Category: Guitar

Musical Organization

I’ve been thinking about band practices.  Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the notes I take when I sit down to learn a new song.  More specifically, I have been thinking about what a mess my notebook has become.

It has been decided.  A trip to Staples is in order this weekend.  I want to buy a binder and a crap ton of clear plastic inserts.  Each song’s worth of notes in the notebook will be copied into a Google Doc with each song getting it’s own page.  The Doc will be printed out and then each song will get its own insert and be placed into the binder in alphabetical order.  No more farting around trying to find the right page in the notebook.  Someone asks for a song, flip to the right page, Bam.  Rock and Roll all over your face.

I am such a nerd.  I suffer from terminal nerdness.

Last Night’s Band Practice

Last night’s band practice was… different.  In a few ways.

It was the first rehearsal I’ve been to that was short a member.  Greg the singer couldn’t make it.  Kevin the drummer, Mike the bass player, and I decided to get together anyway.

Gear wise, I brought my Strat and… well… it’s wimpy.  I ended up playing through my lead channel all night because the guitar just lacks balls.  I may need to come up with some sort of alternate signal path specific to the Strat. Maybe a distortion pedal or something to beef thing up.  The instant I had that thought I realized that I’ve been whining about my Les Paul being wimpy since I put in the Classic ’57 pick ups.  Might a crunchy stomp box at the front of the chain solve that problem too?  Probably not, but it’s cheaper and easier than buying and installing a new pick up.

Anyway, that’s not what felt different last night.  Neither is the missing singer, really.  What was different was that we played very hard.  There was a level of intensity that hadn’t been there before and frankly it wore all of us out quickly. It took less than an hour for us to start feeling out of gas.  I think there was less discussion between songs, and therefore less time to recover before moving to the next thing.  Last night it was a case of someone throwing out a title, we crank through it, then as soon as we finish someone throws out another title.  During the second hour we actually took a break.  It was a five minute break that, thanks to talking about Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, turned into 20 minutes.  It was necessary.  It let us finish off the night with a bang.

For me personally, I have to make some big changes to the way I do things, and I’m not talking about gear (for once).  It goes without saying that I need to practice more.  The other guys have been playing these songs for years now and have them down cold.  If they only practice as a warm up for rehearsal then that’s fine for them.  Not for me.  I take notes on the songs as I learn them and I am completely dependent on those notes.  I can’t make it through without checking the cheat sheets and that has to stop right now. Practice will solve that issue.

More concerning, I am not physically capable of just setting up and playing my tail off for two hours.  My hands cramp, my fingers get too stiff to play, my wrists hurt, my shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my back hurts, my legs hurt.  A solid two hour rehearsal is almost too much for me.  I know I need to exercise more.  That goes along with dieting and should result in improvement with my legs and my back.  For my arms and my shoulders, I think the fix is to practice standing up.  I am into the habit these days of sitting when I practice.  I am not Robert Fripp so I should be standing.

My hands though… that is what scares me.  I think I’ve mentioned it here before. I don’t want to get to the point where the pain in my hands exceeds the enjoyment I get from playing.  I started doing a little research on things I can do to strengthen my hands and my fingers.  Two things come up repeatedly.  One is squeezing a tennis ball, or something similar.  I should be doing that every day.  When I’m sitting in front of the tube I should have one of those squeeze grip things in my hand.  They actually make one geared for guitar players that lets you squeeze with each individual finger.  I might have to get one of those.  The other thing I need to do is stretch before I play.  I was starting to get into the habit of doing just that when I joined Break Even for exactly the same reasons.  A few songs into practice and my hands would be killing me.  I need to get back to doing that.  My research has shown me a few things to try.  I need to never not do those exercises before playing again.  I need to make it as much a part of my routine as tuning up.  I very much want this band to start working in public again.  That means I have to be ready to play hard for four hours a night.  As it stands right now I don’t think I can do that.  I will get there though.  Definitely.  Count on it.

Band Practice

We had our first band practice in a month tonight. Amazingly, I managed to get through most of the songs without too many disasters. Well… mostly.

I did have a difficulty though. Let’s flashback a few years.

It’s 1990 and I’m in my first year in music school. My band from high school, Tempest Fero, is still together. We were playing at a CYO dance in Tewksbury. While covering an 80’s Rainbow song my left hand started to cramp. That happened now and then, but it was never so bad as that moment. My middle and ring fingers needed to bend in order to fret an A-minor chord in the open position but they simply would not do it. They got part of the way, but I could not press the strings down onto the fretboard. It was very disconcerting. I did my best to invert some chords and play others in different positions. I was really worried about the situation. I can’t remember exactly what I did when the song ended, but I probably walked toward the back of the stage and pretended to fiddle with my amplifier. Just to give my hand a moment to rest. The next song lived in a different part of the guitar neck and I was able to get through. In fact I made it through the rest of the gig without any more problems. Over the years I have had similar pains, mostly when songs center around the second fret. There were moments on stage with Break Even where I preemptively changed positions because the pain was increasing. It could get bad, but I never froze on a song the way I did that night.

Until tonight.

The pain started in my right hand this time as I was strumming hard but after one song it was okay. Then during the second or third song the left hand flared up. It was bad from then on, but not debilitation. Then on the second to last song we played I was unable to fret an open G. My fingers shaped it, but I couldn’t press down.

Does that scare me a little?

Oh yes, it most certainly does.

The Downside

I just stumbled on the downside of being in a band again.

I was recording some guitars tonight using my Les Paul. I had decided that Les was going to be the only guitar I used on these old songs this month, and it would probably be the only guitar I used for RPM next month.

Then I broke a string. I haven’t broken a string inyears. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized all of my spare strings are in my equipment bag at Mike the Bass Player’s house.

Damn it! So the ES-335 makes an appearance on this months demo project. The best laid plans and all that happy crappy.