Category Archives: Activity

Goal: Brouwer – Learn Etude 1

Project: Classical Guitar

Activity: Polish entire piece

Time Spent: 15 mins

Notes:

when do you know that a repertoire piece is ready for recording ? Well, for me is when I get to the point that I can play it with my eyes closed. When I find myself “observing” myself play the piece. When I find myself thinking about the emotions instead of the notes.

Of course, putting that up to the mirror is the key. So I now need to do that and put this down in Logic Pro.

Goal: La Catedral

Project: Classical Guitar

Activity: Learn 3rd Movement

Time Spent: 17 mins

Notes:

picking speed is in the viscinity of John William’s performance. However, I still cramp up my hand and especially the left thumb because of the held barre chords. Think I need to do some independent “muscle” only work to build the stamina. All in all , I’m getting through the run faster and smoother.

Goal: JM Verdiales Grade 0

Project: Classical Guitar

Activity:

Time Spent: 37 mins

Notes:

This flamenco study focuses on thumb picking. I vary between picking solely using the thumb i.e. where the thumb moves freely to picking with the thumb as an extension of the wrist i,e, where I lock the thumb on to my first finger and move it as an extenion of the wrist. Both useful. The latter key in performing dowward slip picking and full swipes.

The free thumb comes into play when working on a second technicasl aspect of the study which occurs in measures 5 – 8. Here the thumb plays the same melody but the first finger (i) plays a pedal open E on the top string. Very typical flamenco.

Mix: So May It Secretly Begin

Project: Studio

Activity: Drums for Intro (8 bars)

Time Spent: 109 mins

Notes:

some tech difficulties today, first started with an annoying hum in my headset, I had moved a power strip into my rack bay cavity since I fear that it would get wet, we were getting tons of water coming from the back of our neighbor.

Secondly, can’t find a way of setting my locators start / end in Logic Pro X to the start / end of an arrangement section. Arrangment sections are a new feature in LPX which allow you to divide your tracks into music sections and thus then allowing one to move them and re-arrange

Added kick and snare accents to bars 7 and 8, btw, the project has a pickup bar so the intro actually starts on bar 2.
Overall, getting closer. When I superimpose my drum tracks on top of the original one can’t hear any overlapping flams etc

JM Verdiales Grade 0

Project: Classical Guitar

Activity: Bars 1 – 16

Time Spent: 40 mins

Notes:

I now have the “rasgueado” at bar #10 up to speed , the key is not to extend the rasgueado stroke up through the top E string i.e. 5432