Defeat

"It's just a matter of doing what you want to do : not one man in a thousand is doing what he wants to do. My defeat will be my victory."

Hank Chinaski

Don't Try

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”

Hank Chinaski

Blue Notes

At the suggestion of my guitar teacher, Mike, I have been keeping daily notes of my guitar practice -

Tuesday, 10/30/12

2:00-3:45pm - Jam/lesson with Mike. Fun time, felt comfortable and fresh, fingers accurate and strong. As Mike suggested, would like to begin working on rhythm basics. I believe I have the finger skills to quickly pick up on new chords, just need to learn which chords to play depending on the key of the song. Bob wants to jam tomorrow, but I told him I won't be fresh because of today's practice, so will hopefully get together with him next week.

Wedndesday, 10/31/12

9:00pm-11:00

Walking exercises with metronome, flat palming chords, stretching 2 & 3 finger with bottleneck.

Thursday, 11/01/12

12:00pm - 12:15

Watched a Joe Bonamassa lesson video on 12 bar blues - as he is explaining some of the chords, he says “a lot of these chords that I use, a lot of these inside things, I learned from a guy named Danny Gatton, and this is good stuff to know, but don't ask me to name them because I have no idea what they are.” - pretty funny that a master blues guy does not know the names of the chords he is using!

7:00pm - 9:30

Walking exercises to metronome set at 60, 2 notes per beat. While doing this discovered a 7 note bass lick which sounded familiar, not sure from where. I kept searching for notes until the lick was complete.

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_______________________________________________________________________________________________ 7 7 _____________________7 pause____________7 7 _________________

__0 0 0 h-7 h-9_____9__7 7 h 9_0 0 0 h-7 h-9________0 0 0 h-7 h-9____9 7 7 h-9 0 0 0 h-7 h-9 0

The above lick can be expanded to other notes and riffs. The key is D minor.

3/4 exercise. Jam to Burnside, backing tracks, and some BB King.

Friday, 11/2/12

5:30pm - 8:30

Finger exercises, 3 note pent exercise (skipped the 4 note because 3 is hard enough at this point), flat palming chords, stretching 2 & 3 finger with bottleneck, jammed to various blues songs.

Saturday, 11/3/12

7:30pm-11:30

Finger walking exercises with metronome, stretching 2 & 3 finger with bottleneck. Long jam tonight, almost 3 hours of non stop blues fun. Things are starting to slow down (mind comprehending things which it could not 6 month ago), so I can concentrate on finer details. Focused on making the notes clean and solid, definitely a lot of mistakes, but some good passages. Feel for bends is improving, so is vibrato, just have to keep at it. Fingers sore at the end, otherwise would have played longer because energy was good.

Sunday, 11/4/12

6:00pm - 11:00 (a few breaks thrown in)

Finger walking exercises with metronome. Discovered a new way to walk the pentatonic - hit first note once, second note twice, third note once, fourth note twice, etc, good sounding riffs from variations on this exercise. Came up with another low note riff while doing exercises :

__________________________________________________________________________

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________0__2__0_______________0__2__0________________0_2_0_____________0____

_____2___________2__p0_____2___________2___p0_____2________2__p0____2________

__0 _____________________0______________________0_________________0________0__

Flat palming chords, vibrato practice, repeated difficult riffs from yesterday's jam and repeated them slowly to figure out how to improve the finger movements. Studied picking motion to discover best movements for particular fast passages.

House of Rising Sun practice with 4-5 different versions streamed through the amp. I discovered something which could be a step in understanding how to find chords for rhythm - some of the versions are in different keys, when not in A the open chords won't work, at least not the normal open chords. Saw that the open chord structures work 5 frets down from the main box pattern of the pent scale - if the key is G minor, then the main box pattern starts at the 2nd fret, or the 14th, backing down from the 14th 5 frets is where the main chords are, so use capo at 9th fret.

