Horses and Harmonics

Souvenir guitar from
Virginia Beach

John introduced me to the pentatonic scale--Gm and A (or is it Am?) to be specific.  This takes a good deal of coordination just to play it as in "scale exercises," nevermind trying to improvise a lead phrase of my own.  So one night during practice, my husband asks, "What's  that you're playing?  It sounds like 'My Girl.'"  Yes, that's right.  The Temptations song from 1964.  I was like, "What?"  I couldn't think of anything I'd practiced that sounded like "My Girl."  I kept trying to hear it, but as far as I could tell, it wasn't there.  I asked John about it at my next lesson and he showed me the phrase I was listening for.  Okay, maybe I could see how they were related.  And now I can play it for my husband.  He's my biggest supporter.  (:grin:)

I continued (and continue) to practice "Funk 49" and scales.  Then John added in harmonics and the galloping horse sound, as in the beginning of Heart's "Barracuda."  Admit it, you can hear it in your head right now!  He was pleased that I even knew what he meant by "harmonics" and I think he's been pleased with my execution of them, but the galloping horse sound was a bit more difficult for me to master.

Now, I know all you real guitar players out there are probably laughing out loud at my clumsiness, and I felt like an idiot trying to get my small, heavy pick to do this.  I thought, Hmm . . . maybe I need a more flexible pick.  I looked through my pick dish and found a nice, medium Fender pick that I've had forever and  -- voila! -- there it was!  Yea!  John told me I'd have to use one pick or the other, though.  I couldn't be changing picks out to suit the song.  I'm back to a heavy pick, but it's larger than the original one.  Hahaha!!  You should've seen the look on his face when I reached into my pocket for the other pick. 

The next stop on the harmonics train was the first few bars of "Roundabout" by Yes.  It's mostly recognizable when I play it and I'm proud of the harmonics work but, as usual, my rhythm execution leaves much to be desired. (sigh)

We all know what the musician says when asked how to get to Carnegie Hall . . .

Next up:  New chords, "Purple Haze" and "Melissa."

The Year of Guitar Continues

Conner's picture in the frame
Gayle gave me.

OMG!  I knew it had been a long time since I blogged, but sheesh!  Two months?!  It’s actually been a pretty productive year so far.  Not in writing, of course, but in other things.  I did submit “Douglas Decides” to The Petigru Review, but I haven’t heard whether or not they accepted it.  They extended the deadline after I rushed to get it in on time, but that’s okay.  I needed the push.

And it's not like there hasn't been anything else going on.  I'm still practicing "Funk 49" but haven't quite gotten it yet, so we've moved on to pentatonic scales, harmonics and lead exercises among other things.  John says I’m doing pretty well.  I think I’m doing okay as long as I practice, which I mostly do.  I talked to Joey (brother-in-law and Conner's dad) recently and I guess he finally went back to lessons, which he’d been going to sporadically at best.  It seems John is teaching us the same thing right now and Joe was like, “Yeah, but I’ve been taking lessons a year longer than you have!”  Hey.  What can I say?

For my birthday in April I got a bunch of really cool guitar-related stuff.  My friend, Gayle gave me that great picture frame (shown above) and I finally put Conner's picture in it.  I thought about inserting my own picture, holding my guitar of course, but nobody really wants to see that, eh?  Hahaha!!

Jeff's co-worker, fellow West Virginian and our friend, Lisa loaded me up on guitar gifts!  The book to the left is Guitar Trivia by Michael Heatley.  Really fun book with a lot of information, not only about famous guitarists, but also about guitars and amps.  From this book I learned the difference between single coil pickups (like John's studio guitar) and humbuckers, like mine. This led to one lesson getting somewhat off-track as we discussed pickups.  In another lesson we discussed amps.

Lisa also gave me this book, Guitar Gods (Consulting Editor [whatever that means], Rusty Cutchin, with forward by Mick Taylor).  I haven't gotten into this one yet except to make sure Eric Johnson was well represented--which he is--as he was only mentioned once in Guitar Trivia.  But it looks really good and I know I'll enjoy it as well.  All of this plus Lisa went to the trouble of making a gift bag by taking a solid red (how did she know?) gift bag and glued pictures from guitar magazines on it.  I was like, "Oh my God!"  It was a really good birthday and I know I've forgotten some other things Lisa brought although she did turn me onto Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat beer which is really tasty stuff. 

Joe and Conner did not give me a guitar related birthday gift, but I found a cool SG mouse pad at Shem Creek Music and I tell myself that if Joe had been paying attention, that's what he would have gotten me.  I desperately needed a new mouse pad.  I'm glad I waited.

Actually, I've learned so much--or at least have covered so much material in the last couple of months, I'm going to split up the blog posts so that none of them are too long.  (Thanks to Dave Moulton for that advice!davesbikeblog.squarespace.com/ )