by koree After a long allergy season, I’m back to writing and practicing as I should be. Hoping to complete at least a demo version of an EP by the end of this summer.
I’ve found that one of my challenges in songwriting is that I hate my voice. Not the way I write, but I mean my actual physical voice. I have to stop letting that cloud my judgement, push through, and just focus on the message being delivered.
In the mean time, I’m also going to try to work on making my voice not suck.
by koree This is a sad time. However, I have been thinking a lot about why this death is more sad than that of anyone else. Death is a very natural thing. We all feel loss when someone close to us passes, but for the majority, if not all, of people reading this, none were close to Michael Jackson personally. Those of us in the 30-50 year-old range feel a great loss because a significant part of our childhood was just ripped away. We have never known a time when Michael Jackson wasn’t alive and in our faces. His music has been the soundtrack to many parts of our own lives. We are mourning the loss of our own innocence today, just like many of our parents and grandparents felt when Elvis died. I think this is something that every generation has to endure in order to truly grow up.
I also think growing up sorta sucks.
by koree I’m going to be updating weekly with my current guitar practice routines, just in case anyone is interested in trying these out. Right now, I have just finished tabbing out my daily exercise. This includes some scales that I play every day, plus a little bit of extra stuff that I’m working on currently. This routine changes all the time, and I’ll repost it occasionally when it has been updated.
The practice routine currently includes a four-fret exercise for finger dexterity, the blues minor scale, the harmonic minor scale, and a set of triplet arpeggios in a I III V vii ii III progression. This workout is meant to be played several times in a practice session, starting at a low BPM (such as 40 or 60), and then bringing the BPM up 5 to 10 each time it is played. Once you have reached the maximum speed at which you can play the workout, try to edge the metronome up 1 or 2 BPM at a time until you cannot play the part anymore. This will allow you to push just a little further, and that’s where the speed increase comes from!
You can find a PDF of the lesson here.
Have fun, and good shredding!