Guitar Musings

I try to frequent as many guitar shops as I can, just to dream a bit;  to see what is out of my reach and also to realize what I have isn’t so bad.   The biggest beef with some of these stores, both big and small, is that they don’t take the time to setup what they are trying to sell.  Old strings, truss rod hasn’t been adjusted or something simple, like tuning.   Basically, it’s in the same condition when it came from the manufacturer. 

My Plea:

If you expect for me to spend hundreds, if not, thousands on a guitar in your shop, please invest thirty or so minutes in setting it up.  First impressions are important and if the guitar isn’t setup right, I will not take a chance and buy.  So please, put on a new set of strings, adjust the truss rod to the new environment and tune it.   I won’t guarantee that it will sell the guitar on the first day but it’s a nice start.

I’ve had many successes and failures in learning a new song on my guitar.  I don’t necessarily have a set procedure when learning a piece.  It depends on how much I like the song and/or how difficult it is.  I do make mistakes in my routine and in trying to address this, I have compiled a list of my top five.  All of these tend to create bad habits that impair my ability to learn and put the whole thing together into a successful performance. 

Top 5 Mistakes:

1. I don’t sight read the whole piece when initially getting to know the song.  This keeps me from getting the full picture and I tend to have trouble putting it all together. I can’t tell you how many songs I learned where all I could perform was the first minute or so.
2. Try to play it at full tempo too soon.  This tends to create mistakes or bad habits like poor fingering or timing issues.  I’m getting better at playing slower tempos and then working my way up but still “fall off the wagon” every once in a while.
3. I don’t give it a rest when needed.  I get so obsessed with the song, I think the more I practice, the faster I learn and the better it will be.  I have found that the opposite can be true. Sometimes stepping away for a day or two gives me a fresh perspective and I tend to play the piece better when coming back.
4. I focus on the “fun” or challenging parts or a piece but neglect the rest. The result is that I might be able to play certain parts well but the rest of the piece is sub par and in turn, the performance suffers.
5. I don’t warm up properly.  I sometimes jump into the song without any warming up which can result in me playing like crap.  This is especially true when the song is technically difficult.

Today, in our household, is pumpkin day because it just isn’t Halloween unless you carve up a few pumpkins.  There are so many stencils out there, you can create almost any kind of likeness you want on your pumpkin. 

Maybe not….

This year I wanted to do a guitar themed carving but for the life of me, I couldn’t find any stencils at all, except one.  It’s a Les Paul type of stencil and not as hard to do as I thought. Now that I have carved my first guitar, I think I might be able to work out an acoustic version next time.  If anyone has found any good guitar stencils for pumpkin carving, please leave a comment and share where we can get them. 

Happy Halloween!

Links:

Les Paul Stencil compliments of Doeringer Guitars

Have you ever told a good fish story?  You know, the kind of one where the one that got away, gets bigger and bigger each time you tell it.  In my conversations with fellow guitar players and musicians, I’ve noticed that there can be a guitar equivalent of the “fish story.”  You know what I mean; bragging that you’ve mastered a song that isn’t so mastered or claiming you can play all the scales using 32nd notes at 250 bpm.   All of us have told one of these stories at one point or might let occasional tale slip.  If you say that you don’t or never have, I’m willing to bet that you are telling one right now.

I’ll admit that I’ve let a few stories pass my lips.  Just recently, I caught myself telling a guitar version of the “fish story”.   I was in a conversation with another musician who plays fiddle/guitar and I exaggerated my daily practice routine.  I let it slip that I practice at least four hours a day or more.  Over the next couple days, I replayed that conversation over and over in my head and wished I hadn’t said that but no one’s perfect.  I do practice quite a bit but lately, I’m lucky to get 40 minutes of practice in, let alone 4 hours.  It’s been pretty busy at my paying job. 

So why do we let out these little white lies?  I can’t tell you why this one slipped out of my mouth.  I would like to think it was my way, subconsciously, to motivate my ass back to practicing more.  Who knows?  I’ll leave that up to the Psychologists or others to figure that out but  I can tell you one thing; I’ve practiced a heck of a lot more the last couple of days just to keep me honest.  Four hours a day?  Well… I won’t go there.  Especially in writing.

So what’s your guitar tale?  Leave a comment and get it off your chest.  You will feel better after you do.

Keep Practicing!

So I’m up in the Mountains again but this time it’s for work, believe it or not.  I’m here at the beautiful Copper Mountain resort for the TIE (Technology in Education) conference this week and after 5 years of coming to this conference, I have decided to present as well.  My presentation will be on open source Content Management Systems.  Sounds gripping doesn’t it?   The guy who checked me in, asked about it and soon regretted it.  He said that I “lost him at ‘open’.”  I just told him it’s how to make a web page with certain types of software.  He acted like he was interested and moved on to sending me on my way.  I’ll give him credit though for trying.

What is nice is that it will be just me and my wife for the whole week because the kids are staying with Grandma and Grandpa.  No kids, unless you count my guitars which you could probably make a good argument for.  Especially, considering how much I packed for them.  Here’s the lowdown.  I brought two guitars (Martin, Takamine nylon), music stand, a ton of sheet music, two guitar stands, and other misc things like extra strings, capo, metronome and so on.  I gotta make the practice space comfortable.   Anyway, I just got done setting up all the stuff and it’s a good thing we aren’t haven’t company because my six string children are taking up quite a bit or room.

While I’m up here, I’m hoping to find a guitar store or luthier in the Dillon/Frisco area and check them out.  I’ll just have to make sure to leave the CC card in the room so I don’t adopt another child.