Fashionably Late to the New Year

This blog will always be “the other woman” of my blogs. It probably could be more, but the same can be said of many things.

So, this is 2007. Feels a lot like 2006, which felt a lot like any other year in the 2000s, which felt a lot like any year in the ’90s. I dunno, maybe I’m just getting old. Everything looks the same after you’ve looked at it long enough, you know?

I’m making good progress on the book. It’s like any other job — some days are better than others. Sometimes I have to fight a little more, and that’s cool. If I didn’t have to fight every so often, then I’d have to question whether it was even worth doing.

One thing I’m learning is that I really need to take the occasional day off. This is very difficult for me, but yesterday I forced myself to stay away from the computer or anything related to the book. I thought about stuff a few times and sort of rolled with those thoughts until my mind drifted, as minds will do, to other topics.

With no actual “work” to do on Sunday, I filled the day working on a couple other aspects of my life I’d like to develop more this year. First, my wife and I went out for a good 3 1/2 mile walk down by Fiesta Island at Mission Bay Park. We’ve gotten out of the habit of walking, so we’re trying to ease our way back into it. Kept a decent pace — took just under an hour. Eventually we’ll get back to our 8+ mile walks around the bay. Those always leave us exhausted but with a real sense of accomplishment. Everything in life seems a little better after a long walk.

The other thing I did was bust out my 12-string guitar and play. I actually jammed with an old friend of mine last month, which meant the guitar got cleaned up real nice.

I fired up the latest Neko Case CD and tried to play along as best I could. Since I’d forbidden myself from using the computer, I had no tablature. Sometimes that kind of restriction can be a good thing. In this case, it forced me to work on my listening skills. Some of her stuff is tricky because I think she uses a lot of 7th and 9th chords (and some that sound diminished), but I was able to pick up most of “Hold On, Hold On.”

I also did some finger exercises — scale work. I’ve developed a legato style to soloing in large part because I find scale work unbelievably tedious and never have put in the reps necessary to build good coordination of both hands. But it’s a weakness, and something that probably needs attention.

The other thing I worked on was chord inversions. I’m pretty handy with major triads on the top three strings, but I’d like to get automatic with minor triads and major 7th as well. Those can be very useful when you’re playing with other guitarists and want to avoid duplicating what everyone else is doing. As I like to say, if you’ve got two guitar players in a band and both are doing the same thing, then at least one of them needs to be replaced with someone who knows how to play the instrument.

Well, that’s my word count for the month. Peace…

On this day…

• 2008: Five-Point Plan — Slight revision:

  Finish writing the book.
  Publish the book.
  Find a semi-regular gig that pays actual money.
  Rule the world.
  Think of a fifth point.

  That [...]

• 2006: Stayin’ Alive: Finished — Just getting this one off the plate. A few quick performance notes:

  The vocal is slightly flat at the very beginning. [...]

• 2006: Where Have I Been? — Well, that is a very good question. Physically, I have remained more or less where I am. But in other [...]