Sound Advice Pt 5 (The Initial Gear)

Posted on May 10, 2012 by BluesPlayer76

By the beginning of January, I started to wonder if I had all the gear I needed. My gig was some weeks away, and I was getting concerned that my Line 6 Spider II, even though it was 75 watts, was more of a glorified practice amp than a rugged gigging amp. There were some practices where it struggled to keep up with volume and it was very directional having only one speaker.

I liked the Line 6 concept – using digital circuitry to mimic it’s analogue counter part – the Tube amp. I liked the idea that I can get several amp sounds out of a single amp. It’s a nice solution for someone like me that’s going to play all types of music from Pink to Bon Jovi.

If I was going to do a metal or hard rock band only – then yes, one tube head, one cabinet would be the way to go. However, I have logistic issues. I live upstairs so I’d have to trudge whatever I have 19 steps up. I also drive a sedan – a big one, but it’s still a sedan. So the combo amp is still the best solution for me. (Note: combo amps are amps that have the amplifier power and cab in the same box – as opposed to “stacks” where you can buy a 100watt, 200 watt or 400 watt head and mix and match with various 4 speaker cabinets). Combo amps are almost always mic’d into the PA system. That’s not always ideal since you have to relinquish control over your volume to someone else and trust me, it doesn’t always turn out well and balanced. But that’s what I was going to use.

I started googling and checking the forums for who used what, plus I started looking at ebay.

My current rig had only 4 presets on it’s footswitch and offered delay, chorus, phase shifter, and reverb, as well as a wah pedal on the footswitch. I needed more presets than that so I bought a used FVB Shorboard for $100 that can handle up to 64 presets. This board doesn’t have any effects on it – it’s just controlling the effects already on the amplifier. There are about 12 models on this amp – I would be using about 4 of them, but with or without various effects. I would have about 6 or 7 presets ready for the first gig.

So I had a board. Great. I needed tools, strings, and picks and somewhere to keep them. Tadaaa! – I went to Walmart and found the Craftsman’s organizer. With the help of a razor, I modified the compartments to accommodate what I needed to carry. I have a double locking tremolo system on my Ibanez Presteige – you need a hex wrench to replace strings, as well as a wire cutter to cut the ball bearing off the end of the string. Batteries, and a flashlight. This works great.

My search for an amp continued. I’d heard good things about the Flextone series and the Vetta II series from Line 6 – both these amps are discontinued. They introduced a new line of amps that seemed to be aimed more at the metal market (Spider Valve with tubes in the preamps), and then the DT series which was well over $1000 that was made to work with their Pod series of effects boards.

Finally, I found a Flextone III amp – 150 watts and 2 12″ speakers. This had more like 16 amp models and these models were built to emulate existing amps – Fenders, Marshalls, Bogners, etc. It was old – built in 2004 – and the owner, who was local to me in Berkeley – was asking $155. It would also work with the shortboard I had just bought. I met that bid and waited. No one bid again. There was no bidding war – time ticked by right up to the deadline and no one swooped in to grab it. It was mine. I almost felt bad for the guy. Almost

I got it home and within the first 30 minutes, I found a problem. The volume would drop out on me. The tone would distort when it shouldn’t. Arg! Did I just waste $155? Long story short, I found a great repair shop (and expensive) that would do a complete overhaul on the amp. The only problem was I would get the amp back on Feb 3rd – the same day as my gig with no time to work with the presets. Oh well, I was going to use my Spider II for the gig with the new shortboard. (Although when I did get the amp back, they had cleaned and re-soldered all the connections and knobs and it has been working 100% since. Only cost me $280, so total money spent was about $435 – still not a bad deal for the power and versatility).

Some stuff I couldn’t get used. I used a combination of Musiciansfriend.com and Amazon.com. I picked up an amp stand by On Stage – they make pretty good stuff. When you have a combo amp, it helps to get it off the ground and tilt it up a bit so you can hear yourself better.

