blows away cobwebs Tap, tap “Is this thing on?” 
I’m back with a long overdue update to my LL. I’ve had a bit of a change in direction over the past few months and so I figured this was a good place to document that. This may be a long one, so kudos to you if you make it to the end 
Since I started this log, I have hit one of my original documented goals, which was to play with others and form a band. Many of you reading this have likely already seen my band, DyeV, perform at the community OMs. Playing with others is an incredible experience and I feel very fortunate that I have the opportunity to do so. Our band recently had a bit of a break in our regular practice schedule due to illness and travel, but when we reconvened it was obvious how much fun we all have playing together.
Since DyeV has formed, a large portion of my guitar playing time has revolved around writing and developing original music 
For me, this has been a BIG switch in my thinking about guitar. If you had asked me even 6 months ago if I would be writing my own songs, I would have laughed at you. My focus was exclusively covers and I had no ambition to change that path. Since writing our first two songs it’s like I’ve unlocked some area in my brain that was holding them all back. Now as a band we have a total of 4 songs mostly completed with more in the works. Our goal right now is to try and get at least 10 originals written and performance ready.
I’ve discovered that I really like writing song lyrics. I used to write a lot of poetry in high school and even though I am well beyond that now, I can see little tinges of the kind of stuff I used to write coming out in my music. Funny how that happens. I do feel like my lyrical style tends to have a very “stick it to the man” type feel 
I would like to try and explore other themes as well so our songs don’t sound repetitive. When Dan writes songs on his own, his lyrics tend to be a bit more happy/positive so we balance each other well when we write stuff together.
Stylistically, I like the direction we are going with our sound. I love that 90s garage band rock/punk sound that is harder to find in popular music now. That was the type of music I grew up listening to and it’s just what I prefer. Plus it is SUPER fun to play.
Now here is the part where the “learning”comes into play. I do feel like I need to spend some more quality time with music theory and scales. I feel somewhat limited in my ability to write more complex/interesting sounding guitar solos and lead lines. Though I’m happy with what I have come up with so far, I think furthering my knowledge here will go a long way with helping me develop my music. The first guitar solo I wrote was pentatonic based and while I’m very happy with it, I know there is a whole world out there of playing that I haven’t even scratched the surface of yet. It’s a work in progress and I’ll get there.
I also realized that learning covers is really helping me develop different techniques that I like to use in my own music. As such, I try to throw at least one cover into my practice that stretches my ability so that I don’t just continue to play stuff that I can already do well. I’m currently trying to work on the song Bogus Operandi by the Hives as kind of a solo project for myself. I’d like to be able to record the song with me playing all the guitar parts and vocals. This song is a good mix of things I can do easily and things that stretch me and learning both the lead and rhythm parts is fun.
DyeV has started talking about potential places we could start playing live. It’s a bit tricky since we have two teenagers in the band. There is a local festival here over the Summer that I would really love to play at. I don’t know if we will be ready by Summer to apply to perform, but part of me also just wants to throw caution to the wind and try. We will see.
Going along with the live playing aspect is the fact that I feel like our band could really use a sound engineer None of us are really good at that part since we are all just artists that like to perform. My knowledge is also very limited in this arena. I feel like before we can play live, we need to try and sort out that side of things as well.
Finally, our ultimate goal as a band is to be able to record a full album. We are going to start with one song at a local music studio and see how it goes. If we like the final version of the first song, we were going to see about possibly doing a full album. Again, we will see how it goes, but I’m excited for the prospect.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Tomorrow marks 2 1/2 years since I picked up the guitar and I am constantly in awe of how much my life has changed for the better due to this instrument 