classical guitar lesson 4 and viola lesson 3

Ok i barely practiced since last time, well the stuff that i was supposed to. I think he got a bit mad cause i didnt really know any of the scales anyway for next time i pretty much need to be able to play all the scales. There are specific patterns for different ones so i pretty much just need to memorize those. then he had me play some basic chromatic slurs, which i had gotten much better at. he said for me to just practice them slowly.then i showed him how far i went with music reading, which wasnt much. I read this waltz piece pretty slowly, but it was definitely an improvement from last time. Now, though I can just about read it up to speed which is really cool. What i find very intriguing is that the more you read one piece of music the waaaaaaaaay easier it becomes.

Other than that im finding that I like playing death metal/my own thing more than anything else. I do however enjoy playing classical music very much. Im working on this waltz piece and it sounds pretty sad, atleast to me, and when i play it i feel so much emotion in it, its really cool.





Ill quickly describe my viola lesson here.
Basically she showed me third position, which is placing your palm right where the fingerboard touches with the body. The first note is supposed to be right across from my my thumb and it pretty much fits perfectly. So she showed me how to get into that position, and its pretty easy for me. Then we worked on more bowing, which im still having a lot of trouble with. Pretty much the thing i need to work on is not keeping my elbow too high or too low and to bow parallel to the bridge...

Im getting tired of writing these, but ill keep it going, sorry if theyre getting a bit boring

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.

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

may be learning isnt always the best idea...

I wish I knew what it was like to play guitar 3 months back. Not knowing what im learning and am about to learn. Im not talking about the technical aspects of physically playing, but of reading music, knowing theory, and the start of interpreting songs and chords and all this stuff. Its good to see how classical and jazz music are constructed but for a while Ive had the idea of combining many genres. It would be very different and interesting if i didnt know how classical or jazz were composed from a theoretical perspective, but rather knew it ONLY from a listening/emotional perspective. Now that ive been learning and dealing with rhythm, I naturally feel the need to move away from it at times. Every song has a time signature to it pretty much. I used to write and play songs with no guidance of time at all. I would play based on how i felt at that moment. Of course if it was always like that it would be too disorganized and possibly unlikable. Songs that are on time are great and amazing it gives songs identities, but I liked my first instincts when i created songs too. That was where pure emotion poured in. Rhythm and time are great things and im glad im learning them, but at the same time i dont always want a strong foundation in music. Music needs foundation but why cant some of it have none? I like playing based on feeling rather than paying strict attention to technical aspects sometimes. I dunno its two different worlds really. I dont want to completely lose one or the other.

ummm...something new!!

Two new things for me. One is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge change/difference in me. So ill talk about that one last.

The other day i forgot to write that i started composing a song. Im writing it in A major and so far in 3/4 time signature. Its a guitar piece thus far. Im totally adding another part to it, may be cello, dont really know yet. The interesting thing is that I wrote it with no instrument present. I just sorta put notes on the staff. I didnt do it completely randomly. I did it based on the relationships of the notes. I thought it my head how certain melodies and rhythms would sound together. I emphasized the repetition of certain notes, and things like that. I arbitrarily (word choice?) gave it structure just by writing it and visualizing it on a staff. Im not good enough to read it well yet, though I have been progressing in my reading skills lately. Once i can read it well, thats when ill work on changing it and tweaking it.

Ive been reading this si your brain on music lately, a great book which ill delve into later. One part of the book explains that its the combination of neurons in your brain that evokes emotional responses and mental images from music. Then I realized (dunno if this is really true or not) that opening up to music is changing those connections to evoke positive emotions from music. The goal ultimately would be to keep the links very open to change to listen to other kinds of music. The same goes for rap music. Ill admit there has been a little bit that ive liked about rap music, but there was a whole lot that i did like. I unfairly judged rap music without researching and looking more into it, because everywhere i went i heard the same garbage. But there is some awesome rap out there, and this one artist i found (ironically on a death metal forum) blew my mind away. They incorporated some hjazz elements in the music more so than ive ever heard. It was very well thought out. The lyrics arent just about "shootin up bitches and banging my hoes," they have something more to say, something with substance. One thing ive been learning and understanding about music is that its a way of expression. Expressing thoughts and emotions. In essence saying something through melody and rhythm. Who's to say you cant make something good out of rap music, because you can. Im getting this idea to create my own rap music. I want to study rap a lot more and listen to it often enough to get a good sense and feel of it, and see how songs are written and put together etc. Then I want to emphasize melody in rap music. Melody of instruments. Not just a beat and a few chords of a synth with rhyming behind it. I want to make it a real masterpiece, with an interesting beats, and lyrics especially. The main thing ive always hated about rap music (the rap that ive been exposed to) is that they never have anything positive to say and its so much absorbed in controversy. The same can be said for death metal too, but the thing with death metal is its very hard to understand the lyrics. Exactly what the singer is saying isnt necessarily what the big importance or emphasis is. From my understanding, the main element in rap music is the lyrics, because from what ive heard there isnt much of anything else. In death metal, youve got complex rhythms, instrumentals, and other elements on at the same time. I dont see that with rap so much. Basically, I want to listen to more rap because i do enjoy the feeling i get from it. I will be very selective of the rap I listen to of course.

Heres the rap group Im talking about, may be youll get a better understanding if you listen to a song or two: http://www.myspace.com/cyph4

Jazz lesson 3

I can play the chords pretty fluidly now. He gave me a totally new arrangement using the same chords pretty much plus one other. This time the rhythm is pretty complicated. Well for me anyway, its more or less straight forward i suppose. Not a whole lot to update on

Classical guitar lesson 3

This was a small lesson today. Pretty much, my teacher corrected me on my positioning of my right arm and taught me not to reach with my fingers when i play the lower strings. Other than that he showed me to keep my hand still mostly when playing pieces so that they'll flow better. Then he gave me a few pieces to work on for two weeks, since next tuesday theres no class. So ive got mostly scale practicing and music reading to do. Thats all really