And since this band uses music stands, I bought a (again On Stage) sturdy music stand. And miscellaneous stuff including pick holders, clip on reading light for the music stand, string winders, multi-tooled guitar tools, and a few other things I’ll talk about when I post about my final, complete rig. This took some time and thought to pull together, plus I will take pictures. I wasn’t done making purchases by the time I played my first gig, so I’ve got more to say on that, but for that time, I had what I had to get through the night.

On to the show…

Sound Advice Pt IV (Preparing)

Posted on May 8, 2012 by BluesPlayer76

After I got the gig with Sound Advice, it was early December. The plan was I would work with the Keyboard player exclusively until January, then the rest of the band would have rehearsals with me.

When I showed up to the kbd players house, I was amazed at the organization. Each tune was in mp3 or wav format and he had all his charts (keyboard parts with form notes) on computer which he printed out for me. Talk about being spoon fed. Some of the notes were cryptic or too keyboard centric but regardless, it made it much easier than figuring these songs out on my own.

Even though at that time there were 84 songs listed on their website, we worked from their setlist from the last job, which was about 46 songs. I took home my “homework” and got to work.

When I teach students songs, many times I don’t teach the whole song. I teach the memorable parts. Take Smoke on the Water for instance – people just want to learn the intro. The rest of the chords are quite boring. Or when I do teach all the parts of the song, say like Highway to Hell, I don’t map out the whole form (Form is how the song is arranged – like verse A twice and then chorus B and back to verse A would be a standard AABA form) along with breaks and all that. A kid will get bored, unless he’s in a band and has to learn the whole song for their own performance.

Learning the Form of the song is also getting down the introduction, the ending, the verses, the choruses, the tags (tags are a chord progression that usually are used to lead into the next section), the bridge, where the breaks are, and if you have any particular melody to play – say like the intro for Rebel Yell.

Three quarters of the way through December, I got an email from one of our singers. The setlist for the February 3rd gig would be different than the setlist we were working on. That meant setting me back about 6 songs that I’d been working on and having to work on their replacements. I didn’t consider it time wasted since I needed to know all of them anyway, but it was a definite priority shift. I would come to find out this band does that a lot. I was used to a fairly static set list while this band shuffles things frequently.

I took the mp3′s and ripped them to my hard drive and imported them into iTunes and into 4 playlists: Sound Advice All, Sound Advice Set 1, Sound Advice Set 2, and Sound Advice Set 3. The way they organized their sets were different than what I was used to. Sets 1 and 2 were long. Set 3 was short and as it turns out, we never finish it. There is no set 4.

The guy I worked with was a bit of a perfectionist – and really believed in if he was doing something busy on the keys, I should be doing something less busy on the guitar, and vice versa. This sets up more of a complimentary style rather than competing for attention. We have some very keyboard centric songs and I’m trying to add a bit here and there. We have plenty of guitar centric songs too, where I get all the main parts. I think it works out well.

I prefer working with a keyboard player as opposed to working with another guitarist. I like the contrast more and I think it provides a lot more possibilities.

January rolled around and the band started to discuss where we were going to do full rehearsals. The guitar player I was replacing had hosted band practice. As it turns out, he offered his home to continue to be our practice space. That was very generous of him and the band accepted his offer. It felt a little weird being around him because he was always intent upon listening to me.

It’s a bit of a trek from Pleasanton, where I live, up to Lafayette, but it was only once a week. I had 4 rehearsals with the band and then it would be show time.

I was still sketchy on plenty of songs. I was getting mostly constructive feed back from people after every song. Things like “you play a part there – make a note of it and take another listen at home” or “there was a break there – only bass and drums play there” or “You have a solo after the 2nd chorus”. The only thing I didn’t like was when I heard “Jim played it differently”. Well, Jim is a very different guitarist than I am. Nonetheless, I tried to please. For now.

What was hard was they had a Prince medley and a Bon Jovi medley – and there was no mp3 that I could work with (at that time – our bassist engineered one later) so I had only the full length originals to practice with so I missed those transition spots a lot.

This band also likes to do mashes – there was a mash of “Just Dance” with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. I knew Don’t Stop Believing but a mash is interweaving two songs together – back and forth – which threw off my timing of certain key guitar parts I was supposed to play (and to be honest, I’m still getting cued by our singer on those!).

