Well, as you can see by the lack of posts in a while “real life” has yet again gotten in the way. Add to that an injured left wrist that makes it difficult and painful to play means I haven’t been playing and posting here as much as I would like.

But, I can’t blame everything on the real world and a bad wrist. Since this blog is about leaning the guitar, I should write about the good and the bad. The truth is, before life and limb got in the way I had grown frustrated with my guitar playing. In particular with my guitar lessons. And even further in particular with economy picking. As I posted about in a couple previous posts, my instructor Kit really wants me to break the economy picking habit and I seem to be having a problem doing it.

It all came to a head for me when I set out to properly re-learn Hideaway with the help of Kit. Since I learned the first part of Hideaway on my own, I wasn’t paying attention to my picking technique… I mainly cared about what my left hand was doing and let my right hand do whatever it wanted to do to get the sound (which is pretty much what I’ve always done) When Kit started going over Hideaway with me he wanted to make sure I was picking down beats with an downward motion and up beats with an upward motion. Now, if I had never learned the first part of Hideaway, this might not have been a problem (actually it probably would have been since I apparently have bad right hand habits). But, since my right hand was already set on picking a certain way, retraining myself was proving to be very difficult. This led to frustration and the frustration led to me not playing as much.

Now, in retrospect, I don’t think Hideaway was a great place to start given my abilities. It is far from a beginner’s song. So, because of that I decided to put Hideaway away for now and move on to something a little more manageable. I also told Kit that we need to forget about breaking the economy picking habit because it was frustrating me far too much which was taking away my enjoyment and causing me to play less and less (after all, I’m not trying to become a virtuoso). Kit’s response was that if that was what I wanted to do, we can do that… but, at some point he’s not going to be able to take me any further.

So here were are now. My wrist is starting to get better and playing isn’t as painful as it has been the last few months. I’m starting to pick the up the guitar more often and I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. This should mean more updates to the blog.

I feel as if I’m starting over AGAIN and that everything I learned over the last year is gone. I know it’s not all gone and it will come back, but it’s a bit frustrating to be starting over again.  But I still love my guitars and love playing when I’m just messing around and not giving a crap what I sound like.

Illustration by Erin Nations.

Related Posts

1. Guitar Lesson – October 30th, 2009
2. Guitar Lesson – October 9th, 2009
3. Guitar Lesson – September 11th, 2009

Thanks for to everyone who entered and left nice comments about the photography. The time has finally come to announce the winners of the Guitar Print Giveaway.

The winners are:

11×14 Custom Print: @diawan
8×10 Custom Print: @bubbafat
8×10 Custom Print: @js091402

Congratulations!

For anyone who entered the contest and didn’t win but would still like a print, I’m offering a 30% discount on any print orders. And for everyone else, between now and the new years, all of the prints will be 15% off. Just head over to the Guitar Print page for more information on placing an order.

Thanks again!

Related Posts

1. Guitar Print Giveaway
2. Guitar Print Giveaway Extension
3. Rickenbacker 330 Fireglow – Pics

As I posted a while back, I was learning Eric Clapton’s version of Hideaway using a Lick Library lesson video. Of course I was doing this on my own so my technique was less than perfect. My instructor Kit is a stickler for technique, especially when it comes to picking. So, we set out for me to re-learn the parts of Hideaway I already know and then learn the rest of the song properly. And for anyone who’s learned something improperly and then needed to re-learn it properly, it’s not fun. My muscle memory is already set for my improper picking and fingering, so it’s going to be tricky re-learning the parts that I already know.

The big problem is my picking technique (as I posted about in my last lesson). I’ve always picked in a way that seemed most comfortable for the song. So, that may mean down down up down down up up which could mean up picks on down beats and down picks on up beats. Kit wants my picking to be consistent: down picks on down beats and up picks on up beats (unless I’m picking for effect: i.e. all up all down, etc).

I have a bit of a problem with changing the way people do things naturally. I think its possible to do something unconventionally and have it work perfectly for you. But, since I’m not exactly doing wonders with my unconventional ways, I’m going to work on it.

So, Kit transcribed the opening part of Hideaway and included the picking motion for each note.  I thought it was hard enough trying to figure out what to do with my left hand and now I have to think about my left hand AND my right hand.  In the few times I’ve practiced since the lesson, I’m already pretty frustrated.  But… no pain, no gain.

