An Ethereal Guitarist's Path

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

so many freakin ideas

Ok so here we go. Ive been on a huge binge of no motivation. I think i finally figured out why. I think its the way i practice, though not necessarily what i practice. Ive been practicing very hard songs, and techniques. I try to improve too quickly, so i dont build a strong foundation in my technique before moving to the next exercise. My idea that i have now is to make a list of 10-20 techniques or licks to work on, and practice them for sometime starting at 60 bpm one day. Then the next day ill put the metronome up a few clicks. Ill then keep repeating that until i can get a lot of things that i want up to speed. Then ill start learning easy songs, well just not super hard ones. Songs that particularly have a lot of emotion in them, such as metallica. From playing ride the lightning in rockband, I was reminded at how awesome metallica was and how cool Hammet's solos are. Ride the lightning also has a special place in me because it was the first metal album I purchased. It was the one i religiously listened to all the time. Its so phenomenal. Im going to learn the whole album with leads and all. The great thing about the album is that its very diverse so its not like ill be practicing one very specific style.

Stress. Yes I get stressed out a lot. I thought of a great idea. Stress wil be the name of an album I will write in the future. The point of the album will be to help relieve some stress. Im thnking musically it will incorporate a lot of tension in melodies, and big buildups of tension and then have these very strong cadences. Im not sure what ill do for vocals or singing. I would love to get a girl with an amazing voice to sing on this as well as myself once i get much better at singing. As far as a style goes...I want to make it similar to nightwish. nightwish songs was soooooo emotional and evoke so much feeling. Mostly through the vocal melodies for me atleast. So basically id like to make it similar to them but make things more complex and obviously in a pretty different style. As i said, I want there to be a lot of tension build ups. Each time i get super stressed out, I want to write part of a song. Then when im not so stressed add to it to make it come together and harmonize or something. Pretty much everytime i get stressed i want to add on to what i had before. I want to make this an album thats basically one song in many parts. Something that you can select individual tracks to or listen straight through and it will still flow very well and creatively. This then brings me to my next point...

Nightwish!!! One of the best bands ever in my opinion. Ive been fucking addicted to them. Im a sucker for female vocals, but the vocals are the most powerful and emotional part of the band. So beautiful and so strong. I love bother Tarja and Anette equally. I think one reason ive been loving them so much is because theyre not too heavy, not too fast, not too slow, and have a fair share of soft songs. So much can be said about this band, and they are now one of my favorite bands of all time. Im looking into finding more bands with female singers now.

All of this has been going through my head for days now. I havent worked on my classical and jazz stuff im supposed to be, I just havent been up to it. Which reminds me, I need to get myself a footstool. Slowly im getting my motivation back which is a good thing and exactly what i need.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

no motivation to practice

why must this happen? Any solutions?

I feel like anytime i hang out with people im just not inclined to practice my instruments for most of the day. The days where i did practice a lot were days where i didnt hang out with anyone. It seems the only solution is to stop being so social... dont really know though