Sometimes, it would be the simplest of things that would throw me off. Maroon 5′s Give a Little More has this chicken pecking kind of guitar lick in the beginning. The drummer got on me about playing it “right”. It occurs in two spots. Some people got really concerned that I would screw it up. I was thinking “it’s just a chicken pecking part – how important can this be?” but for them it set up the feel of the song from the beginning and having it correct was important to them. It would be a few rehearsals before I got that simple little part right.

Another problem developed in these rehearsals too: dynamics. At this point, I was using a single speaker, 75 watt amp by Line 6 – a Spider II. It’s loud, but it’s very directional. Some people couldn’t hear me, while others heard too much of me. I would eventually fix this issue by replacing the amp with a 2 12 combo amp (another Line 6 – I’ll get a post up here about my gear soon) and putting the amp father away into a corner, increasing the spread of the sound, but this would happen in April – up until then I would struggle to get the mix just right and people would complain. In fact, someone said it was “depressing” that I didn’t seem to have a concept of how loud I should be.

I was wondering if they were starting to have second thoughts about me.

However, February 3rd was looming and they weren’t going to be able to replace me so I figured they were stuck with me at least until then.

Sound Advice (Pt III – The Talk)

Posted on April 27, 2012 by BluesPlayer76

So the audition went very well and we’re talking about basic things – how often we gig, etc. Since everybody showed up at different times during the evening, I didn’t have a real good feel for their personalities as we were already running through songs.

I didn’t like everything I heard. Someone said “We don’t gig on Friday nights”. I looked at him, and was like “what?”. Someone else said “Yes, but if we got a gig on a Friday you’d play it, wouldn’t you?”. The answer is yes. My first gig with them was on a Friday night.

Also, some people didn’t want to gig that often. Hey, don’t get me wrong, the gear is just as heavy as it was the last time, and I have a full time day job, but I’d like to shoot for 2 gigs a month. Last year they had 11 gigs. So in my mind, we’re halfway there.

Like many other things, gigs are pretty seasonal. You can do club work year around, but they are also at the bottom of the rung as far as jobs go. Weddings are late Spring, Summer and early Fall. Then there are holiday parties for companies. Quieter periods are Jan/Feb, Oct/Nov. So my philosophy is take them when we can get them.

When the band asked me what I thought I raised the following points:

1) When I saw them play, almost all the guys wore jeans. Not good.

2) The web site needs work. Grainy photos, and no real pizazz to it.

3) They didn’t have a portfolio. We should have a promo package on nice paper that has contact info, song list, CD or DVD and website info.

I would find out later that if I asked the other 5 members what they thought about something, for example, should we do a group picture vs single photo and photoshop collage them together, I would get 5 different responses. We’re not on the same page for a lot items. Some want to gig as much as I do, some about 75% of what I want, others 50%. Some don’t want to do anything during the week (Thursdays can be advantageous – some club owners want to see what you can do before they put you on a Friday or Saturday).Others agreed about what I said about dressing a little nicer, others ignored me.

Welcome to band life.

All those issues would have to wait. I got a call about 2 weeks later saying I got the gig. I was to start rehearsing with just the keyboard player at first. He had the mp3′s and the charts. December was going to be a big brain dump on me to get the 46 songs down for my February 3rd gig.

I was up for it.

Sound Advice (part II – The Audition)

Posted on April 4, 2012 by BluesPlayer76

So in my last post, I talked about how this band contacted me on bandmix.com to try out for their top 40 dance band. But first I had to check them out.

So on a Saturday night in early December, I and my girlfriend trucked out to Antioch, CA. at a club called Bases Loaded to hear them. When I walked into that bar, I was really taken aback by how large their stage was. Many bars have a small stage and dance area – preferring to fill up the place with more tables for more drinking, eating customers, but this place was large and had a very nice stage front and center across from the bar.

We took a seat in a booth and I started noticing some things. First, the two lead singers were very good, played off each other well, sounded well together. They used a sound man to run the Public Address (PA) board. Some bands prefer to do that themselves to save money – most use a sound man now. He’s dedicated to watching the volume levels, make sure the mix is right (i.e. you can hear all instruments and singers) and no feedback or ringing that could turn into feedback.

