I pulled an Allen Iverson last night and didn't practice at all. Instead I played six hours of World of Warcraft while my wife, mother-in-law, and son were out running errands.
I'll do better tonight.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
(2:54) Rock Band 3
The Midi PRO-Adapter and Rock Band 3 showed up on my doorstep yesterday. I resisted trying it out right away and did chord transition practice and then worked on my picking with the opening rift of Don't Fear The Reaper. I already saw a huge improvement from the day before, but it's no where near perfect or even full speed.
After 45 minutes of actual practice, I booted up Rock Band 3 and went through the Pro Guitar tutorials. I had to set the options to No Fail because I haven't received the Fender Squire yet, so I can't actually play along with feedback. I did use my electric guitar to play along with The Hardest Button To Button on Easy, Medium, and then Hard. Easy and Medium were a breeze to play through the first time. They involved picking strings at a slow pace, without many hand movements. I had to pause the Hard mode and sit down and actually work through it slowly because a few power chords were added and slightly faster picking. I didn't bother trying it on Expert yet because I think that will be a pretty big step up from Hard.
Right before I went to bed, Best Buy emailed me to let me know my guitar was on it's way to my local store. Hopefully by this weekend I'll be able to start using it.
In total, I put in an hour and 31 minutes of practice last night.
After 45 minutes of actual practice, I booted up Rock Band 3 and went through the Pro Guitar tutorials. I had to set the options to No Fail because I haven't received the Fender Squire yet, so I can't actually play along with feedback. I did use my electric guitar to play along with The Hardest Button To Button on Easy, Medium, and then Hard. Easy and Medium were a breeze to play through the first time. They involved picking strings at a slow pace, without many hand movements. I had to pause the Hard mode and sit down and actually work through it slowly because a few power chords were added and slightly faster picking. I didn't bother trying it on Expert yet because I think that will be a pretty big step up from Hard.
Right before I went to bed, Best Buy emailed me to let me know my guitar was on it's way to my local store. Hopefully by this weekend I'll be able to start using it.
In total, I put in an hour and 31 minutes of practice last night.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
(1:39) The First Good Day
I actually found plenty of time to practice last night. I spent the first 15 minutes practicing switching between A and D chords. I am focusing on sliding my ring finger along the string when I switch from D to A. I developed a bad habit of completely lifting it off the string when I move the middle finger from the E to the D string.
Up to this point, I have only played guitar sitting down, with the guitar on my lap. I want to be able to play standing up, but I never took time to get my electric guitar at the right level to be able to play comfortably. I spent some time figuring out how long to make the strap and I think I found a happy medium. The guitar isn't so high that I look stupid, but I can reach around and play bar chords without straining my wrist too badly. I will probably tweak it a little going forward, but it feels okay so far.
I wasn't in the mood for practicing chord changes, so I decided to surf around Justin's site. I found a weekly riff and loaded up the first video. It was Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster cult. I spent some time watching the video, with frequent pauses and rewinds. I think with some practice that I'll be able to get it down. It will be good picking practice if nothing else. I'm not very accurate with my inner string picking at this point, and the song uses a combination of the 6,5,4,3 strings over various chord changes with the left hand. I like the song enough that I think I'll be able to stay with it until I've mastered it.
After an hour and fifteen minutes I called it good for the night and opened a beer.
Up to this point, I have only played guitar sitting down, with the guitar on my lap. I want to be able to play standing up, but I never took time to get my electric guitar at the right level to be able to play comfortably. I spent some time figuring out how long to make the strap and I think I found a happy medium. The guitar isn't so high that I look stupid, but I can reach around and play bar chords without straining my wrist too badly. I will probably tweak it a little going forward, but it feels okay so far.
I wasn't in the mood for practicing chord changes, so I decided to surf around Justin's site. I found a weekly riff and loaded up the first video. It was Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster cult. I spent some time watching the video, with frequent pauses and rewinds. I think with some practice that I'll be able to get it down. It will be good picking practice if nothing else. I'm not very accurate with my inner string picking at this point, and the song uses a combination of the 6,5,4,3 strings over various chord changes with the left hand. I like the song enough that I think I'll be able to stay with it until I've mastered it.
