Lesson, 3/29

I had another guitar lesson Tuesday evening, and it's still a lot of fun - even though it often feels like drinking from a fire hose.  Here are the things we talked about, and that I'll be focusing on for the next two weeks.

Tremolo Picking: I made decent progress with this, and there's plenty more to work on.  He wants me to hold more of the pick, which should give me more control.  I'm to keep working at it with the metronome, getting faster as I can do it while hitting every note cleanly.  I'm also to do tremolo picking with the four-finger exercises of the right hand, which will work on getting both hands faster and coordinated.  I also have exercises with open-string tremolo picking, and then two-string open-string tremolo picking, which is wickedly hard.

Guitar Vibrato: I currently do right-hand vibrato in what he calls "violin-style", or twisting the fretting finger back and forth while you hold the note.  It does add some tone to the note, but it doesn't have the effect it does with a violin since a guitar has frets.  What he calls "guitar-style" vibrato involves moving the string itself up and down, like mini-bends.  It sounds great when he does it, but it's really hard to do and feels incredibly awkward.  I think it will take a lot of repetition to feel somewhat natural (i.e., to the point where I could do it without thinking while playing.)

Music Theory: I knew this was a big question, but I asked how, when looking at a song, you know its key, and what scales are appropriate.  I knew some of this, but we talked about theory for a bit, and he gave me some charts to study.  I already know a decent bit of theory, and I'm interested to know more.  But this is a subject that can get as complicated as you care to go with it.  I now know all the basic scales needed to play in any major or minor key, but I have to get them smoother and more natural.  This will be an ongoing process.

Band Practice and Soloing

Last night was band practice, as all Tuesdays have been recently.  It's still a blast, and we're getting the songs in our set list down pretty well.  I think we sound decent, and am pretty certain we'll be able to do a creditable 90 minutes.  We have more time to rehearse than we originally thought, as we had to cancel the April 2 gig date due to band member travel.  We're trying to reschedule, and it seems likely that it will be in the May timeframe.

I took both guitars with me last night, but played the Epiphone exclusively.  I wanted to see what it felt like and played like over an extended practice.  We played for two hours and did every song in our set list, and it felt great.  I'm still not entirely happy with my tone, so I'm playing with amp settings - but that's unrelated to the new guitar, I've also been playing with amp settings and trying to find the right tone with the Telecaster.

My ability to take a solo is coming along.  It probably rates as "almost at the minimum acceptable level."  But that's significant progress, as three months ago I basically couldn't do it at all.  Now, given any key, I can do *something.*  Probably even enough that a friendly audience would say it was fine.  But I need to get better, and I intend to.

The first thing I need to do is expand my repertoire of phrases or licks.  After practice last night I realized that in the five songs where I have a free-form solo, I was doing the same basic thing in every song.  I need to listen to songs and watch YouTube to get ideas, and plan this out better.  I realize now that it's not the quantum physics I thought it was.

I also need to be able to bring a solo to a definite conclusion.  It now basically just peters out, and I nod to the guys to get on with the next verse.  It should be obvious when it's ending, and I need to figure out how to do that.

Our next rehearsal is in two weeks, and I intend to have improved by then.

Final anecdote: discussing the Les Paul, Eric noted that I would look more like Jimmy Page if I had it slung about a foot lower (basically playing it off my thigh.)  I answered that I would also need satin dragon pants.  But seriously, how does he play it that low?!?

Playing the Les Paul

The story of my eBay win of the Epiphone Les Paul is told elsewhere.  But I got it back from the shop on Sunday and can finally talk about actually playing it.

Cleaned and set up, it's a beautiful instrument.  The only thing that was wrong with it was the high-E tuning peg, which I thought was broken, as it couldn't hold the string in tune.  According to the repairman, It was easily fixable, and now works fine.  A badly-needed new set of string completed the setup.

I've been playing it exclusively for the past two days, and I love it.  It gives that nice fat Les Paul sound that I could try to get with the Telecaster, but never with complete success.  I've been doing some finger exercises and rehearsing some band songs, and the feel doesn't seem much different.  I guess from reading message board posts, I was expecting that the feel might be different.

Also, it just looks so damn cool.

Going forward, I'm sure I'll play both guitars, but it remains to be seen in what proportion.  More details and impressions as I play it more.

Tremolo Picking

My main picking exercise for my next lesson (thankfully not this coming Tuesday, but 10 days from now) is tremolo picking.  In other words, moving the pick quickly back and forth across the string.  Basically, as fast as possible but hitting every note cleanly and in time.  This will build picking speed and accuracy, and is also designed to burn in good habits.

