rehersal diaries/Blog
learned the neon riff by john mayor but still working on the slap pattern and the weird blues chords (finger patterns are difficult to play). begging to add the singing part as well but still working on the rhythm when singing and playing the guitar at the same time. link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zciynSXSmus
24/11/20-19
rehearsal
after house of the rising sun we changed bands and we are now working on a Elvis medley. it is not going too badly so far still need to write a guitar solo for it. personally however i have almost perfected the neon riff and i am now working on shepard of fire by avenged sevenfold. Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT8FEOJEFcI
03/12/2019
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finished perfecting the ending of the long-tall sally medley and made it so that the medley leads into the next song "riot up in cell block number nine" we are going to this by adding a drum solo in between the two songs to act as a kind of "bridge" and we have also upped the standard of our consistency while playing. personalty i have tried playing the guitar solo with the guitar behind my head to increase my stage presence.
2/12/2019
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today we went through the songs we did for the Christmas show and we tried to get new songs not the most productive of sessions because we had just finished the Christmas show the last day so not a lot of work was done we just jammed for a bit next week we will start working on new songs.
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12/12/2019
rehearsal
Today we recorded and filmed the songs we did for the Christmas show in the media studio .The performance of the songs was of a good standard and the recording went fairly smoothly. In future we will learn more song as a band so that we have a wider range of material to play.
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8/1/2020
Continued practicing the songs that I started before. starting to get the basic slap pattern for Neon down. The Christmas break and started to do my sound for film project on logic
31/1/2020
This week I used logic to start my project and I started adding in markers for scene changes and in band we started learning a cover of a beionce song and carried on practicing "forget you". On my own I continued practicing a number of songs, most importantly, I practiced Neon for the concert and I practiced it for dexterity as well because it is a considerably difficult song.
12/2/2020
Added the drone into my sound for film project. This was useful for the plane sound effect as well as just the general theme. In the performance aspect my playing of Neon has gotten a lot better and I decided to add delay into my performence at college which I think was more suitable for the song in question than the overdrive I was previously using for it.
29/2/2020
Performed Neon today and it went better than I thought it would although the wah pedal section still needs some work. In bloom also went well although I think the levels could have been adjusted a bit because I couldn't hear myself too well.
12/3/2020
Week 2 of artificial harmonics practice, it does seem to be making a difference. This technique was particularly useful while playing the solo for Sheaperd of fire and the intro to Joe Satrinai's Surfing with the alien because of the extensive use of pinch harmonics to exentuate the repeated phases.
25/3/2020
Started teaching guitar to some friends and friends of friends who wanted to learn the basics. Also continued with artificial harmonic practice and started collaborating with my band to get a set together. We ended up going with : highway to hell, have a nice day, shepherd of fire and I thought about performing neon solo. not sure about that last one yet.
8/4/2020
I did some guitar scale excursuses and worked on the songs with the band. I also practised dining in a better tone on my amp (Fender Champion 100)
23/4/2020
This week I did a lot more theory practice (had to catch up on my scales because I might be doing grade 6 at some point this year). I also practised through the whole song list , still trying to get the solo for Shepherd of Fire down. Im stuck on the alternate-pick shredding.
6/5/2020
Pretty just practised the solo for Shepherd of Fire. I made a decent amount of progress; I also made the overcommitment to learning the whole thing by ear which is making the solo painstakingly difficult to figure out, just becouse of the sheer amount of notes in the solo. but I'm going to follow through with it because it will improve my ear and my ability to learn by ear.
20/5/2020
Harmonics practise is finally starting to pay off. I can now instinctively get the (relatively) correct area on the string to get the Harmonic instead of accidentally hitting the an Octave.
4/6/2020
Started on my Final evaluation of project 3, started by doing a review of the proposal and the went on to talk about the songs I had recorded. I also started learning "Life is a Highway" because why not.
20/11/2019
rehearsal
finished house of the rising sun, i am planning too play the rhythm guitar and add in small blues licks in the A minor pentatonic scale to add some change in the otherwise boring chord progression. i will also play some of these licks in the solo but i will play them faster too make sure that people will feel like they recognise them and this should add a slight feel of familiarity to the solo.
26/11/2019
rehearsal
finished the first two songs for Christmas show but still need to work on the endings for both songs. still need to finish learning "blue Christmas" as a group. other songs are an Elvis medley and "riot up in cell block number 9" personally i need to add more variations into my lead blues playing and learn some more complicated blues techniques like using a slide or diads. I also need to add in more quarter-tone bends.
05/12/2019
Christmas show
performed long-tall sally medley and riot up in cell block number 9 at the Christmas show as the closing act. played the solo for the medley behind my head and did not smack myself in the back of the head so that's a positive. stayed in time who band played really well considering the last minuite changes we made to the lineup as a whole.
04/2/2020
rehearsal
practiced "forget you"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKxodgpyGec) and added different aspects in to improve it and we learned another song as well.
19/12/2019
started practicing for the music makers(where I take guitar lessons)
concert. This week I started learning "In bloom" by Nirvana which I will perform with my band and "Neon" by John Mayer which am going to perform with just me and my guitar teacher.
24/1/2020
Learnt a bunch of new songs at home, including: Shepherd of fire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT8FEOJEFcI) and Polaris
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYE7DcfovLM).
These both took a considerable amount of time to get the general idea because of there complexity and dynamics.
6/2/2020
I added the wah pedal aspect to Neon and it is a big improvement. I need to work on the vocals now and still trying to get the rhythm for In bloom.
19/2/2020
last week of practice before the Neon performance got the rhythm, timing and vocals down as well as possible
adding the final touches to the practical task this involves syncing it up with the movie clip.
5/3/2020
Handed in my project 2 and I thought the written part wasn't bad but I should have added more to the actual produced track with the movie clip on it.
This is week one of practicing artificial harmonics with the dorian mode.
18/3/2020
Week 3 of pinch harmonics practice. I have started implementing it into my regular playing and I am trying to reach a higher level of accuracy overall which was quite an undertaking because I am tying to do this with a Joe Satriani song which are generally quite mechanical and advanced technically speaking
1/4/2020
This week I did a lot of song practice and managed to get "Have a nice day" down because the rhythm is pretty simple. I have also been working on my shredding and implementing different states into it, for example the Harmonic Major scale.
16/4/2020
Re- strung my SG after the high E broke (as usual). Then I practiced Shepherd of Fire on it and managed to get a better tone as the SG is more suited towards metal than the Strat is. Learnt the acoustic part of hi ho silver lining as well.
30/4/2020
Vocals are also coming along pretty decently. I have started to figure out my range and according to my guitar teacher its "not bad". I still have no real idea what I'm doing when it comes to vocals because I usually just go off instinct.
13/5/2020
Learnt "Crystal Mountain" by Death because my guitar teacher recommended it to me. Its very good for improving mechanical dexterity and also it implements the Harmonic Major scale a lot thought the song and I personally need to use scales other than the pentatonic and Major scale because otherwise my improvisation is going to get very predictable
27/5/2020
Mic that I ordered finally got here so this week I re-recorded all the songs for project three (I decided just to go with what I know best and what I put the most time into) took my time setting up the mic in the correct position used websites to figure out what I didn't know (the references are my Bibliography). I did Shepherd of Fire and Neon in one day (I used Pro-tools by the way ) and I did Hi-Ho Silver Lining a few days later (personally not a huge fan of that song but I gave it my best shot).