the valiant knight returns

wow. it's been over a month since i blog'd something...

well, to be honest, not much has happened with my guitar playing the past few weeks. i left it at a friends house for a while, and it's hard to play with people who don't like loud music in the house all the time.

"what has happened?" you ask.

i started learning a couple new songs. "blue and evil" by joe bonamassa and "haunter" by himsa. it's tough to attempt both at the same time, what with himsa playing in a way low dropped tuning, but i'm trying anyway. re-tuning every day sucks.

with that said, and a new post up, i will now retire to playing video games because it's 1:30am and i can't play my guitar right now.

inspiration is like bacon

this is bacon

i fucking love the library! the library around here has a damn good selection of cds for honest, tax-paying citizens like me to borrow. i settle for 8 today (but i could have gone away with as many as FORTY!).

this is the loot from todays inspiration hunt:

fugazi, repeater

black sabbath, master of reality

dream theater, metropolis pt. 2: scenes from a memory

buckethead, monsters and robots

tom waits, rain dogs

yngwie malmsteens rising force, marching out

melvins, houdini

joe satriani, surfing with the alien

it's a pretty nice collection, if i do say so my self. got some classic shredding with yngwie, buckethead and satch. theres the sludgy melvins, the proggy dream theater, and even the whiskey-soaked crooning of mr. waits. obviously, the shredding is good for inspiring me to try a little harder, and think a bit more out of the power chord riffing box. but there in that stack of cds to my left is something even better; examples of great songwriting. say what you will, but don't deny that tom waits knows how to write the shit out of a song. sabbath are masters of building  tension, due in large part to the fretwork of tony iommi , and the melvins know how to balance the fuck yeargh! with the near-silence.everything i picked up today will, somehow, inspire me in some way, itty bitty small or fucking huge epiphany-like, to become a better guitarist.

i recommend that everybody go to the library, or the record store, or a friends house and pick up some things you've never heard before (or at least never really listened to before). there's bound to be something in whatever you pick up that will bring something new into your head. maybe the vocal melodies, or the way one of the chords is played, or even just a simple pick slide could lead you to something new you can do with your playing. at least thats what i'm hoping these cds will do for me.

whiplash!

this motherfucker right here

so i decided to try some metallica stuff today. i listened to a few of my favorite tracks and settled on "whiplash" and "seek and destroy." they sounded fairly simple (for metallica, that is), and in all honesty, they are. i'm not a total beginner by any means, ive been "playing" for a few years (mostly just dicking around trying to sound badass), but i feel like i can master these couple with only a few days work. and maybe someday i'll try to learn the solos. fucking kirk hammet...

anyway, i started out with the more, what i like to call "fuck yeargh!" song . "whiplash," obviously sounds way more fuck yeargh! so, i look up the tabs, and holy shit! this stuff is really easy. just a couple bars of chugga chugga with some variation of power chord or double-stop tacked on to the tail end. okay, i underestimated the chugga-chugga riffing. i'm trying my ass off to get the right number of notes in before the power chords. i've got the speed down, but i can't seem to get the right number of notes out in the two bars i'm working with... i either end up cutting to the power chords too soon, or waiting half a beat too long to play them. pissing me right off...

on to "seek and destroy." much, much, much easier for me to grasp. the opening riff is giving me a little bit of grief with some off the fingering, but i'll get it in just a couple hours i think. the other rhythm riffing ain't too bad at all... is mostly relatively slow chugging eighth notes, either palm muted low e's or some double stops or some individual notes. the pre-chorus is stumping me a bit, because i'm not hearing what i'm seeing in the tabs. its probably just my crappy laptop speakers or something in the way i'm playing it thats just a bit different than the way kirk and james played it on the album. that's about as far as i can go right now. the pre-solo stuff(you know, the part where the tempo jumps from slow burn to what-the-fuck-shredfire)is giving me a damn good fight, might take a couple of days to beat those few bars into submission.

well, that's all i can do for now... with the rhythm going smoothly, all i can do now is hope to one day be brave enough (and patient enough) to break down the solos to manageable, slow-moving, bit-sized chunks and start really annoying the dogs.

this is rose

she's a dean vendetta

this is rose. don't know why i named a black guitar "rose" (or why i felt the need to name it in the first place), but i did. i don't know everything about her, but i do know that she sounds good, even though all i have is a tiny little 15-watt first act amp that came with the old first act strat wannabe that sits in the closet gathering dust. i make it work with the boss ds-1 i got as a gift. actually, now that i think about it, rose was a gift, too. from my best friend jarred. he got her for me when i had to use what money i had to pay the damn bills.

well, me and rose are trying our best to get better. we're taking a rest day today, but tomorrow we're gonna get to work on some legato stuff, which will hopefully transfer over into faster playing. well, faster playing that isn't just palm muted open low-e riffs, anyway. i do that just fine as it is.