Guitar Musings

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.

In a past post about guitarist nail care, I threatened that I might try Nail Envy to strengthen my nails, avoid chips and breakages.  I finally followed through with my Twitter threats and bought both Nail Envy original and matte.

After the first application, I immediately noticed the difference in strength of my nails.  It not only protects my nails from cracking and breaking, I have noticed the tone in my playing has improved with a fuller sound similar to using an extra thick guitar pick.  I’m able to attack the strings with authority and without worry.  Nail Envy leaves a shiny finish, once applied so if that is something that concerns you, buy the matte.  That’s what I did because I got tired of all the “girly” nail jokes and seriously, my nails were reflecting light like mirror. The matte finish is just as effective as the original, in strength, but applying it requires more patience.  It takes a bit longer to dry and until then it has a rubbery like consistency for about an hour or so and was easy to scuff or damage during that time.   After it completely dries, no problems at all.

Definitely give Nail Envy some consideration if you need to strengthen your nails.  I have been using for 3 weeks now and am completely satisfied with the results.

Update(12.2.08):  After a few weeks of using this product I thought I would give a followup.  Still working  well but keep in mind that there will be a build up on your nails and you will have to accasionally use fingernail polish remover to clean your nails and re-apply Nail Envy. Also, the matte finish tends to yellow over time so if keep that in mind as well.

Links:

Nail Envy Original Finish
Nail Envy Matte Finish

If you follow me on twitter, you know that I recently purchased a Fostex MR16HD multitrack recorder.  I was inspired by the “Big Red Button”  post by Hercules Castro, so I finally bit the bullet and ordered one.  Anyway, UPS delivered it the other day and thought I would share my first impressions during the unboxing.

First Impression?

While removing it from the box, I was surprised how compact it all was, about 15’’.   I don’t know what I was expecting but I still envision those huge consoles in the studios that you see in the magazines and TV.  I ended getting the black unit which, aesthetically, is more pleasing to my eyes.

Knobs and Buttons

The overall unit is pretty impressive with man buttons and knobs but not too much to make it intimidating.  Keeping consistent to the Fostex claim of keeping it simple to let you get inspiration down.  The sliders for the main volume and each track feels a bit cheap to me.  I’m not saying that they are cheap, it’s just that I’m more used to the “weighted” feel of other consoles that I’ve worked on.  The screen seems a bit small to me but is probably enough to do the job. I’m just the type of person that prefers more real estate.

Powered on

Powered it on and heard the 40 gig hard drive spin up.  At first I was afraid that the noise of the hard drive would interfere with the quality of the recording.  After the unit completing booted up, I could barely hear the hard drive, thus taking my worries about noise away.  The unit comes with a sample song called “ Fostex Fever.”  It’s your basic 80’s style keyboard, multi-vocal groove song to show you what the unit can do.  Pretty cheesy song but it gave me the capability to mess around with the levels, EQ and effects for each track;  a good tutorial to get me started.

Now it’s time for me to record something. More thoughts on the functionality of the unit in future posts so stay tuned.

Links:

Fostex MR-16HD 16-Track Digital Recorder at Musicians Friend.  Already fifty bucks cheaper than what I paid last week.

Official MR-16D information from Fostex

I’ve witnessed and participated in many “Tab Vs. Standard Notation” debates.  I’ve heard the “purists” call tab a “crutch” where you will never learn the piece completely without standard notation.  While the the other side will argue that tab opens a door to a ton of music to those who did not get formal training.   The arguments go on and on and there will never be a right or wrong answer.  All I can give you is my testimonial of sorts.

I’ve been working on a piece that I’ve toyed around with for years but was never really comfortable with it.  I learned the it using tab and a recording that came with the songbook.  At first glance, the piece appears to be easy learn but it has to be played at a fairly high tempo (200bpm) so frustration began to kick in.  No matter how much I practiced it never sounded or felt right.

So what did I do?  I decided to look at the standard notation part of the transcription and noticed something that the tab doesn’t show.  I was not separating the melody with the bass line completely.  In short, my index and middle were playing notes my thumb was supposed to be playing.  The result of this mistake was the melody was getting muddied up with notes that weren’t supposed to be there.  So I made my thumb do it’s job and the song began to fell better; there is now a clear separation between melody and the bass line.  Only problem is that I now have to re-learn a bit a of the song to un-learn some of the bad habits I developed.   A small price to pay to get it right.

What’s better? Tab or standard notation?  For me, it’s both.  I can learn a song much faster using tab but the musicality comes out using the standard notation.  The separation of voices, dynamics subtle nuances that only standard notation can provide.  Tab is ideal with the help of standard notation but if you can read music well, then there is no need for tab, theoretically.  So maybe the edge goes to standard but that takes nothing away from tab because I owe of ton of my repertoire to tab.

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:

10.18.2011 – Update:  the old stencils I used for this post is no longer valid.  Below is a link to a stencil for not only the guitar but Les Paul himself.  

http://www.carvingpumpkins.com/2009.html