Category: Guitar

Therapy

Said it before, but playing the guitar like a doofus is what passes for Covid-19 mental health therapy for me.

Added leads to a November song. Added rhythm to a November song. Added rhythm to a re-recording song. That puppy was a work out.

My SG is finally making an appearance in the Great 2015 Re-Recording Project. Will I got back to the ES-335 for volume 4, or will that be the Les Paul? Do you care? No? Do I care that you don’t care? No? Does any of this mean anything other than me getting my frustrations out in the middle of the corona-quarantine? Nope.

Music Progress

I mixed two more NaSoAlMo songs tonight but hearthis.at is down so I won’t share them.

Six songs finished, three more in the pipeline. I still need to come up with one more.

There’s nothing special in this batch. Nothing terrible, but all kinda blah. My playing isn’t very good right now. I’m trying my best but it’s all kinda sloppy and weak.

Here’s what I have so far.

Monday…Blah

Monday…. ugh… another Monday.

A full five day work week this week, then a three day work week next week and then Thanksgiving. So close, yet so far away.

I coulda sworn I heard something big fall during the storm last night. I took a look outside today and couldn’t see anything. Either I didn’t hear what I thought I heard, or it was just a lot deeper in the woods than it sounded. No big deal, all is well.

I might be in for a difficult day on the intermittent fasting front. Let me tell you the story. I mentioned our pizza lunch. When dinner time came neither of us was hungry so we both just made something small. I was done eating by about 6:00. After that I played guitar for an hour or so. Then Jen and I did a big chunk of our 30 minute workout together. After that I played guitar a little more. When I was done I started getting my iPad ready to watch the double shot of Walking Dead spin offs, and was about to do the last few minutes of my workout. That’s when I realized it was 8:55.

I only had five minutes to eat before the fast started and I hadn’t eaten in almost three hours. I was looking at 19 hours without food. Crap. I grabbed a handful of crackers and scarfed them down. It didn’t matter. By 10:00 I was already feeling hungry. Today is going to be tough. Four hours and 15 minutes to go.

Okay, off to work. Wish me luck.

Sometimes Plans Change

I told myself I was going to restrict myself to two pedals for the November music. That lasted through six songs and part way into the seventh. First I swapped out an overdrive for a fuzz so I could do some noisy bits. Then I dropped both pedals and went back to my regular pedal board. I just like it better, and it’s got the digital delay that I wanted to use.

Oh well, sometimes plans change, right?

Ouch

I put vocals on five songs this morning. Two new ones and three re-recordings. This afternoon I put lead guitars on four of them. I decided a few days ago that I was going to stop using my ES-335 and use my SG instead. The 335 (and the Les Paul) is over 40 years old and best I can tell it’s never had a fret replacement. The SG is two years old. It’s all original. What’s that mean?

The frets on the 335 are old and worn. I’m going to have to have them replaced… soon… as well as all of the wiring and all of the pots. I’ve written about that a few times before. The frets on the SG aren’t worn at all, not even a little bit. What’s that mean?

Ouch, is what it means. Worn frets are lower and closer to the fretboard then non-worn frets. That means they are a lot easier on the fingers when you’re sliding around like a madman. Today, on the non-worn SG’s frets, I was sliding around like a madman for an hour and a half. What I thought were pretty decent sized calluses on my left hand turned out to not be that thick after all. A couple more rounds of me ripping my finger tips to shreds like I did today will fix that.

Ouch.

I’m Not Very Good

I’m not a very good guitar player. If you had any doubts, then there’s me coming right out and admitting it.

All of these songs that I am re-recording… Whenever in the past I wrote them and recorded the original demo, I blew through them like they were simple. Now that I’m doing them again, they are suddenly insanely, brutally, unimaginably difficult. I screw up constantly. Like, oh my god, could you please do something right?

I was trying to play arpeggios on one song and I fat fingered them over and over. I finally got through it and moved on to the next song and… more arpeggios. Bite me, past self. Take after take after take of me fat fingering and I finally threw a temper tantrum and ripped off the ends of my finger nails. It actually helped a little.

Seven out of 10 re-recordings are ready for vocals. Eight out of eight (but hopefully 10, eventually) November songs are ready for lyrics. Maybe some car singing in the morning? We’ll see.