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...the more you play, the more it kills.
Scales are one of the major building blocks of playing any instrument. I remember having to memorize and play then in high school band as warm ups every class...and I hated them. Scales are just so boring and I wasn't very good at memorizing them.
I couldn't get myself to play them when I was tooting on the trumpet back in my high school, brass rockin' days, and the same applied in my transition to the strings. Being a self-taught guitarist, I always figured learning scales were one of the best ways to learn the fret board, to strengthen my fretting hand, and to work on my alternate picking, among other things. Unfortunately, it never caught on. I skipped to the fun part, searching the internet for guitar tabs of songs I wanted to learn and strumming away.
So here I am, close to 9 years since I first picked up a guitar and the scales are coming back to haunt me. Still running with the self-teaching philosophy, lately I've been disgusted with my lack of knowledge with what I'm playing. (That and learning other people's songs. I know Good Riddance by Green Day yet I don't know some of the most basic theory!) I've written dozens of songs, I've been in a band, I play my guitar most every day, but if you were to ask me what I was playing, beyond the basic explanation of, "this is a G-chord", I'd probably talk like I just picked up a guitar yesterday.
Last week I pulled out an on old book, part of the K-I-S-S series of books (Keep It Simple Series...or Keep It Simple Stupid for someone like me.), for a starting point, something to jump start my thirst for guitar learning goodness. The scales section popped right out at me and now whenever I'm just sitting around I tool with every scale I can literally wrap my hand around; major, minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, chromatic, pentatonic....it just goes on.
As simple and straight forward as some of the stuff in this book seems, having played for all this time, I think spending some time going over this mind-boggling music theory stuff will do me good. It's not the most fun thing in the world, I mean, let's play some songs! (Write some songs is more like it.) But that's what happened 9 years ago and I think it's time to get a little more serious, no matter how much is hurts.
Scales, scales, they're good for your skills...
See You Soon Conan
This is sad, at least for me. Conan O'Brien is off The Tonight Show after only 7 months. I love Conan, I never disliked Leno, but I always struggled to stay awake through Jay's show so I could catch Conan on Late Night.
Below is the link for the final episode of Conan's version of The Tonight Show. If you don't watch the whole thing, at the very least watch the last 5 minutes or so. It's a very rockin' and incredible end to a show cut too short.
Ending The Year With A Bang...Not So Much
The fact that I'm just now writing this post about my New Year's Eve says quite a bit. This new year was supposed to be different, not the same 'ol hum-drum, sitting in front of the tv to watch the ball drop and pretending that I enjoy drinking a few. (Which I really don't.)
I mentioned in my post, "The New Year's Eve Let Down", back in November how ringing in the New Year is never what it's cracked up to be. Though the transition from '09 to 0-Ten (definitely doesn't sound right when you say it out loud) wasn't the same kind of let down, I'm thinking I hyped up this year's celebration a little too much in my head.
KJ and I headed to downtown Kansas City to catch a rock show put on by 98.9 The Rock featuring local band Red Line Chemistry, Cavo, and Rev Theory. Overall, the show was decent, Rev Theory was definitely the highlight, with Cavo almost putting me to sleep and Red Line Chemistry being pretty impressive. No offense to Cavo, they have some great tunes, but they followed the local opener who came out ripping as a 5-piece group (2 guitars, bass, drums and lead vocal), as a 4-piece (only 1 guitar) which was a major step down the intensity meter.
Compounded with a long, short week at work, it being way past my normal bed time (I'm usually in bed by 10:00 at the latest), many more drunk people in comparison to other shows, and the countdown being a little bit of a dud (you need to work on that for next year 98.9) I was most definitely ready to hit the door once Rev Theory finished their set.
So as for ringing in 2010, the new decade, this show was a major step up from most other countdown nights of my adult life, but I feel that it could have been a little better, even with my insane expectations.
What's the moral here kiddies? I enjoyed myself and that's all that really mattered. I have to quit with all the hype and enjoy things for what they are from now on, I think that will make all the difference. Rock on to 2010!
Oh, and the hell with resolutions! Let's just write some tunes and leave it at that.
Let me know how your New Year's Eve went!
Commiting To Writing
I was just scoping out the blogosphere and I read a great article about writing. It was pretty straight forward but great advice none-the-less, be committed to writing. It's little things like the advice from this article that make me realize how easy it is to get things going and just do what I like to do, write songs. Screw the inspiration, the time, the distractions, every excuse in the book. It's all about putting the pen to paper or the fingers to the keys and that's it, nothing complicated. It doesn't matter what it is, just as long as it's words coming from my head and into the daylight.
