Quoting from Mark Twain "The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated" is true for me given my unexplained absence. Last month I was on travel status for a week. Upon returning from my business trip I had minor surgery to fix ingrown toenails that I have had since high school. Yes I know I am a procrastinator and more so I have an aversion to pain inflicted by surgery. Yet the daily pain became the driving influence to seek medical assistance. An hour after walking into the doctors office I was hobbling out. It has been four weeks and I am almost totally healed on one toe and about 80% healed on the other. During my initial recovery I could not play my steel guitar because I could not operate the pedals or the volume pedal. I could not set up or tear down my guitar. Since I have two guitars my instructor graciously let me bring one guitar to his studio and my instructor set up my guitar and allowed me too leave it in his studio. I have been back at it and have changed my schedule. It has become increasingly difficult to work all day, get home and eat dinner and practice. I decided that I would increase my lessons from 3 times a week to 6 days a week. My reason for this approach is that lessons 6 one hour lessons a week, I get more out of it than practicing 2 or 3 hours a night on my own. Now I have completed Kansas City and am now almost done with Walking After Midnight. My instructor is setting one lesson per week dedicated to precision and the other lessons to learning a song, ride, turnaround or such. He is also slowing down and including phrasing and timing with each lesson. I am also learning to train my ear. My lesson here is when I use my tuner and tune my guitar, I pick E repeatedly and burn that pitch into my mind. My instructor tells me with the knowledge of the E pitch I can tune all other strings. While I do not understand yet, I will have faith and do it.
The other issue I had at this time was my Fender twin reverb amp developed problems. I took it in and it took 3 weeks to get repaired. During the absence of my beloved tube amp, I reinforced why I hate digital amps. Thank God my baby is back.
Some housekeeping, I said in an earlier post, I had figured out how to use Tabledit and would share my new found knowledge. I have not forgotten and I will add this post later. In learning Tabledit, I have been entering Steel Guitar Rag since I know the song. This leads me to the next piece of housekeeping.
I have always wanted to share how to play the steel guitar. I have scheduled time in a couple of months to record audio and video of learning the steel guitar. The plan is to record techniques needed for the song in question. I also need a video camera to record the lessons. In my opinion a cheap video camera is not an option. When I obtain the video camera of the quality I need I will record a lessons for Steel Guitar Rag to start. Other housekeeping I need to discuss are driven by you the reader.
I always review which of my posts get the most views as well as what searches are entered by you. The majority of what I have seen centers around learning, techniques, tablature, and equipment selection. So I will include posts on these topic areas and lessons will include these topic areas. Be patient as I need to do some research to back up what I share with you.