The focus is almost entirely on the right hand.  Once picking basics are established, the next step will be coordinating faster left-hand movement with the faster picking.  But for now it's four 16th notes on the same fret, then moving to another fret.

I'm using the metronome to keep myself going at a steady pace, and one that I can hit every note accurately.  For now, that means 76bpm, where I'm playing four 16th notes every beat.  The idea is to slowly increase the speed.

I'm doing a lot of simple finger exercises, and the scales I already know pretty well (minor pentatonic, blues, and minor), going up and down, trying to keep the picking steady.

I can't say it's loads of fun - and it's undoubtedly even less fun for the folks in the house to listen to.  But it's a basic skill that has to be learned, so the sooner the better.

On Slowing Down

I had another lesson Tuesday night, and I asked a couple questions that led to us switching gears.  We're by no means done with the minor scale and working that into improvisation with the blues and minor pentatonic scales, but I also have some right-hand picking exercises to work on.

I started doing the picking exercises last night and was getting frustrated - I couldn't do it smoothly, kept flubbing, etc., etc.  Stepping back to think, I realized I was going too fast and need to start slower.  Immediately after realizing this, a number of very emphatic quotes from people on the message boards popped into my head - guitar teachers saying that their primary advice to students is SLOW DOWN.  Everyone wants to play fast, but you can't lay fast until you can play slowly.

The rule of thumb is to play at the speed you can play it perfectly.  Then slowly speed up.  And the way to track this is with a metronome.  I have a metronome and intend to start using it to keep myself playing in a steady time.

So the current mantra is "slow the f&^% down!"

String Bending and 9's

My other assignment (besides the minor scale) is to do a lot more string bending.  I thought I was doing plenty, as it is a cool technique and sounds great (done properly.)  But apparently I could be doing plenty more.

Most of the bending I've been doing has been half-tone bends (i.e., one fret.)  But now I'm also supposed to be doing whole-tone (two-fret) and three-fret bends.  I was able to do whole-tone bends in the lesson (more easily on the upper frets than on the lower), but three-fret bends were near impossible.

Part of the reason was finger strength, which I can work on.  But part of it was string gauge.  My Tele had standard 0.010 gauge strings.  I've been reading debates on the message boards about the pros and cons of going to thinner strings (0.009 gauge, or "nines.")  Since I was due for a string change anyway, I decided to try a set of nines.

I re-strung about ten days ago, and I can tell the difference.  Whole-tone bends are easier, and I can manage the three-fret bend, although it's still not easy.  I guess finger strength is the other part of the equation.

I haven't seen any downsides to the thinner strings.  But we'll see.  When I took the Epiphone into the shop 10 days ago, I asked them to re-string with nines also.

Beyond the details of how to bend, there's the question of when (i.e., which notes.)  And that comes back to the scales.

Learning the Minor Scale

I've been going for a lesson every other week, and one of my assignments for the last two lessons has been to get the A-minor scale down cold - all five positions up the fretboard.  Actually, according to this page, what I'm learning is the "natural or relative minor scale."

The first week or two was just leaning the positions - lots of slow repetition until they start to get burned in.  I have that down pretty well now (not perfectly, I'm still doing repetitions every night), so the assignment two weeks ago was to start improvising using the minor scale.

Actually the assignment was a little more complicated.  I've been improvising over the blues scale, so the assignment was in a couple parts:

• Improvise over the blues scale, throwing in a few notes from the minor scale.
• Improvise with an even mix of notes from the two scales.
• Improvise over mostly the minor scale, throwing in some blues notes.

Learning the scale positions and playing something that sounds interesting are two very different things.  My improvisation is still *very* rudimentary.  I also get stuck in one position, and the idea is to be able to move fairly seamlessly from one position to another up and down the fretboard.

Then of course there's moving to a different key.  Once you A-minor, then B-minor is the same thing two frets higher.

It's not easy.  I can see little glimmers of progress, but there's still SO far to go.

A New Guitar Blog

Yes, a new guitar blog.  As it says in my profile, I've had an off-and-on, more-frustrating-than-not relationship with the guitar over the past 30+ years.  In the last year or two, I've finally starting making some strides in learning how to play.  The result of making progress is that it's more fun to play, which means I want to play more and work harder.  A nice positive feedback loop.

I've also had a chance to play with some people of similar ability, and we've had some fun jam sessions, and we're currently rehearsing as a band, and may even have a gig lined up a local bar.  More on that as it happens.

I know I'm just scratching the surface and have a lot to learn.  I hope to use this blog to write down my thoughts and experiences.

I've also played electric bass over the years, and am fooling around with the mandolin.  These instruments may find their way into the blog too (which is why I put "fretboard" in the blog title instead of "guitar.")