Thanks to the Saphrym blog for the great advice and the great blog. To check out the article, "Writing Tips: Commit", click here.
Rock on!
Off Topic: New Dog!
Christmas came in early in our household. Yesterday, we picked up our new dog, Lisey. We're really excited to finally have a dog after the long and arduous search, KJ even more than me! She's a American Eskimo dog mixed with what we think is a border collie. But since she was a rescue we may never know. She's already taken a liking to chewing on the branches of our Christmas tree, so we have to keep a good eye on her.
Oh, and if you're intere
sted in where the name Lisey (pronounced "Lis" like Melissa and "ey" like....e) came from it has some mixed roots. (And if you're not interested I'm going to tell you anyway.)
I wanted to try to name her after a Red Sox player (since I'm a big Sox fan) and finally settled on Lisey as a tribute to first baseman Kevin Youkilis as Big Papi didn't quite have the ring to it. The name also comes from the Stephen King book Lisey's Story, as I'm also a big SK fan. I definitely wanted the name to mean something, much like I want my lyrics to always be meaningful, and I think we accomplished that.
Word Box Wednesday #5 - It's Been Awhile
So my last Word Box Wednesday was April...yikes. It's a glaringly sick example of how unproductive the songwriting has been over the past year, the year that was supposed to be my most creative to date.
The Word Box (explained here, last January), was always supposed to be my songwriting inspiration. Or maybe not so much inspiration but a little jump start to the ideas that weren't coming to me otherwise. But lately it's just been an old Whitman's Sampler box with words taped all over it. (Although, it does look pretty cool if I do say so myself.)
The saddest part is that I have this feeling in my gut that I really want to write. The insane urge to create good song after good song that I can be proud of and share with the world. The problem is that I just don't know where to go from here. I sure as hell am not going to give up. But where are those ideas going to come from and how am I going to finally put them together to make something worthwhile? Honestly, I have no clue, but I'm going to start by reaching into the Word Box for the first time in more than 8 months and see where it takes me.
So here I go....first I'll give it a good shake. (shaking....) Then I'll take off the cover. Reach in, (some more word shuffling...) and pick out the word:
dirtAll good questions, now let's run with it. Rock on!
It's Definitely A "Twisted Christmas"
It's going to be another weird Christmas this year. Since KJ and I can't make it home once again, we're trying to make the best of it and thankfully the live rock shows have been plentiful to compensate. Our Christmas season got a little "twisted" last night as we caught 98.9 The Rock's Twisted Christmas show at the Midland Theater in Downtown Kansas City. The show featured Adelitas Way, Sick Puppies, Papa Roach and Breaking Benjamin.
This was the second time in a few months that we got a chance to catch Sick Puppies live. We first saw them back in September here in Lawrence (see "Hard Rock, Sore Throats, Hot Bass Players and Getting Old"). I missed Emma. It was nice to see her rocking the bass once again. This was also Breaking Benjamin show number 5 for us. And honestly, I would see them again...and again. Ben (the lead singer) was a little under the weather but they still put on a good show and even rocked out a great version of Dream On by Aerosmith.
As for Adelitas
Way and Papa Roach, this was the first time we'd seen either. Adelitas Way was decent, they brought some energy and some good tunes. But Papa Roach was nothing short of amazing. I like their music and although I've never been a huge fan, they most definitely know how to bring the rock. Jacoby, the front man, was all over the place, dripping sweat from song one and all while sporting a giant smile on his face. It's so much easier to get into the music when you can see the band enjoys what they are doing.
Aside from the music it was one of the most interesting shows I've ever been to and that might mean that I need to be in the pit a little more often. We saw at least 3 sets of women making out (I think there was one girl that was the common link to all 3 sessions), two sets of naked breasts (on a couple of different occasions, one occasion that won our side of the floor a little contest), and at least 3 fights, all of which my bad ass girlfriend broke up. This show was truly what a rock show is about.
It's nice to think that in about 3 weeks we'll be heading back to the same place to catch Cavo and Rev Theory for The Rock's New Year's Eve party. It'll be a huge change of pace to be counting down the new year like we've seen on tv all these years. It will no doubt be a great experience and an even better reason to rock out like we love to do.
By the way, sorry for the crappy cell phone pics of the show (Not that the pics on here are ever stellar anyway). It was hard whipping out the camera in the surging crowd and though we were close, it was necessary to use the zoom on my cell phone camera, making the pics a little grainy. But with me being a bit of a cell phone photog wannabee, I couldn't help myself.
Rock on!
