesn't need to be perfect... It just needs to be "real", which means that the totally basic chord progressions are simple but extremely gratifying to play along to. My favourite jam-along track has to be "Over and Over". Once you've nailed the intro lick, you're there in the land of grunge-rock.

I also scanned through a freebie Blues Lesson DVD that had been gathering dust in bottom of my TV cabinet, more as a distraction than anything else. The DVD briefly looks at the soloing styles of a number of blues/blues-rock greats: the three Kings (B.B., Albert and Freddie), Clapton, SRV, Hendrix etc. Most of the lessons were still beyond my reach as a player, but what I did take away from it was the idea that at times adding major tonality to the minor pentatonic is a great way to break add colour to licks.

What does that mean in practice? The easiest way to add the major feel is to either hammer-on or bend the second note in the pentatonic scale up a semitone (one fret). To my ear you get a kind of delta blues vibe. It doesn't work well over every chord in the standard I-IV-V, but certainly adds interest when turning around.

I guess if you look at the relationship between the major and minor pentatonic box 1 shapes then you could also add interest by half-step sliding into the 2nd, 3rd or fifth notes in the scale. I'll have to try that...

Gee, do I sould like I know what I'm talking about? Music theory is something I was never interested in until I actually learned some. It's fascinating to me that you can construct a detailed framework for understanding and appreciating music, only to realise that most great music is made when you throw the rules away. You have to take a leap of faith and let the music come from your heart instead of your head.

What else did I learn this weekend? Red Dog plays best with a heavy pick. I'm using a Jim Dunlop 1mm (blue) Tortex one now. Back when I was exclusively playing the acoustic, a floppy 0.5mm one felt better as strumming was a major part of what I was doing. On the electric, control and precision are more important to me.

Finally, I discovered that I need to lose weight. Either that or shorten my guitar strap! The way the Les Paul sits on my belly right now means that it faces down towards the floor which ain't good! Maybe I should add 'lose the flab' to Step 1, too.