Confession time – I don’t spend my leisurely time listening to top 40 radio. So as the band went into song after song, my girlfriend was reacting like “Oh I love this song!” on many occasions while I was say ing “Huh?”. Now I knew some songs, like Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, but many of the female lead songs I hadn’t heard. Not an issue, I expected that.

So the band sounded good, the next thing I paid attention to was the guitarist. What kind of guitar were they used to? Well, he played a Fender Stratocaster – great guitar, I have one, but they only have 21 frets (they can hit a high C# and you can bend from there). He used a slide to get past that range. That’s a difference right there – I don’t play slide. Nothing wrong with it, but the action on my guitar (the height of my strings to the fretboard) is very low and pressing the slide onto the strings like that can cause the stings to buzz on the frets.

The next difference to me was that their current guitarist was a solid rhythm player, while I have focused more of my time on soloing techniques – scales, arpeggios, triad shapes and placement of them all in various styles. I also use a whammy bar (aka tremolo or vibrato bar) for some wild effects. So to me, from this one performance, I determined I was a bit flashier than what they were use to. That doesn’t necessarily mean better or that they’d even want that.

The band played for an hour, and then took a break. I took that opportunity to go up and talk to them, shake all their hands, and tried to get a “vibe” from them – who’s the grumpy one? Who’s the leader? Who’s the primma donna? From my experience, bands are like the 7 dwarfs – no two personalities are the same and someone usually takes on more responsibility than the others and is the tie breaking vote in certain decisions.

So they asked me again if I would be interested in auditioning and I said yes. So I was told “pick out 5 songs from 5 different genres on our song list and let’s get together this Thursday”. Agreed.

So I looked at their band site (which I didn’t care for, but more on that later) and they had 84 songs listed (it’s now up to 89). They were listed in alphabetical order. So trying to keep it a good mix, I picked Jenny 867-5309 (pop/rock), Jump (a bit harder rock, tried to get Eddie’s solo down), Before He Cheats (country rock), Ain’t Too Proud to Beg (R&B), Celebration (funk), and Get Into the Groove (pop/funk).

The audition was at the keyboardists house. When I showed up he was the only one there. So we started running through songs. I’d brought my Stratocaster, NOT my Ibanez because I wanted to blend in more like their previous guitarist. Besides, none of the songs chosen really needed a metal type guitar.

One by one, the other members of the band showed up. I supposed I could have been a bit put off by this lack of courtesy (I was on time) but for some reason it didn’t bother me. By the end of the night, everybody was there, even the male singer who I was warned wouldn’t be there.

The funny thing, and I’ve run across this before, is I called a tune – and someone reacts with “Whoa! We haven’t played that in over a year!”. The keyboardist said “It’s on our song list, we need to be able to play it.”

It was becoming obvious that the Keyboardist was the band’s unofficial leader. Not that he called all the shots, and in certain situations he defers to others, but if he pushed for something, he normally got it.

So we ran through all the songs. As more and more people arrived, they got to hear me. It was not a full fledged audition – we used a drum machine – the drummer didn’t play. I don’t think the bassist did either. The problem was, they didn’t rehearse at the keyboardist’s house – they rehearsed at the guitarists house and since he’s no longer in the band they had to make do.

I nailed all the songs and then it was discussion time. I could tell they liked me. One person even said “We have three more players to audition and we have to be professional about it, we have to listen to them, but we really like you”.

Nice to hear. However, it’s not over till it’s over. I said you absolutely should go ahead with the other auditions. Since I was being rated on my guitar skills only and NOT guitar and vocals, I was in a much better position. My singing skills suck, to be mild. It’s really the only reason why I ever lose out on an audition. It’s not my playing skills.

So as they auditioned me, I auditioned them. And when they said “Do you have any questions for us?”

I had a few.

