Monday, February 4, 2013

C6 Kansas City Continued -- Detour

Well sometimes life gets in the way. I was unable to practice Friday or Saturday, so my total hours of practice for last week was at 9. Today is a day of mixed emotions. Today is the Superbowl YAY Go 49'ers. All of my office mates are rooting for the Ravens. Today trash talk and tomorrow some will be eating crow. All in good fun. Today is also the one year anniversary of my Dad's passing. Weather is the same as it was last year -- cold and gray. Melancholy feelings are not present, I am at peace and remember the good times and good conversations he and I had. While I do miss him very much,  I celebrate his life and the gifts he gave me that cannot be measured and are always deeply personal. Time to get back on track.

I am excited today as my instructor will be coming over to my house for my lesson. He has not seen my studio since I reorganized it and besides that, I bribed him with a spaghetti dinner! LOL. He is a good friend as well. Dinners are meant to be shared with family and friends.

First thing today, I had to relearn last Thursday's lesson and integrate new parts to the song. Last Thursdays lessons used some single note picking and added some string racking and slides and introduced me to the 7th pedal. Like the E9 neck where my first steps to the pedal were in Blue Hawaii and were basic, so it seems we repeat the process on the C6 neck.

Once I had this relearned we decided we needed a break. After all it is Superbowl Sunday, so we watched the game and had a good dinner. After dinner we played around with and talked about effects.

I have had a wah-wah pedal but never used it upon advice from my instructor. His idea is there is much to learn about correctly playing the steel guitar before looking at effects. Effects pedals will mask inconsistencies in your playing technique whereas perfecting technique will provide for a more effective effect when you do add them. We plugged in the wah wah pedal and he showed me how to use it on a couple of songs I have learned already. We looked online at other effects pedals and discussed their uses.

I think I have a lot more to learn before I start looking or incorporating effects.
I only got 9 hours of practice in last week and I am at a deficit this week havibng blown off Sunday.

Time to focus on practicing Monday night and get back on track.

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