150!
now to make it a bit more automatic and cleaner
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Day 4
Oh man it's like im hitting a brick wall of speed. My left hand won't move faster! I inched my way from 130bpm to 135bpm but it's pretty consistent. 150 I'm coming for you!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Day 3?
I don't know if I can count this as day 3.
I started off at 125 and it was way too fast, i couldn't do it. I had to slow it down to 110 and then work my way back up to 125. I was doing 126 for a bit but wasn't really feeling too good about it.
I'm going to chalk it up to this not actually being day 3. I only got an hour of sleep last night so I'll insist my muscles didn't have time to commit the motions to memory. Now whether that's based in reality or not... I'll be sure to try again tonight after I get some sleep...which I am going to do right now.
I started off at 125 and it was way too fast, i couldn't do it. I had to slow it down to 110 and then work my way back up to 125. I was doing 126 for a bit but wasn't really feeling too good about it.
I'm going to chalk it up to this not actually being day 3. I only got an hour of sleep last night so I'll insist my muscles didn't have time to commit the motions to memory. Now whether that's based in reality or not... I'll be sure to try again tonight after I get some sleep...which I am going to do right now.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
God Knows - Day 2
Yesterday I ended off with 100 BPM, and today I have worked my way up to 125 BPM. Its crazy how muscle memory works. I know my fingers can move at atleast 125 BPM but if I try to play something at that speed that isn't my ordered triplets (say if i went from 15-12 on the high e and then for the third note went to 12 on the b string, instead of what I'm practicing, 16-14-12 on the high e) I can't do it at that speed at all.
Its neat, what I'm sort of doing is making a certain part of the guitar playing automatic. I don't have to think about what comes next or how long to play it.
Well today I'm at 125 bpm with no problems. The journey to 125 wasn't as smooth as I'd like. The guide I posted yesterday recommended playing at each tempo for 60 seconds, but my left hand didn't have the stamina for that. I would play and then my left hand would start to burn as its muscles screamed for oxygen. So I would have to rest my hand. Surf the web a little, play something slower. When I came back to speed practice I found I could do the bpm I was just struggling with with ease. I could ramp it up and go faster, and faster
I'll be honest. It's addicting to improve. You see yourself getting faster and then you become impatient, wanting to see how far you can go one jump. I tried playing at 140 and I could do it, but it sounded sloppy and there was a lot of tension as I tried to keep my arms in sync.
So I'll slow it down, back to 120, then up to 125, and then push onward to 150.
25 more to go.
Its neat, what I'm sort of doing is making a certain part of the guitar playing automatic. I don't have to think about what comes next or how long to play it.
Well today I'm at 125 bpm with no problems. The journey to 125 wasn't as smooth as I'd like. The guide I posted yesterday recommended playing at each tempo for 60 seconds, but my left hand didn't have the stamina for that. I would play and then my left hand would start to burn as its muscles screamed for oxygen. So I would have to rest my hand. Surf the web a little, play something slower. When I came back to speed practice I found I could do the bpm I was just struggling with with ease. I could ramp it up and go faster, and faster
I'll be honest. It's addicting to improve. You see yourself getting faster and then you become impatient, wanting to see how far you can go one jump. I tried playing at 140 and I could do it, but it sounded sloppy and there was a lot of tension as I tried to keep my arms in sync.
So I'll slow it down, back to 120, then up to 125, and then push onward to 150.
25 more to go.
Playing fast - God Knows
I recently became reintroduced with the song "God Knows" from the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It has a pretty rockin' guitar part so I wanted to learn it.
I am not a very fast player. Lots of songs require speed that I just never properly developed. Things like the intro to Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover", and JerryC's arragement of "Canon Rock" all have great contrast between speeds, but I do not have the finger dexterity and accuracy to play those parts.
Frustrated with never having learned these skills, I turned to google and stumbled upon this blog entry.
http://lorinator.feminoise.com/the-real-secret-to-playing-fast/
To paraphrase, it says practice very slowly until you get a clear and effortless sound, and then make it faster, and repeat until you reach desired speed.
Which makes complete sense. However she highlights a very important concept - patience. It's boring to play slow, so people spend very little time doing so. To quote the author:
"In my experience, most people — even if they start out playing slowly — try to play too fast too soon. And let’s face it, having to play slowly when you really want to play fast is a drag. You get bored and end up hacking away as fast as you can — fooling yourself for instant gratification — and still sounding “OK.”"
Patience is something I saw when learning to play poker. A vast majority of new poker players play too loosely, or play too many hands. I understood the value of patience in poker ($$) but that has given me perspective on patience in other things, like guitar.
