C6 Kansas City Continued

Well It is Sunday and the start to a new week. I only got 8 hours of practice last week. I lost 5 hours yesterday as I was down with a touch of food poisoning. So today I will try and make up some time. I got about 2 hours practice in before my lesson. My right hand finger position is getting better. I am not fumbling around to find my string chord positions like I was on Friday. I am successfully keeping my right hand over the pickups as I practice. I am also able to keep my pinky on my left hand down on the strings as I use the tone bar. So my little victories over some bad habits. When I leave my lesson, I turn off the radio and drive home with only the lesson playing in my head. When I get home I immediately set up in my music room and go over my lesson a couple of times before I get dinner which is usually waiting for me. After dinner, I go up and practtice. Tonight I practiced for 1 hour giving me a total of 4 hours so far for the week. I have practiced all the songs I have learned and relearned 7 in all then also practice my current lesson. Remember my discussion in a previous post about Together Again? That bar slanting technique that will take me 10 years to perfect? Well I am continuing to practice that small part daily as well.

I did do it! I took my violin and had my instructor tune it for me and I am just going to practice pulling the bow across the strings. I am not going to worry about finger positions until next week. If it gets to be too much I will put it down for a while. I did not realize how much I missed learning the violin. I must be a glutton for pain! LOL. After I finished practicing on my steel guitar I spent about 5 minutes practicing on the violin. My short practice was successful as I drew the bow across all the strings without the screech. However, I was not able to cleanly draw across the D and A strings as I kept getting the G and E strings and I was sometimes getting a harmonic.

The techinques I am using in the song Kansas City include:

1. Single string picking and slide
2. Forward roll
3. 3 string chord picking with palm blocking.

I am still focusing on precision. Is the bar where I think it is? If not start over and try again. Is the roll timed well from the slide where it sounds like a single chord? Is the timing between chord picking correct? Is my left hand staying where it needs to be. Is my left hand where it needs to be and am I holding the tone bar correctly.

My lesson tonight was good. Learned the next few chords to Kansas City on the C6 neck. Taking me right into second octave right from the start. No pedals or levers yet. This is good as it is giving me time to acclimate to the C6 neck. I have 3 center levers dedicated to the C6 neck, I have to adjust my seated position so my left knee is between these levers. These levers are situated approximately between the 7th and 12th frets. This new position changes my perspective on the bar illusion and seems to make it easier to be more precise.

I have tonight and tomorrow after work to practice this new phrase and smooth it out before my next lesson. Posting on a regular basis is helping me keep track of my practice time and gives me a reference back on problem areas and when discourage can read about my own progress. I will post again Tuesday evening after my lesson.