After an hour and fifteen minutes I called it good for the night and opened a beer.
Monday, April 25, 2011
(0:58) Easter Sunday
Did I mention this wasn't a good weekend to start playing guitar? We normally have some weekend plans, but we were much more busy this weekend than we normally are.
Between a birthday celebration on Friday, watching Gabriel all day Saturday while my wife decorated Easter cookies, and then driving an hour to Grand Rapids to celebrate Easter all day on Sunday it was hard to find time to practice.
Again, I tried practicing early in the morning on Sunday. Again, Gabriel was just as eager to play the guitar as I was. He had a late night on Saturday and woke up earlier than normal on Sunday. He was tired and cranky as a result, and refused to crawl around and play with his toys like he normally does. My wife was getting ready for Easter Sunday Mass and she was busy throwing up due to morning sickness.
All around happy times in our household.
I did finally find time to practice, again starting at 11PM, which is when I should have been going to bed. I put in 41 minutes in total during the day, which was well below the hour I was hoping for. My practice was fruitful even if it was short.
I went through a second Justin Guitar lesson on the A chord. I was glad to see that he taught the A chord with the same fingering that my friend had shown me when I first learned guitar. Most guitar books I've seen show the index finger on the G string (on the guitar!), the middle finger on the D string, and the ring finger on the A string. All of these are crammed into the second fret.
The preferred way to play the A chord is with your index finger on the D string so that it is between the other two fingers; middle on the G and ring on the A. This allows all of your fingers to sit closer to the fret as well as making it an easy chord change to D. All you have to do to swap to a D chord is pop your middle finger down to the E string and slide your ring finger over to the third fret. Quick and painless, as long as your fingers have developed plenty of calluses.
Mine have not.
And they hurt quite a bit.
I haven't been playing any chords using my pinky finger yet, so I have been spending some time just pressing down hard with only my pinky on the thick E string until I can't take the pain any longer. I'd rather just get all the pain out of the way now and not have it fall behind my other fingers in callus development.
Between a birthday celebration on Friday, watching Gabriel all day Saturday while my wife decorated Easter cookies, and then driving an hour to Grand Rapids to celebrate Easter all day on Sunday it was hard to find time to practice.
Again, I tried practicing early in the morning on Sunday. Again, Gabriel was just as eager to play the guitar as I was. He had a late night on Saturday and woke up earlier than normal on Sunday. He was tired and cranky as a result, and refused to crawl around and play with his toys like he normally does. My wife was getting ready for Easter Sunday Mass and she was busy throwing up due to morning sickness.
All around happy times in our household.
I did finally find time to practice, again starting at 11PM, which is when I should have been going to bed. I put in 41 minutes in total during the day, which was well below the hour I was hoping for. My practice was fruitful even if it was short.
I went through a second Justin Guitar lesson on the A chord. I was glad to see that he taught the A chord with the same fingering that my friend had shown me when I first learned guitar. Most guitar books I've seen show the index finger on the G string (on the guitar!), the middle finger on the D string, and the ring finger on the A string. All of these are crammed into the second fret.
The preferred way to play the A chord is with your index finger on the D string so that it is between the other two fingers; middle on the G and ring on the A. This allows all of your fingers to sit closer to the fret as well as making it an easy chord change to D. All you have to do to swap to a D chord is pop your middle finger down to the E string and slide your ring finger over to the third fret. Quick and painless, as long as your fingers have developed plenty of calluses.
Mine have not.
And they hurt quite a bit.
I haven't been playing any chords using my pinky finger yet, so I have been spending some time just pressing down hard with only my pinky on the thick E string until I can't take the pain any longer. I'd rather just get all the pain out of the way now and not have it fall behind my other fingers in callus development.
(0:30) My First Saturday
I woke up early on Saturday morning and was eager to grab my guitar and start practicing. Unfortunately, my 9 month son woke up early with me and was even more eager to grab the guitar than I was.