Related Posts

1. Guitar Lesson – October 9th, 2009
2. Guitar Lesson – October 2nd, 2009
3. Guitar Lesson – September 11th, 2009

And finally, here are some more guitar pictures.  This time it’s a 2009 Rickenbacker 330 Fireglow.

If you live in or are willing to travel to the San Francisco Bay Area and you’re interested in having your guitar photographed leave a comment in the comment section and I will contact you via email.

For information on limited edition prints of these images, visit the guitar prints page.

Related Posts

1. Gibson ES-175SP Pics
2. Gibson Les Paul Korina Goldtop 1957 Reissue – Pics
3. Buying A Rickenbacker 330

In honor of the new Wolfmother album Cosmic Egg, I’m doing a cover of their song Dimension found on their self titled debut album.  I actually saw Wolfmother live this weekend at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit concert.  It was an all acoustic set, which is a bit different than you’d expect from Wolfmother (the entire concert is acoustic).  I’m also going to be seeing them next month at the amazing Oakland Fox Theater (if you haven’t been there, its a great venue).

The song is pretty straight forward (which still doesn’t keep me from messing it up) with a lot of power cords and quick little riffs.  Normally I don’t include the actual song on my videos, but this song has a lot of breaks where there’s nothing but singing and drumming.  So, I thought it would be best to include the song in the mix (for that and to help cover up my bad spots).  You can find the tabs for the song here.

Guitar: Gibson Les Paul Goldtop ’57 Reissue
Amp: Vox AC15CC
Effects: Keeley Fuzz Head

Related Posts

1. Jace Everett – Bad Things
2. John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton – Hideaway
3. The Black Keys – I’ll Be Your Man

As I learn my scales, chords and try to learn a some easier sounding songs that I like, I start to wonder if you either have it or you don’t when it comes to playing the guitar.  Just when I think I’m starting to make some progress I head over to youtube and see a 12 year old belting out some amazing  guitar.  Clearly, that kid has it.  Then I look at my videos and think, clearly I don’t.

Whenever I’m on a lesson website or video, someone invariably says,”if I can learn this, so can you” or “these lessons are so easy, anyone can learn to play the guitar.”  I just don’t know if that’s the case.  It would be like picking up a camera and thinking you’re going to be able to make a shot as good as Irving Penn just because you know how to properly expose an image.  There are some things that go beyond just learning the techniques.

Then I think, maybe it’s like learning a language.  I can say “bon jour” in French pretty well, but if I were to try and say anything else, it’d sound like crap or I wouldn’t even know what to say.  As it stands right now, I can badly say “bon jour” in guitar, but that’s about it.

It’s rather frustrating not to be able to play the way I want to play.  Or at least consistently play the things I can play.  But then again, I have no goals or aspirations of being a professional musician.  I’m doing this because I love the guitar.  I guess I need to stop going to YouTube… because kids like this are reinforcing my feelings of inadequacy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PshGgt06XE

Related Posts

1. John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton – Hideaway
2. The Beatles – Day Tripper
3. Jazz Progression In F And Bar Chord Positions

As you can see by the lack of posts recently, I’ve  been busy with real life (the blog has yet to become the Guitar media powerhouse allowing me to quit my day job… or buy a cup of coffee… just yet).  Unfortunately, this has also meant I haven’t been able to add more guitars to the Guitar Print Giveaway.  Because of this I’m going to extend the giveaway to November 2nd.  Between now and then I will definitely be adding more guitars for the print giveaway.

So, if you haven’t had the chance to enter the Guitar Print Giveaway, head here to enter.

Normal posting will resume next week.

Related Posts

1. Guitar Print Giveaway
2. Guitar Print Giveaway – The Winners
3. Gibson Jimi Hendrix Model Guitar Revealed

Today’s lesson was mostly focused on my picking technique.  As I mentioned in a previous post, somewhere along the way I picked up the habit of economy picking.  Upon seeing this my instructor Kit had me stop doing scales all together.  In last weeks lesson he started me back on scales with the Pentatonic Scale.  With the Pentatonic Scale, there are only two notes per string, so you’re pretty much always alternate picking.

Normally when doing Pentatonic scales you start with the first finger on the low E string and end with the fourth finger on the high E string (when only going in one direction).  As I wrote in my last lesson, Kit had me doing the scales starting on both the low E and high E strings.  Starting with a down stroke using the fourth finger on the high E will put you in a situation where, if you have a habit of economy picking, you may switch back to economy picking.  Which I did.