…to be continued…

Spencer

Sound Advice Part I (The Email)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by BluesPlayer76

*** Schedule Note! As of April 2nd, 2012 I have openings Wednesday night 7:00pm, 7:30pm and 8:00pm. Email me for details ***

Hey all -

In October, something went wrong with my website – while it was up, I could not post more blog entries. As my daily work and family life got busy, I put off working on it until January when my host decided they were terminating the type of account I had and required me to upgrade to a new site. That forced me to reinstall wordpress on the new site and get this puppy up and running.

but during the down time…

I got an email out of the blue from a site called BandMix.com. Someone wanted to know if I was interested joining their dance band. It seems that their guitarist and founder no longer had the time to stick with a practice and gigging schedule and was quitting (on very good terms) the band. They had a show in early December, 2011 and then they had to find someone by February 3rd, 2012 for their next show.

This greatly piqued my interest. First, in the last 3 years I’ve made 3 attempts to form bands, only to be thwarted by personal issues – varying levels of commitment, varying musical abilities, and varying musical directions. This has been well documented in my previous posts (see Band categories). I’d pretty much given up on it for the time being, but I joined bandmix.com out of frustration back in 2009. Besides a brief flirtation with the all original band Lipshok, it was quiet out there.

Sound Advice is a top 40 band, but saying that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Top 40 now seems to come in 31 flavors. This band’s material went back to Born to be Wild and Gimme Shelter, and up to Hot and Cold (Katy Perry) and Give a Litte More (Maroon 5). To say it’s all over the map is an understatement.

Actually, this is the kind of music I do well in. My teacher never let me box myself in – I was playing rock, blues and jazz in my lessons with him. Those fundamentals let you branch out into just about any musical style (you may have noticed I left out Country! Not my forte…)

The band is a 6 piece (with a guitarist) and has both male and female lead singers (that’s a big plus – you can cover a lot of range of material with that combination). Then there was a drummer, a bassist, and keyboards. I’d be the only guitarist. Great! I like that.

The first thing to do was to go listen to the band. Their next gig was in early December at Bases Loaded in Antioch, CA. It was time to do some reconnaissance work and find out:

1) What does the band sound like?

2) What kind of guitarist do they have now (and are used to)?

3) What kind of gigs do they play?

All of this matters. If the band sounds horrible, well, I’ve been there. I can’t fix other peoples playing. If their guitarist is like another Larry Carylton, I would have my work cut out for me. And if they played dives in bad areas where we have to fear for our lives, it isn’t worth it.

Next: Part II – The Sound Advice Report Card

Spencer

Welcome to Fast Fingers Guitar Lessons

Posted on April 1, 2012 by BluesPlayer76

It’s taken months to get this site back online, but it’s up! This site is a combination of web lessons and a chance to sign up with in home guitar lessons of nearly any style. Feel free to poke around and read some of the older blogs I’ve posted – subjects include lessons, music theory, how to practice, managing being in a band, and much more.

If you’re looking for drum lessons or know someone who is, check out http://ryanonthedrums.com as well.

Spencer

We Have Moved

Posted on July 27, 2011 by BluesPlayer76

Hey folks -

it’s been some time since my last blog. I’ve undergone shoulder surgery (not the rotator cuff or I probably wouldn’t be typing this right now) and have been healing, resting, and physical therapy. This should address some pain I’d been having playing acoustic guitar and any activity where I had to lift my arms above my head.

So I have gone nearly all of July without working. That is strange for me – I’ve never taken more than a week off for vacation and I took 3 weeks off in between jobs, but never this long.

One of things that has been on my TODO list for a while is to redesign my website. My old website was very basic. It had my bio, it had some pics of me, it had guitar lesson rates, and other details, a place where I could imbed youtube videos of me playing and giving lessons, and a blog page- but it wasn’t really a blog page. It was a cut and past of what I wrote here on blogger.com and then a link back here.

Well anybody who knows web sites knows that people hate to leave the original site they were on. I wanted a website where I could drop in nifty gadgets like a calendar without too much difficulty and note where I’m playing next. Play videos and blog.

Well, with my time off, I began to read a lot about wordpress. It can do everything I mention above – and it’s all about the blog. I think having the blog be the first thing people see is a good idea. The blog is where content is going to change the most, and you get to see it first.