He is able to pull himself up on my knee and reach the guitar with no problem, so I had to cut my practice short after only 10 minutes. I need to put a strap on my electric guitar and then use that when he is around and my wife is unable to take care of him. Otherwise I'm going to end up with a lot of interrupted practices.
Later in the day I had a chance to practice again. I was watching Gabriel again while Maria was taking care of some things around the house, so I went out to our front yard and put a blanket down in the grass and placed him on it. He doesn't like the feel of grass on his hands, so he was pretty much stuck on the blanket until I picked him up again. I was able to get in 18 minutes of D chord and picking practice before he became unhappy and we went back inside.
Total practice time for the day was 28 minutes. Not very good for a weekend, but my wife spent 8 hours decorating Easter cookies so I was in charge of Gabriel for almost the entire day.
He is able to pull himself up on my knee and reach the guitar with no problem, so I had to cut my practice short after only 10 minutes. I need to put a strap on my electric guitar and then use that when he is around and my wife is unable to take care of him. Otherwise I'm going to end up with a lot of interrupted practices.
Later in the day I had a chance to practice again. I was watching Gabriel again while Maria was taking care of some things around the house, so I went out to our front yard and put a blanket down in the grass and placed him on it. He doesn't like the feel of grass on his hands, so he was pretty much stuck on the blanket until I picked him up again. I was able to get in 18 minutes of D chord and picking practice before he became unhappy and we went back inside.
Total practice time for the day was 28 minutes. Not very good for a weekend, but my wife spent 8 hours decorating Easter cookies so I was in charge of Gabriel for almost the entire day.
(0:00) The First Practice
I didn't get a chance to practice as much over the weekend as I was planning on. My goal was to spend half an hour on Friday, 45 minutes on Saturday, and then a full hour on Sunday. I want to slowly ramp up my playing time because I know my fingers are going to kill for a while until the calluses start to form again.
I managed to get the full half an hour in on Friday despite my wife calling me on the way home from work and asking me to do last minute grocery shopping for dinner. My parents were coming over to celebrate my mom's birthday and grocery shopping and dinner prep kept me busy until they arrived. They stayed late, and while they were still over I started thinking about giving up learning the guitar. This was obviously silly, since I hadn't even picked up a guitar yet. All these thoughts about how I won't be able to find time to practice and all the video gaming time that I would have to give up flooded my head. I thought about hopping on the blog and deleting my first post before anyone read it, and then just going on with life as normal. (On the plus side, as of Monday no one else has read it, so I could still get out of this without any Internet embarrassment)
I successfully fought those ideas though, and at 11PM I pulled my electric and acoustic guitars out of the closet and tuned them both. I pointed my browser to Justin Guitar and found the first video lesson, which was on the D chord. I spent the remainder of my half hour playing the D chord and then seeing if my fingers could move between E,G,D,A.
My hand strength is gone, my calluses are gone, and my brain doesn't remember any of the songs I used to know, but after the short practice I felt like my fingers were performing almost as well as they had four years ago when I last played.
There is hope!
I managed to get the full half an hour in on Friday despite my wife calling me on the way home from work and asking me to do last minute grocery shopping for dinner. My parents were coming over to celebrate my mom's birthday and grocery shopping and dinner prep kept me busy until they arrived. They stayed late, and while they were still over I started thinking about giving up learning the guitar. This was obviously silly, since I hadn't even picked up a guitar yet. All these thoughts about how I won't be able to find time to practice and all the video gaming time that I would have to give up flooded my head. I thought about hopping on the blog and deleting my first post before anyone read it, and then just going on with life as normal. (On the plus side, as of Monday no one else has read it, so I could still get out of this without any Internet embarrassment)
I successfully fought those ideas though, and at 11PM I pulled my electric and acoustic guitars out of the closet and tuned them both. I pointed my browser to Justin Guitar and found the first video lesson, which was on the D chord. I spent the remainder of my half hour playing the D chord and then seeing if my fingers could move between E,G,D,A.
