Adi_mrok's Learning Log

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81

That’s a very nice-looking and nice-sounding guitar there :slight_smile:

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Been a while, but as usual I like to make an update at the start of the year to see where I got in last 12 months later on. :grinning:

This year I can clearly say that GAS overtook amount of songs I have managed to learn :rofl: my little music room is filled with joy called musical instruments and gadgets now and I probably won’t be able to squeeze much more, perhaps replacing like for like is now on the table for me :grinning: picture from year before and now! Psst if you look closer you might spot one extra guitar not on the wall :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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Speaking of GAS - what I wanted to do for some time now is to replace PUPs at my East Coast HSS strat. Read lots of posts, scratched some hair off my head in the meantime but yet again went with good old Toby’s advice and wasn’t disappointed. Purchased pickups from Irongear, specifically Vintage 60s and Fat Torque for humbucker and boy oh boy was it worth it! A pic of my WIP and I decided to record a little sample of how my last recording sounded on previous PUPs vs now, I will let you to decide if you can hear a difference :wink: New PUPs for Eastcoast :) - YouTube

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So in the last year we can add 8 extra covers including 2 collabs (thanks Luka and LBro!), 1 impro challenge, 4 Community Open Mics including wonderful Richard’s testimonial and 1 Livestream event with Justin. Not much impressed with amount of songs I have managed to learn but to be fair I tried to pick some more challenging ones to step up my game and humbly speaking I think I achieved that, at least I feel it that way.

I should also add 2 more songs on top of ones above which I only performed at Open Mics and didn’t get a chance to record those properly. Well perhaps one day :grinning:

Although I paused indefinitely learning Snow by RHCP which is my last year’s failure thinking of what other songs I learnt I will give myself some slack and I look forward to getting back to it one day. If I had to choose one I am most proud of? Can’t really, all of them were awesome :rofl:

My resolution for this year, or perhaps my goals? I would like to continue learning songs but also I hope to step out of my comfort zone and start some more with playing around with music, so progressions, scales, licks and this sort of stuff. Going back to what I learnt last year and having a look from theory point of view what was happening and why it sounded so good. I also think that all the new skills I picked up will come in handy when trying to discover my sound or however some of you folks call it :wink:

Plenty of fantastic materials available over here and at Justin’s webiste, definitely going to have a finer look at Richard’s posts and try to learn something new off it. So let’s get to it!

Practice routine:

  • Songs songs songs :slight_smile: due to change!

Songs I know and work on:

Open Mic performances:

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Hiding behind the plant.

You’ve had a real breakout year. I’ve noticed more confidence in your playing which inturn comes through in your videos.

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All good Adrian. Additional guitar easily spotted.

I think the East Coast’s sound is improved, assuming amp etc settings all the same.

You have come on strong in the year. One highlight in my mind would be playing Black Betty over the original recording at an OM … that was a stellar performance.

I like the idea of ‘playing around with music’ and ‘discover my sound’. Look forward to hearing what you may come up with as you venture down that musical avenue.

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Can’t go wrong with Iron Gear pups, sounding sweet Adi. A good productive year methinks and certainly some great progress on the playing side. Looking forward to what the new year brings from you.

:sunglasses:

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Hi Adrian,
That was a good year for you and you experienced a clear breakthrough :sunglasses:
Greetings and keep the good things flow,…

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Hi Adrian, last year was definitely a very productive year for you, so many highlights. I look forward to what the new year brings from you especially from the looper.

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Hi Adrian, wow you really achieved a lot throughout the year! So many songs, and a lot of cool techniques too!! Bravo! I checked only a few of your recordings (La mattina, '74’75, More than words, Good Riddance, Blackbird) and I do agree

:blush::raised_hands::blush::raised_hands::blush:

This is inspiring, I need to be a bit more like you, as songs are the greatest vheicole of learning.

I wish you a a joyful year with loads of fun with your guitars :blush:

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Thanks Rick really glad to hear it from you as I know you are not a type of guy who gives pats on the back without any reason! :smile:

@DavidP many thanks and glad you also think new pickups are sounding better. Yes I tried to keep settings to pretty much same they were during the recording, obviously few weeks have passed so in the meantime some tiny tweaks in volume or tone knobs could have happended but main patch was the same. And thanks for appreciating BB, that was definitely the fastest one I have done so far! :laughing:

Silvia, James, Rogier and Toby - many thanks for appreciation and stopping by at each post I make, this pretty much gives me a kick to keep on keeping on :grinning:

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Very nice looking studio and the list of the songs that you’ve learned is just massive :open_mouth:.

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Thanks Radek as probably you’ve noticed with more time spent in here amount of recordings grow too so I am sure if you stick at it your collection will grow too! :slight_smile: all the best

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Man this is impressive. I need to start working on one of these!

I’ll have to reread through this several times, but your growing repertoire is impressive, as is your studio! Keep up the good work!

The growth of your guitar ability (and confidence) should be an inspiration to anybody in this forum.

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I don’t know how much do you practice but list of my recordings is not even half as long despite of almost 2,000h of work :sweat_smile:. Respect!