So I installed wordpress on my site, upgraded to the latest software, got the database set up, and migrated all the blog entries here (comment included) over to my website.

One of the things I’m excited about is I can categorize my blog entries. If you’re just interested in lessons, that’s a category. If you’re just interested in my band experience, that’s another category. This is way cool since I like to write about a wide variety of things.

The site still has a long way to go – I need to change the basic template and add all the content that was in my old website, but I figure I’m about half way there.

I hope you come and check it out. I will be able to see comments more easily there too – I noticed when I migrated the entries over last night there were some comments I never saw. That’s too bad. I would like to encourage more dialog in the future.

So check it out, see what you think, give me feedback.

http://fastfingersguitarlessons.com

Spencer

Metal and Bebop

Posted on April 9, 2011 by BluesPlayer76

Hey all -

I took lessons from Jim beween 1972 to 1978, then he made me a teacher. Then I took lessons from the late Warren Nunes from 1980 to 1981, about a year and a half. Both teachers (more so Jim) were responsible for shaping my approach to playing.

One staple of their playing principles were to forget about modes. What are modes?

Let’s start with the key of C:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 or 1

C D E F G A B C

So in a “modal” approach, C to C is the “Ionian mode”. D to D in the key of C is the “Dorian Mode”. E to E is “Phrygian mode”. F to F is the “Lydian Mode”. G to G is the “Mixolydian mode”, A to A is the Natural minor scale but also called the “Aeolian mode”and the B to B is the “Locrian mode”.

My teacher’s preferred approach was to use chord shapes within the context of whatever scale we were in (Major, Pentatonic of blues) and this is still what I primarily use.

As my sons have introduced me to more and more Metal – Speed metal, death metal, thrash metal, Garage Sale Metal (ok I made that last one up) – I got interested more in the guitarists than the bands themselves. Some of these players are nothing short of amazing.

Metal is a niche market. It’s not like pop and blues where guys like Clapton can tell Fender “you’ll make the guitar like this” and they do it. These guys have difficulty being a commercial success. Don’t think Metallica – who have a couple of hits – those hits generate royalties and a nice income. Think “Dying Fetus” – what, you never heard of them? See?

As a result of limited financial success, I assume, a lot of these killer guitarists teach. Hey it’s a good way to make money and solidifies your understanding of musical theory and concepts (it worked for me). So these guys have instructional youtube vids out there, usually promoting their pay for DVD.

Besides the fact that they all tune down a half or a whole step, and many play 7 string or 8 string guitars, their playing seems be centered on 4 approaches:

1) scales/modes

2) arpeggios

3) legato (hammer ons and pull offs) through the scales

4) fast alternate picking through the scales

Before I get into #1 above, let me say this : metal guys aren’t the first guys to play blinding fast music. Look at Bebop (“be-what? Who is he, some rapper dude?”). Let me explain.

Before there was the internet, and radio stations all across the country, music traveled with bands. This meant that if an area developed a style of playing, it took bands traveling across the country to get the word out. The new music would be heard by local musicians in their town and they’d pick up on it. In this fashion, styles of popular music would normally take about 10 years to change – we’re talking the 1920′s, 1930′s, and 1940′s. And if you study these styles, each style seems to be an answer of sorts to be different than what is currently popular.

In the 1940′s it was the big band era – everybody wanted to dance – why not? The world was in WWII and they needed some form of escapism. Then we were out of WWII and the world needed a way to celebrate.

But out of that, these jazz musicians wanted to not play for happy dancing couples but to play for their art, their music, to test the boundaries of harmonic structures and playing technique. So after WWII and into the 1950′s, Bebop was formed.

Bebop is a franticly paced, complex jazz style. Charlie Parker (sax) and Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) are probably the two main pillars of this genre, but they guy I like more is John Coltrane.

John played tenor sax (my fav sax) and was technically very, very proficient. He wrote an historically complex song called “Giant Steps” that changes keys all over the place.

In 1958, Downbeat magazine used the term “sheets of sound” to describe Coltrane’s playing. This same description could be used to describe what some of these modern day shredders do.