So, this weeks exercises are all geared towards breaking the economy picking habit.  I’m supposed to do the chromatic scale up and down the neck.  The chromatic scale is just every note in order moving up one fret as you play the scale up and down the neck:

E—————————————————————————-1–2–3–4——-
B————————————————————–1–2–3–4———————
G———————————————–1–2–3–4———————————–
D——————————–1–2–3–4————————————————–
A—————–1–2–3–4—————————————————————–
E–1–2–3–4———————————————————————————

I need to do the scale up and down the neck with the following picking patterns:
All Down, 1x
All Up, 1x
Down/Up, 2x
Up/Down, 2x
Down/Up, 4x
Up/Down, 4x

For example, for each note on the “Up/Down 2x” scale I would play each note 4 times before moving to the next note: up, down, up, down.

I’ll point out that Kit isn’t against economy picking.  However he believes you should be in control of your movements.  If you’re economy picking, its because you want to be economy picking for the feel or sound, not because that’s what your hand happens to be doing.

If you’re like me, you’re thinking this is going to be a long monotonous exercise… but if it helps break my habit of unconsciously slipping into economy picking, then I guess that’s a good thing.

Related Posts

1. Guitar Lesson – September 11th, 2009
2. Guitar Lesson – October 30th, 2009
3. Guitar Lesson – October 2nd, 2009

Since I seem to be posting so often about the Jimi Hendrix Gibson guitar debacle, I thought I’d post another quick update.  It appears that even Experience Hendrix have removed all mention of the guitar from their website.  Initially it had only been Gibson who seemed to be abandoning anything Jimi Hendrix related on their website.  Although, I couldn’t imagine why they would want to get rid of the Jimi Hendrix Piano, that was totally legit.

So, does this mean both parties have decided to hang their respective heads in shame and walk away from the deal?  I guess only time will tell, but as of now neither Gibson or Experience Hendrix have any mention of their collaboration on their websites, when just a few short weeks ago they were making grand statements about the magnitude of the greatness of this collaboration.

The Experience Hendrix press release was here.  Now, it’s gone.

Hmm, if only there were a mechanism for the people to see all that information that these two companies want to pretend never existed.  Someday.

Related Posts

1. Gibson Jimi Hendrix Guitar Canceled?
2. Gibson Jimi Hendrix Model Guitar
3. Gibson Jimi Hendrix Model Guitar Revealed

Unfortunately I had a photo shoot run long yesterday, so I pretty much missed most of my lesson (don’t you hate it when the real world interrupts your leisure time). It was a hectic day and showing up 40 minutes late to 45 minute lesson wasn’t what I was planning on. Luckily Kit had a little extra time before his next student and I got a whopping fifteen minutes in.

Since the lesson was an abbreviated one and because I left my lesson folder in my car (which would have pretty much taken up the fifteen minutes I did have to go back down and grab it) Kit deviated from our regularly scheduled lesson. Instead he showed me the Minor Circle Of Fifths and gave me an exercise to go along with it.

The Roman Numeral at the top is the position on the fretboard and the corresponding note on the Low E string is below it (the “o” is an open string). The distance between each note is a 5th. And, I know what you’re thinking… this isn’t a circle. With Kit, this doesn’t surprise me, but this is how it was presented to me:

The exercise I was given was to play the minor chord, then play the pentatonic scale at the current position. Repeat this around the Circle of Fifths (in the order shown above) and then chromatically (up the neck in the regular order of the notes). The first time through, play the scale up and down (Low E to High E) and then repeat the whole process playing the scale down and up (High E to Low E).

Here is the Pentatonic Scale:

Since the lesson was cut short we didn’t get into a lot of the technical details of what’s going on, so I’m sure I’ll get a more in depth look into the Circle Of Fifths and The Pentatonic Scalenext week and I’ll report back then. If anyone wants to give me a head start that would be great.

Another thing I was told to keep an eye on was bending strings out of position when grabbing a chord or playing notes. Apparently when I’m grabbing my bar chords I’m bending some of the strings out of position. The same goes for when playing scales and individual notes. I need to focus on only pressing as hard as necessary to get the notes to play.

Hopefully life won’t get in the way next week and I’ll make my lesson on time.

Related Posts

1. Guitar Lesson – October 9th, 2009
2. Guitar Lesson – October 30th, 2009
3. Guitar Lesson – September 25th, 2009