So I'll be documenting my progress on playing slow to playing fast for the song "God Knows"
I got the tab here - http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/a/aya_hirano/god_knows_ver2_guitar_pro.htm
The passage I'm practicing comes in at measure 8 - the triplets that come in around ~00:10 in the youtube video.
My target tempo is 150 bpm. 16th note triplets have 6 notes per beat. That's 900 notes per minute! But since I'm pulling off for the triplets I only have to pick 300 notes per minute.
I started out at a ridiculously slow 50 bpm, and have worked my way up to 87 bpm. I will track my per session goals and progress here.
Looking forward:
After achieving 150 bpm with the triplets, I'll work on the 16th notes which will require picking 450 notes per minute. So you can see why I started with the triplets.
I am not a very fast player. Lots of songs require speed that I just never properly developed. Things like the intro to Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover", and JerryC's arragement of "Canon Rock" all have great contrast between speeds, but I do not have the finger dexterity and accuracy to play those parts.
Frustrated with never having learned these skills, I turned to google and stumbled upon this blog entry.
http://lorinator.feminoise.com/the-real-secret-to-playing-fast/
To paraphrase, it says practice very slowly until you get a clear and effortless sound, and then make it faster, and repeat until you reach desired speed.
Which makes complete sense. However she highlights a very important concept - patience. It's boring to play slow, so people spend very little time doing so. To quote the author:
"In my experience, most people — even if they start out playing slowly — try to play too fast too soon. And let’s face it, having to play slowly when you really want to play fast is a drag. You get bored and end up hacking away as fast as you can — fooling yourself for instant gratification — and still sounding “OK.”"
Patience is something I saw when learning to play poker. A vast majority of new poker players play too loosely, or play too many hands. I understood the value of patience in poker ($$) but that has given me perspective on patience in other things, like guitar.
So I'll be documenting my progress on playing slow to playing fast for the song "God Knows"
I got the tab here - http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/a/aya_hirano/god_knows_ver2_guitar_pro.htm
The passage I'm practicing comes in at measure 8 - the triplets that come in around ~00:10 in the youtube video.
My target tempo is 150 bpm. 16th note triplets have 6 notes per beat. That's 900 notes per minute! But since I'm pulling off for the triplets I only have to pick 300 notes per minute.
I started out at a ridiculously slow 50 bpm, and have worked my way up to 87 bpm. I will track my per session goals and progress here.
Looking forward:
After achieving 150 bpm with the triplets, I'll work on the 16th notes which will require picking 450 notes per minute. So you can see why I started with the triplets.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Accidental Babies
Great tune by Damien Rice. While the album version is performed with a piano, a video on youtube exists where he plays for some folks with a guitar. Knowing it was possible I looked up tabs. The best version I found is here: http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/d/damien_rice/accidental_babies_solo_tab.htm
While its incomplete, it is enough to play through the whole song. Some phrases won't be spot on but it SOUNDS good.
One part in particular is when Damien sings "does he drive you wild?" The piano uses more bass and I just thought I'd tab my impression for future reference (because I'll forget what I did by tomorrow..heck I'm starting to forget now, damn you introduction).
While its incomplete, it is enough to play through the whole song. Some phrases won't be spot on but it SOUNDS good.
One part in particular is when Damien sings "does he drive you wild?" The piano uses more bass and I just thought I'd tab my impression for future reference (because I'll forget what I did by tomorrow..heck I'm starting to forget now, damn you introduction).
e-----------------------------------|
B-----------------------------------|
G---------------------4---5---7/9---|
D-0---0-2-3---5/7-----5---5---------|
A---0-------0-------5---5---5-------|
E-------------3/5-3---------3-------|
Friday, September 11, 2009
My Song
I keep my guitar next to me so I can have something to do during down time. Waiting for a raid to get started, or just trying to load dalaran on my 5 year old laptop, haha. Anyways strummed some chords from an old song I wrote, which made me look up the song, which made me look up all my old songs, which makes me want to play guitar.
So here I am.
A lot of the things I played, I have forgotten. Neat little tricks or nifty things I had thought up on a whim are lost. Luckily I kept this blog and retain some things. This just reinforces my desire to write it all down, so if I ever go through another lapse it will be here, waiting for me.
One thing I plan to do is to re-do all my songs, perfect them, and then put them on youtube, or something. It'll be something I can show my grand kids, through a time machine, whatever they'll have when I'm 60.
So here I am.
A lot of the things I played, I have forgotten. Neat little tricks or nifty things I had thought up on a whim are lost. Luckily I kept this blog and retain some things. This just reinforces my desire to write it all down, so if I ever go through another lapse it will be here, waiting for me.
One thing I plan to do is to re-do all my songs, perfect them, and then put them on youtube, or something. It'll be something I can show my grand kids, through a time machine, whatever they'll have when I'm 60.
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