So I haven’t done one of these yet even though I joined this forum a while ago but I had three successes in a row tonight so and I wanted to share somewhere and to have something to look back on next time I’m (inevitably) frustrated with the guitar. I picked up the guitar again this year after quite a few years away and I finally feel like I’m nearing the level of playing I was at back when I really seriously practiced in my early 20s.
Back then I really struggled to play faster solos, which was a problem for me then, since I was obsessed with Guns 'N Roses and only wanted to sound like Slash. I remember the first full-length solo I learnt was ‘Stranger Things Have Happened’ by the Foo Fighters and no matter how much I played it slowly, I could never seem to play the last section along to the recording at speed. I decided to re-learn the song (and solo) a couple of weeks ago, and predictably, hit a wall with that section of the solo. Tonight I finally managed to crack it and played it at full speed twice in a row. I’ll probably need to keep practicing to make it stick but I’m so pleased. I’m not gunning to be the next Steve Vai, but it’s nice to know I can actually play at least one thing I used to think was just too fast for me. I think a huge help was getting my rhythm and timing sorted (finding out I was dropping and gaining beats at random when I was playing without a track was extremely helpful - a couple of weeks counting out loud to a metronome seems to have helped a lot)
The second thing I managed tonight was to finish transcribing a song that wasn’t recommended to me as a good song for a beginner to transcribe. I picked ‘Archbishop Harold Holmes’ by Jack White, since it didn’t sound too complicated when I listened to it. The last fill took me a little bit of time to work out but otherwise it wasn’t too tricky. Again, I’ll need a bit of time to play it at speed, but I have the skeleton worked out now, which again I’m pretty pleased with.
Finally I put together a riff and a chord progression to go with it, and it sounds ok. Part of what I wanted when I started playing again was to write music that interested me, and it definitely sounds like the start of a song I wouldn’t hate. I’ll need to flesh it out and add some more parts, but it’s the most promising my creative output has looked over the last few months.
Overall I’m feeling oddly relieved. I’ve almost hit my old level of playing (really the only difference is I’m not learning songs as quickly as I used to and my technique is slightly shakier but I’m improving very quickly right now) and I’ve managed to punch through a couple of barriers (quicker playing, transcribing) that I used to really struggle with.
Anyway, I think my routine for the summer is going to look pretty similar to now: Warming up with scales and exercises to a metronome, working on things I’ve been learning (or learning new things and working on those), repertoire, transcribing, then just general noodling. It seems to have made something click at any rate.