Jammed to Bar B Q Bob and the Spare Ribs (what a name, haha), the band played in a bar, the video captures the entire concert, they played almost 2 hours without break - played along to all the songs, lots of good blues with different keys and rhythms - Fun!

Monday, 11/5/12

10:00pm-11:45

Finger walking exercises with metronome. Flat palm chords. House of Rising Sun practice. Jam to Junior Wells South Side Blues.

Tuesday, 11/6/12

Break

Wednesday, 11/7/12

5:00pm-7:00

2 hour jam with Bob at his auto garage. Bob is good at playing rhythm, so we played 2 hours with me mostly on lead. I tried rhythm for 15 minutes, not too good with it because lack of knowledge of how to stay in key, which hinders creativity for spontaneous music. Positives - good to test myself in the presence of another musician, learning through watching what Bob was doing (he also explained a lot of stuff, which was helpful). Negatives - Bob hesitant to break away from playing a song in an exact way, which hinders creative jamming. Similar to a conversation, where one wants to recite exact lines of poetry or dialogue, while the other speaks his mind. I prefer music to be an open conversation, flowing and in the present moment. For my part, too weak with rhythm due to knowledge gap - my fingers have the strength to play rhythm, I just don't know where to put them. Will continue to research this and will eventually figure it out if I'm lucky.

Thursday, 11/8/12

7:00pm-8:00

One hour of jamming to blues songs, not inspired to do anything else.

Friday, 11/9/12

7:00pm-9:00

finger exercises - good control and sound.

Saturday, 11/10/12

5:00pm-8:00pm

Finger exercises. 3 note pent repetitions. Jam to blues songs. Worked specifically on sliding more than usual, trying to be quicker and more proficient, especially the longer 3 fret slides near the nut. Watched a portion of a dvd which I got at Eugene library - “easy steps to blues guitar jamming” - included was a booklet which showed chords for jamming in E. Quote from dvd - “first rule in playing with a friend is... leave space...I mean, you can't have too much space in music...and so if your'e in doubt of where you are, you can just wait...” and “jamming the blues really does have a lot do with that, it becomes intuitive, and hearing the spaces also becomes quite intuitive, you don't really want to have to think about it too much...some of the great blues players played just one or two notes, and repeated them over and over again.”

Fingers got sore earlier than normal, probably from practicing slides.

Sunday, 11/11/12

6:00pm-11:30 (with breaks)

Walking exercises, flat palming chords, House of Rising Sun, Outside Woman Blues, jam to various blues songs. Bends are getting better, nice feel and sweet sound. Vibrato improving, but still a ways to go. Practiced long slides, making improvements. 

The Arrow of Time

"Time flies faster than an arrow; life is more transient than the dew. No matter how skillful you may be, it is impossible to bring back even a single day of the past. To have lived to be a hundred years old to no purpose is to eat the bitter fruit of time, to become a pitiable bag of bones. Even though you have allowed yourself to be a slave to your senses for a hundred years, if you give yourself over to Buddhist training for even one day, you will gain a hundred years of life in this world as well as in the next."
Dogen

Walked to Mike's a few days ago, set up the gear, and got to jamming. He let me borrow one of his distortion pedals, which gives a bluesing sustain. After a few minutes of feeding off of each other's sound, Mike asked for a suggestion on what to stream through the amp, and I offered up the tasty Clapton/Allman 6 song jam album. After jamming to songs 1-4, we played along to a few miscellaneous beats and ended the day. Definitely worth $50 due to being in the presence of a master guitarist and absorbing the action. I believe this absorption is just as, or more important than, listening to him talk about theory. I was pleased with my playing, my concentration and composure were at a high level and I had no troubles with losing the distinction between master/student.

Next week I will be walking to a music space on 6th st to jam with Bob. He was disappointed that I could not jam with him the day after I had my jam with Mike, but my energy and motivation was low so I decided to wait a week, letting the excitement build and continuing to practice along the way.

Meditating every day, I am slowly breathing my way to a nice place inside my head. I close out the night reclining in bed reading Zen books.