Last week, I had a poll that asked if you were getting better or worse in your music-making. This week, let's discuss that. What techniques are you working on that will make you a better musician? What are you noticing that you can't do any more that used to come easily?
Also in progress is a nice discussion on guitars over here, if you're interested. Mostly electrics but some acoustiphiles are sneaking in where it's dark. I want to gush about the new Taylor I bought but I'll try to sneak it in there.
Turn the page for the extended jam session.
As I've mentioned many times in these diaries, I studied twelve years of classical piano, found out that I preferred playing keyboards, and now I'm learning guitar the right way after learning it the wrong way from my piano teacher. In my lesson this week, I found that I couldn't even do the beginning position for a fairly straightforward technique. Try as I might, I could not place my pinky on the second string without hitting the first one and muting it.
Here's the chord I was trying to shape, for you guitar players:
-------5-------
-------678-----
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That's to set up for a unison bend, a technique where you bend the lower string to raise the note to the same pitch as the upper string. The fingers on the adjacent frets are there to help you push harder. It would be written like this:
-------5-------
-------8^10---- (6 & 7 are there, but only to help bend)
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You don't play the 10th fret, you bend the string enough to make it sound like it would if you did play the 10th fret. This is hypothetical, as I can't even play the beginning position. Try as I might, I could not get my pinky to hit straight on. It kept curving in at an angle, and hitting the E string.
So in order to be ready to learn this technique, I am practicing this:
-------5-------
-------8-------
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and then adding the extra 2 fingers behind the eighth fret when I can get it clean. I figure if I try that several times a day, I will eventually get to a point where I can do what I was supposed to practice in the first place.
Interestingly enough, I have no trouble whatsoever with the excercise below and was able to add the full bend in almost immediately. Here I don't use the pinky at all, and only have to span 3 frets instead of 4. My pinky is definitely giving me some technique problems.
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-------5-------
-------7^9----- In this one, one finger is added behind the 7th fret
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I'm sure you all have your challenges you're working on, at every level. Share what you're working on, or any topic you wish. Are you getting better because you're working on something challenging? Are you getting rusty just because you're not putting the time in to stay in practice? Be sure to describe what's happening.
This is a community diary. All topics on musicians, music, and other noise are welcome.
Previous Music Room Diaries
#8 - 5/05/07 Cinco de Mayo Edition!
#7 - 4/29/07 Requests You Won't Play
#6 - 4/22/07 Crossovers and Genre Jumps
#5 - 4/14/07 Inane Song Structures (Pachelbel)
#4 - 4/07/07 Ear Playing vs Sight Reading
#3 - 3/31/07 Perfect and Relative Pitch
#2 - 3/25/07 Music Lessons
#1 - 3/18/07 Jokes & Stories