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2000 hours?! Blimey that’s a lot :grinning: assuming 1hr a day for 3 years tallies up to mere 1095 hours. Although I do not count amount of time spent on practice diligently but getting 2 hrs a day happens almost never and I am travelling couple weeks a year on average so that’s no guitar time too. So safe to say 1095 hours is more or less my number probably!

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Thanks Travis you have some pretty impressive amount of songs under your belt too so nothing to be shy about :wink:

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Then it is even more impressive how well you can organise you practice time. I can dedicate 2,5-3h 6 days a week (with occasional hiccups) but don’t think I’m very efficient.

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To be fair last year I really was only learning songs and new techniques only with new songs coming. I reckon if I spent more time on musicality in general I would have less songs under my belt. That is the plan for this year BUT there are so many great songs I might as well do the same thing this year again after all :grinning:

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Hey everybody, hope you all doing well you beautiful people! I haven’t done any update recently and also been very absent over past months, so as an apology/explanation just wanted to share with you what I have been up to and why I’ve been more quiet than usual. :grin:

Basically all in life goes well. Since my promotion early in 2023 I had lots of learning to do about other parts of my geeky place of work and also I was picking up a lot of slack left after sudden health related departure of my predecessor. More responsibilities, but in a good way, took huge chunk of my time when I was able to lurk at community in slower moments at work, replaced it with actual work (sigh :pensive:)! I have managed to built a little team of my own, learnt a lot of new tricks (I love chatgpt and I am proud to say so! :grinning:) and basically get all bits and pieces together. I am now onto another tasks to fix what’s been broken for years and looking forward to it.

Speaking of a geeky place - here is a cool picture from one of synchatrons we have on our site. Any geeks with questions let me know :grinning:

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Surely work is not my only excuse to go quiet? It is NOT! Some of you might be aware that I started a refurbishment of my living room which took a lot longer than I expected it to be! I knew some basics as it goes for general building skills, I am pretty good with electrics, so at least that bit went well. But general building as much as it was rewarding, at moments it’s been absolutely soul destroying! Just before my current holidays we managed to pretty much close out the skirting and doors stage of works, which mostly allows to say big refurb is done. Now it’s only minor elements to enhance the room. A few more months of steadiness and I have whole upstairs to do, but to be fair only flooring and wall decorating. Stairs I will leave to someone else to do!

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Okay so I did some work stuff, some refurb stuff, that’s it?! No it is not! We have done some fair bit of travelling finally and that’s been on hold because of covid and buying a new house in last few years. With new job and bit more works done we went quite crazy this year and managed to see really amazing places! We have visited Oahu and Kauai, which was such an amazing experience! Fell in love with snorkelling and looking forward to my next journey where I can put my mask on :bat::grinning: swam with lots of fish, sea turtles, even spinner dolphins (literally 3m below us) - awesome!

We are now we are in Italy visiting Toscany, and later this year we are planning to go to New York Comic Con and back to our families for Christmas. So yea lots of travels! Few pics from Hawaii below, such a paradise!

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We also went to Download festival, and it was awesome! They called it downpour this year, as raining was bit extreme, but it didnt spoil the fun to us! Really cool bands we saw, from big headliners like Queen of Stone Age, Fall Out Boys, Limp Bizkit, The Offspring, Sum41, to ones like Hoobastank, Wheatus and to what was most positively surprising gig of all - Billy Talent! Man it was like on record, best or second best live concert I have heard quality wise if you compare covers to the record! I would post a video but those are not possible to add here unless its via proxy service. Wheatus and Teenage Dirtbag was great during a secret midnight gig available to campers only, but main gig was way overcrowded!

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Me and my wife also did our life in the UK test, and been granted British citizenship! I was surprised passport had black and not blue cover, but anyway might be the case we were branded as black sheep! (Politics joke ahead, look away if sensitive, mods feel free to delete if inappropriate!) so bugger off Mr Farage, you won’t ever get us out that easily :rofl:

And with all that time utilised for something else, I have been a little selfish and kept community time to bare minimum (a visit every few weeks). Hoping this will improve moving forwards, and on the bright side guitar time is always there, never skip a practice and hopefully my next OM set will bring some excitement and new set of skills. For those of you who actually read it all here is a little spoiler - there will be looper, lots of fx, hopefully facial emotions (wink wink Luka), feedback, and debut of my “new” (bought last November) guitar :rofl: stay tuned!

I am also still hyped up about my collab with good old JK on Brothers in Arms. I know its been months, but I keep coming back to it every now and then and it was such a great experience! Need to think about the next project and will issue some EOI hopefully in next few months time. I have quite a funny idea, but not sure even what song to target! :grin:

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No wonder you’ve been awol laddie !! That’s a heck of a lot going on in your life and all good things, even the work challenges. Also good to see you have been getting some breaks and travelling, as it will balance out all the other :poop: Really stoked (am I allowed to say that ?) about the citizenship, that is really good news. Look forward to hear you playing, when the time comes.

Good to see you back ! :wave:

:sunglasses:

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Thanks Toby! I must say in a personal sphere this was pretty darn good year, and still lots to come!

As for playing lets hope all goes well for COM! Coming back today home so will start fiddling with the tech on my refreshed laptop and will need to get my fingers warmed up for next couple of weeks :grinning:

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