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Innovation with Sleigh Bells
A lot of the time when starting our daily lessons my brain is firing on 3 cylinders and the super charger is not functioning. I’ve just gotten up and don’t drink coffee, so I’m not a real functioning individual yet. I, groggily, fumble through the lesson and say OK, that is out of the way for the day and begin my daily functions.
As I’m doing chores or going for my walk my brain finally starts working and sub-consciously, I am going through the guitar lesson in my brain finally firing on all cylinders. For whatever reason I’m thinking about how I can improve or change what I just practiced a few minutes ago. As I have a few different techniques that I have learned over time I change the arrangement I’ve just practiced. Today was not different from yesterday’s lesson thoughts and I made some changes to how I played the lesson.
We practiced 2 measures of a E measure lick that has a nice tone to it. But I was dissecting the different notes and and ended up enhancing different notes of the arrangement that also affected the way I played yesterday’s lesson.
On the first measure I ended up using a hammer on for the beginning B string 3rd note to the 5th note and on beat 3 and I used a pull off from the E string 3rd fret to the open string and hammered on the B open string to the 3rd fret with my index finger. I didn’t use this every time through just as a different flavor once and a while.
Measure 2 is really ripe for innovation. The 1st beat is a slide up one fret to the B/3, G/4 position. I found it easier to leave my index finger on the 3rd fret B string from the previous measure and hammer on the open G string to the 4th fret for beats 1 and. For beats 3 and 4 and I would either slide back form the 4th fret G string position to the 2nd fret , or do a pull off, to get from fret 4 to fret 2. To finish out the “and” portion of the 3rd beat I would do a Pull off to the open string or pick the open string. Beat 4 can be a D string 2nd fret pick or another hammer on from the open sting to the 2nd fret. I then went back to yesterdays Nice List, Naughty list Lesson and added some mainly hammer on’s where slides are used in the lesson.
I usually didn’t use all of these techniques on every picking motion, just mixed them in for flavor.
Tell me what you came up with to enhance different lessons. Be sure to nail down slides, hammer on’s, pull offs as soon as you can to help you develop your own way of picking different patterns.
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4 Replies
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I can’t even compete or expound upon what you’ve just outlined. I’m a sporadic daily person. I get up every day saying you’re gonna do the daily and it really happens. I do pick up the guitar every day, but I really should get back to the daily lessons and I took lessons from a local instructor years ago, and I was with TAC then, he commented that he was very surprised at how advanced I was for having picked up. The guitar may be a year earlier or whatever and he never challenged me or put downTAC and any manner in fact, he often wanted to know what I was working on that week and we would play around with it then that was fun. It really was and I haven’t done it in a long time and I probably should. I’m just not an improv player. I was a faithful daily challenge player, and I’m not sure when it stopped being daily probably at undo with some medical issues or just work issues that got in the way.
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@Loraine are you able to play with less pain now or is the wrist (or any other parts of your arm or hand) still giving you a lot of trouble? Has it been getting better since your most recent surgery? Sorry if you already posted a report recently and I missed it.
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Hi Pete, I still have quite a bit of pain. I got a steroid injection about a month ago. The doctor tried them twice before and they didn’t work. The pain was excruciating a month ago. This one actually helped. I see him tomorrow, and he’s giving me another. He’s leaving practice, and I’m heartbroken. I really liked him, and he took it very seriously when I said I had to be able to play.
He said whoever the new surgeon is that I see will probably be quite shocked at the condition of my wrist because it’s deformed from all the bones being shifted to the right from the force of the fall. He was hoping they would’ve fallen back into place naturally but that’s what’s causing the pain basically is my wrist and finger bones. All being shifted to the right and he said the only way to repair it was they have to cut out part of the bone and then they have to fuse the middle finger. I was horrified. I said I won’t be able to play guitar! And he said that’s why he never did the fourth surgery so now I have to see another surgeon. I’m afraid that he’s gonna push me to get the surgery.
I hadn’t seen my old guitar teacher for over a year. I contacted him to ask his assistance with something. He had never seen my wrist and was shocked that I could play after the large number of breaks, the deformity, the chronic pain. He was shocked I wouldn’t let them do the 4th surgery. I said you don’t understand, the guitar and TAC community saved my life. I’m not sure what I would do without it. It is a part of me now.
Anyway, @jorgemac I’ve very selfishly hijacked your post, and made it about me, I’m sooo sorry.
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you are one of the shining lights of this website and it is always wonderful to hear from you. As I always say to you you, hang in there and keep on chugglin.
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