My hand strength is gone, my calluses are gone, and my brain doesn't remember any of the songs I used to know, but after the short practice I felt like my fingers were performing almost as well as they had four years ago when I last played.
There is hope!
Friday, April 22, 2011
The Decision
I didn't expect today to be any different than any other Friday. Sure, it is my mom's birthday, but there isn't anything else special about today.
I woke up, drove to work, checked my bank account to make sure my payday check had been deposited, and pointed my browser over to dubiousquality.blogspot.com to check out the weekly Friday Links post like I do every Friday morning.
The first link was about a 30 year old guy who quit his job to spend 10,000 hours training to be a professional golfer. "Awesome" is about the only word I could come up with after reading the article and then checking out his blog at The Dan Plan .
I started thinking about my own life and how I spend my time. I have a good job as a software developer, I have a wife, a 9 month old son, and another baby on the way. A normal day in my life involves getting up early, working from 7:30AM to 4:00PM, and then spending the evening with my family. All of my extra time is spent on video games.
I love video games. No, let me state that differently. I really love video games.
Video games easily take up 20 to 30 hours of every week. They used to take up 40+ hours before I was married. I keep track of the time I spend playing games and I have a list of all the games I have ever finished. My favorite games are competitive online games, and over the years I've come to realize that these games are filling a longing in my life for something else.
I long to compete, perform, and to be noticed for my accomplishments. There's not a whole lot of those things in my day to day life right now. I am a code monkey, a husband, and a father.
Today, I have decided to change how I spend my free time. I won't be cutting out my gaming time completely, but I am going to start using at least half of that time to learn how to play the guitar.
I won't be starting completely from scratch. Five years ago I picked up an accoustic and electric guitar and spent a year messing around on both of them. I never had a formal lesson, but I learned some chords and could play some basic songs. I stopped playing around on the guitar when I started dating my wife four years ago and I haven't picked one up since.
This time is going to be different, though. I am going to start with Justin Guitar and look into getting local lessons. I'm also going to merge my world of video games and guitar playing by picking up Rock Band 3, a Midi PRO-Adapter, and the Fender Squier.
My goal isn't to mess around on the guitar this time. I am going to learn to play guitar, and play guitar well.
I woke up, drove to work, checked my bank account to make sure my payday check had been deposited, and pointed my browser over to dubiousquality.blogspot.com to check out the weekly Friday Links post like I do every Friday morning.
The first link was about a 30 year old guy who quit his job to spend 10,000 hours training to be a professional golfer. "Awesome" is about the only word I could come up with after reading the article and then checking out his blog at The Dan Plan .
I started thinking about my own life and how I spend my time. I have a good job as a software developer, I have a wife, a 9 month old son, and another baby on the way. A normal day in my life involves getting up early, working from 7:30AM to 4:00PM, and then spending the evening with my family. All of my extra time is spent on video games.
I love video games. No, let me state that differently. I really love video games.
Video games easily take up 20 to 30 hours of every week. They used to take up 40+ hours before I was married. I keep track of the time I spend playing games and I have a list of all the games I have ever finished. My favorite games are competitive online games, and over the years I've come to realize that these games are filling a longing in my life for something else.
I long to compete, perform, and to be noticed for my accomplishments. There's not a whole lot of those things in my day to day life right now. I am a code monkey, a husband, and a father.
Today, I have decided to change how I spend my free time. I won't be cutting out my gaming time completely, but I am going to start using at least half of that time to learn how to play the guitar.
I won't be starting completely from scratch. Five years ago I picked up an accoustic and electric guitar and spent a year messing around on both of them. I never had a formal lesson, but I learned some chords and could play some basic songs. I stopped playing around on the guitar when I started dating my wife four years ago and I haven't picked one up since.
This time is going to be different, though. I am going to start with Justin Guitar and look into getting local lessons. I'm also going to merge my world of video games and guitar playing by picking up Rock Band 3, a Midi PRO-Adapter, and the Fender Squier.
My goal isn't to mess around on the guitar this time. I am going to learn to play guitar, and play guitar well.
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