distractions

Why is music so good!?!?

i keep getting distracted from playing guitar because I want to listen to music. At least im not being a complete tool and doing nothing though. Im understand music much better and am listening to it more closely the first time i hear it. Its cool to see how my listening skills develop over time.

The new Cynic album, Traced in Air is a fucking masterpiece. It is going to be a huge influence on my writing in the future. It has already influenced me when I improvise. As a matter of fact im listening to it now. Its very good progressive jazz with a metal edge to it.

Im working on a lot of syncopation now. Im starting off slow and very simple for now. I always thought syncopation was fucking cool, and its hard to do so I want to become a master at it. I think it should be used more in death metal. But with death metal a lot of notes are usually all even, if not then its always beats 1 2 3 or 4 getting accented.

Next thing im working on is rhythmic variations. Im trying to think of jazzy type rhythms and will play them to scales to start out. Once i can get a few down with some scales, I will start writing some melodic progressions and applying the rhythms to those. Again im starting out simple and slow. Its hard to think of all this from the top of my head. I dont really know standard jazz rhythms. I listen to jazz but its hard for me to analyze it because i know very very little. I havent worked so much with my chords but will get back to that soon as well.I remember how they are constructed for the most part, im just looking for the different voicings.

I found a video on youtube that teaches like 240 + chords really fast. It takes different string sets and has like 4 different voicings for each chord. Its a very good exercise, hard to get down.

IM back to getting my practicing time up. Im gonna get to about 4 hours by the end of the day, if not more.

Right now im learning
Atheist: piece of time
Theory in Practice: Colonizing the Sun
Anata: Downward spiral into madness
Metallica: Pulling teeth

Im not sure what else to be learning.

Also Im not sure if I should make a practicing schedule or not. I guess it would make sense to make sure I work on every technique. I wonder if not having one is inefficient.
There are a lot of exercises and shit I do, I kind of just do them at random, when I feel like it. I think I might just at least write them down and make sure I dedicate time to each of them.

I also have discovered that playing ultimately comes from your spine/lower back. That is like the musicians power house. My deltoids control my right and left arms/hands. At first I wasnt sure about the right arm, but today i payed special attention and realized it does. Its great that I found this out because now i can correct my technique even more. It makes it so that I dont need to put any pressure on my thumb with my fretting hand.

WHen you fret you want to bring your fingers to your thumb, not the other way around. When the muscles struggle, other muscles tense up trying to sort of aid the struggling muscles. This is why you need to play slowly! Your larger muscles are what can handle the most tension thats why feeling tension in your hand muscles would be very bad. It will wear you out within seconds. Also, pressing from my rear delts, gives my fingers better control in moving.

My improvisation has developed a lot, and changed, really cool. Im just playing stuff I normally dont. I think part of that was from taking a huge break.

Ive got lots of new music coming in the near future. One or two ambient songs, then some black metal songs. May be something proggressive or jazzy, we'll see.

I think that finally concludes this post!