New Lessons, New Amp, New Post

I'm amped for my new amp.
Vox 4W Class A Tube Amp.
Lovin' it! 

I just love sayin' it!  "Four watt, Class A tube amp."  Sounds like I know what I'm doing, doesn't it?  Hahaha!

For our 19th anniversary, Jeff came through on his promise to buy me a new amp.  He's such a good guy!  I became more and more disenchanted with the Peavey Blazer the more I played on it.  My teacher John, played around with it when I took it in with me and he concluded it was just a cheap amp.  Being as how it was ten years old in September, that doesn't surprise me.  We spent a good deal of money on the guitar and at that time knew even less about amps than we know today.  But the Blazer wasn't giving me consistent sound and it has too many knobs for somebody like me.  The one good thing about the Blazer is that it has a "headphone" connection that the Vox does not have.  Sometimes those headphones comes in handy.

So Jeff and I headed up to Hanahan to see Michael Davis at Ye Olde Music shop.  www.yeoldemusicshop.com   John had told me what a nice guy he was and that to get what you really want, that's the place to go in the Chucktown area.  Michael knew exactly what I was looking for and though he had to order it, I got it in a few days for a great price.  He even threw in a DVD lesson and some picks!  He's got some nice guitars up there.  (pant-pant-drool)  But he's right--I've already got a nice guitar!

So now I'm set, right?   I've been studying major and minor scales, trying to pick them faster, all with the intent of teaching me how to play lead guitar.  John and I tried this a while ago, but I'm just not hearing it.  And I told John so.  "That's okay," he said.  "I didn't expect you to, yet.  You will, though.  In time."

(sigh)  All right.  Whatever.  He's trying so hard to make a "real" musician out of me.

In the meantime, I watched Michael's DVD lesson and he had some pretty good tips on rhythm, stated in a way that made sense to me.  You may remember that's one of my weak spots.  And he taught a section of "finger picking."  One of the songs was "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas.  Man, I just did not get it!  I asked him about it when I went to pick up the amp and he wrote it down for me.  It sounds so pretty, and it's one of the goals I had set out to master, but it "plum eluded me," as Jed Clampett would say.

I started taking hour-long lessons in September.  John and I talked about the new amp (which I took in to show him the next week--he loved it!) and that brought the conversation around to Michael, the shop and the DVD lesson.  So we went directly into a lesson on finger picking with an exercise to practice.  That gave me a better chance of success because there was no hint of "Dust in the Wind" in what I was doing to Michael's lesson.  Hahaha!!  Sorry, dude.  Hahahaha!!

Eventually I got it and with a little warm-up, I can play it pretty well.  And isn't that what's been happening all year?  I think John's completely over-reaching my skill level and voila!  On the third day or so of practice, I start getting it.  It's encouraging.

For now, during breaks in the picking lesson, I continue practicing all my songs.  I have a great time with AC/DC's "Hell's Bells"--that's so much fun--and Eric Clapton's "Cocaine."  I easily get the chords on "Cocaine" but I still lack any filler skills.  As in, chunka-chunka.

Gotta love the chunka-chunka!

Bending Lead

I think I've mentioned the pentatonic scales.  If you want a definition, you'll have to look it up.  But I have been practicing them and though I'm not very fast I've gotten some faster.  More importantly, however, is practicing the down and up string strum technique.

Stringstrumstringstrumstringstrum.  Hahaha!!  That's hard to say.

Anyway, John wanted me to practice listening to the relationship between the notes so he could start teaching me "lead."  Now, the nephew Conner, achieves this seemingly without effort.  He's all up and down the scales, bending strings and filling in the blanks with good licks.  Me?  Not so much.  Again, I will attribute this to the difference between a "musician" (that would be Conner) and a "technician" (that would be me.)

Eric Johnson

Knowing what a fan of Eric Johnson I am, John told me that he plays a lot of his leads in these scales so that afternoon as I chopped vegetables with the stereo on in the background I was able to hear EJ playing lead within those scales and I thought, Cool.  It's sort of the way a writer begins to read differently because they're not only reading the story, they are also able to pick out particularly good or bad writing.

I recorded myself playing a blues phrase over and over and then played it back to practice lead scales on, but I didn't feel I was very successful and honestly, the whole idea doesn't interest me that much to begin with.  I'll leave that to the true musicians.  I can bend strings pretty well, but my rhythm-deficiency limits my success with that too.

I am, however, making some progress with "Johnny B. Goode."  The epiphany I had while writing a previous post of this blog related to the string-strum method mentioned above.  The last three notes of the second bar (and the same phrase thereafter) were being executed neither with rhythm nor skill.  And then I realized I should be strumming down and up instead of just down.  It's made a lot of difference.  I'm still not very good at it, but it's coming along.

Chuck Berry

I also changed picks for "Johnny B. Goode."  I looked for my Joe Bonamassa picks because I knew they were small and heavy but I only found one.  WTH?  I know I gave Conner some, but did I have to give him nearly all of them?  Sheesh!