Day 17 | Stuck in a loop
Two weeks in and I hit my first wall. That was fast!
My progress so far:
I’ve worked the intro to 30–35% of the tempo, minus the pre-verse that I’ve only started playing with.
I tried recording the whole intro in one go but every single time I turn the mic on, I panic and collapse into a pile of semi-quavers… I’ll try again later 😒
I’m a little conflicted about my progress. On one hand, I’m happy with what I’m already able to play and how much I’m improving every day. But on the other, I can’t play what I’ve learned as consistently well as I‘d like to: I can go through 5 very good runs and then I’ll trip over myself in various places for the next 5 ones. This is very frustrating!
And that got me stuck in a loop this past week:
“I should keep practising this bit until it’s perfectly clean”
“Sure, but you’re starting to look insane, repeating the same couple of bars again and again and…”
“AAaaaAAaAaah!!! You don’t understand! I can’t move to the next part before I’ve mastered this one!!”
“Listen, maybe you need to give this part a bit of rest and bring some variety to your practice by looking at the next part?”
“I…”
“Shhhh… Why don’t you take a 5 minute break for now and have a piece of chocolate to calm yourself down?”
So in the end I spent the week eating chocolate, repeating the first 15 bars of the song in a mad loop, and I only took a shy look at the next 8 ones. Didn’t feel great.
Stuff I learned this week
- I had a “Ooooooh, THAT makes more sense…” moment when I realised after practicing them for a couple of days that bars 11 to 13 can — no, should — be played with hybrid picking. Which makes it a lot easier. Let’s just say that the time I spent playing it with alternate picking was good string skipping practice…
- Talking about string skipping… what a treacherous b****! Bars 8 to 10. That’s where a lot of my failed runs end in a dissonant plonk.
- I discovered that economy picking is a thing. Something I did without thinking it actually had a name. And a stupid name, in my opinion. Makes it sound like you’re doing something less than what would be appropriate. Like you’re being lazy. When actually it’s just a clever way to pick in some cases.
- I’m starting to think about getting the right tone for this song. Not the exact same one as Eric Johnson but something close enough. For now I’m just killing my trebles and adding a bit of delay on my amp. More on that in future weeks…
- I need to work on my palm muting. This is going to be essential for the verse.
That’s all for this week! I hope I’ll make more progress for my next check-in. My plan is to start working on the verse while I keep practising the intro:
See you soon! Leave your comments below :)