OK, metal is not bebop – harmonically metal is still very basic, but their long runs tend to center around various modes in a singular key. (in quick key changes, like giant steps, I’d still much prefer a chordal approach). These long, fast runs create a “sheet of sound” that maps out the tonality of the mode in blinding speed. In this sense, I can see the use of modes to improvise with, going a bit against the advice of my teachers (but that was in the 1970′s pretty much).

So I now am working on modal exercises that are meant to be played at fast speeds. It’s not difficult for me to see them because modes are usually built on major or minor scales. It’s more of an adjustment of my approach, not a departure from it.

Shred on….

Spencer

But I’m not Chinese!!

Posted on January 12, 2011 by BluesPlayer76

Hey folks -

Yes I know that title makes no sense, but hear me out.

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article written by Amy Chua entitled “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” which inspired thousands of comments, both for and against Ms. Chua’s article.

Her article boiled down to a few main concepts -

1) Getting A’s is the most important thing (no sports, sleep overs, etc)

2) You MUST take piano or violin

3) Anything less than an “A” is unacceptable unless it’s gym class.

Well, I read the whole thing and to be honest, I didn’t see it as all bad or all good. There were aspects in that article I liked.

No, I’m not advocating taking away your child’s right to food, water, and bathroom breaks when practicing. I think that hammering a young person into conforming stifles creativity and self expression. But some of the ideas expressed in the article might be key to getting past road blocks in your (or my) development.

First, I would take “failure is not an option” and instead use “Aim High”. When my boys struggle to get good grades in a class, I don’t push for a B anymore. I tell them “There’s no reason why you can’t get an A in this class so work for it”. Even if the A doesn’t come, they will do better than if they’d aimed to get a “B”.

Second – positive mental attitude. My sons have struggled with this at times and I have too when it comes to my day job.

Four years ago I had my dream job – the one I’d worked for, gone to school for, and finally had it. I was successful, I’d built a team that was getting the job done. But a reorganization of upper management put in place a new VP who played favorites. Unaware of this, I went about business as usual and when I went on vacation (2 months before reviews) I came back to a list of complaints from my director who had gone through all my work while I was gone. The complaints continued, I got a bad review and pushed to another team. My replacement, who I met with, said within the first minute of our meeting “The VP said I had a job here as long as I want it!”.

I went to manage a team in an area I didn’t like. A year later I was moved to manage a team I liked even less. Then I was given a chance to go back to computer programming in Java again, I took it, and while the work was interesting, my new boss hated me. Another bad review, kicked off THAT team and landed where I currently am now.

Now my new boss has been fine, the work somewhat interesting, but guess where my attitude was by now? Right, in the dumpster. And it stayed that way for a while.

Recently I’ve been working on changing my attitude, if not for the company, at least for the quality of work I should be doing. With a bad attitude towards your school, your teacher, your work, your boss, there is little room for success. My son criticized his school everyday and came home with some really bad grades.

My suggestion?

Stop saying/thinking negative thoughts. Catch your self in the act “this job is horrible” – and interrupt it with something else. Find satisfaction in SOME aspect. For a student, you can watch that D turn into a C, then into a B, and finally an A.

Focus (i.e. stop being lazy): When one of my sons struggled with math, I asked him how many hours a week does he spend on soccer? His answer: 30. How many on math? 2. Guess which one he was better at?

We need to make up our mind that we are GOING to do something and it starts now. Once started, it gets easier. I hate to clean my desk. Hate it. But once I get started, I don’t want to be interrupted until it’s done, cleared, and smelling like some sort of furniture polish.

Set goals – I will do “this”, “this” amount of time or for this long or this many times a week.

The more you accomplish, the more fun something gets: This is a point that Ms. Chua makes towards the end of her article after berating and ceaselessly pressuring her 7 year old to play a piece on the piano. When her child was able to play the piece, the joy, the relief, the sense of accomplishment gives the child new confidence. Ok, this is a valid point. But for her, the ends justifies the means. I won’t do that to my kids (as much), but I will push. I will remove distractions, I will ground my kids, and I will work with them on what’s stopping them from being successful.

The same thing goes for my work. My work had been sloppy. My manager has noticed it and mentioned a few things. From here on, I plan to dot the i’s and cross the t’s – and maybe I can stay here long enough to find a new job elsewhere

Check your attitude, focus on goals, and remember success builds on success.

Spencer Out

"Protect yourself at all times…."

Posted on November 7, 2010 by BluesPlayer76

Anybody who has watched a boxing or MMA match has heard those words given by the referee at the beginning of a fight in the ring or cage. But they apply to aspiring shredder guitar players too.

I remember reading an article about Yngwie Malmsteen who complained about tendonitis in his left hand (I cannot find the article now). As I remember he said something like “I never warmed up, I just picked up the guitar everyday and played as fast as I could. I’m proud of this album because I was in a lot of pain during it”.

Recently I’ve been watching killer shredder Rusty Cooley play pentatonic scales, which are traditionally played with two notes per string, stretching out to playing 3 notes per string. Now I’m hearing that other players are playing the major scales, traditionally 3 notes per string, at 4 notes per string. Or 5.

The result is a dramatic change in the texture of the melodic line you’re playing, as well as very quickly traversing the guitar neck from low to high and back again (almost like sweeping arpeggios).

I’ve been working on these techniques myself too and noticed a few things:

The hand is just like any other physical part of your body. Every athlete warms up – especially before exercises of great speed (sprints for example) or strength (bench press with a barbell). EVERY single piece of documentation about exercise mentions to warm the body up before stressing it to reduce injury. In fact, even for low or moderate exercise.

The major scales for me pose no real stretching issues for me, so I practice those on a metronome for a couple of minutes at a very safe, borderline “boring” tempo. Then I bump it up 10 beats/min. Then another. Then another. You can feel your hand warming up – there’s more blood circulating to it. This is extremely important to keep your hand healthy.

With regards to stretching out on these 3/4/5 note per string scales – START SLOWLY! The beginning of the neck is where the frets are wider and pose the biggest challenge. One way to give yourself the optimum angle is to play the guitar on your left leg (not the right) and elevate your left foot. This is what classical guitarists do and so does Rusty Cooley.

When I first started working on my stretch, I did a whole note scale exercises – using my 1st, 2nd, and 4th finger on my left hand:

String Fret Finger

6 1 1

6 5 4

6 3 2

6 5 4

Shifting to the 5th string, the fingering remains the same:

Fret

4th string:

3rd string:

2nd string (notice there is no change in frets from the 3rd string due to how the guitar is tuned)

and 1st string

Then reverse the pattern 1st string down to 6th.

Master this pattern before attempting to go a wider stretch. The pentatonic pattern will require the stretch of 6 frets, as each string will require some combination of a whole step and a minor 3rd (3 half steps).

Additionally, don’t work these intensely at first. Take frequent breaks – go play something easy – it keeps your hand warmed up so then you can go back to the more challenging pattern. You should feel NO PAIN. I don’t mean the finger tips – your calluses will get built up, I mean no pain in the hand. If you do, rest it. Don’t get frustrated and push through it. Your hand will unfortunately reward you with pain, swelling, and a forced vacation from playing.

I did a general search for guitarists with tendonitis and I got an interesting list (Note, this list is in no way exhaustive and I have no way of verifying this):

Leo Kotke

Steve Vai (he admited in an interview I read he switches to .09 strings in the studio to go easier on his hand, but plays with .10 live).

Robben Ford

Alex DeGrassi

Yngwie Malmsteen

So if these guys can get it, any player can get it.

So to recap:

1) Warm up for at least 5 minutes, gradually increasing your speed (use a metronome)

2) Practice your stretching exercises (like the whole tone scale above) first – master it before trying to stretch one more fret

3) Guitar on left knee and elevate left foot for best hand angle

4) Take frequent breaks as you work on your new skills

5) NEVER push past pain if you feel it – take a break. If the new technique just hurts, give it a rest for a few days then go back to it.

6) If you get chronic pain, see the doctor. You’re likely going to have a take several weeks off from the instrument (hopefully steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 keep you from getting to this point).

Protect yourself at all times!!

Spencer