I’m nursing a couple of blisters on my fingers, so I figured better to write just now. I watched Rig Rundown for quite a bit on YouTube. Vernon Reid and Uli Jon Roth were among my favorites. I’ve also seen great rundowns with Doyle Bramhall, Santana’s tech, what’s-his-name, the country guitar player from Maine (monster player)…dammit, I can’t remember his fucking name, though I can see his face and hear his playing…Johnny Hiland! That’s the dude. Tremendous musician. Oh, and Derek Trucks. Man, that guy’s tone is all in his hands.

Let me trip a bit more on my musical practice. Let’s see if I can organize things according to the categories of rhythm, harmony, melody, and timbre:

  • Rhythm: use a metronome, practice grooves and changes, scales and arpeggios; fingerstyle playing along with a metronome, giving myself an option to play these tunes as groove tunes rather than only as legato statements; practice comping along with great jazz records, making up my own parts as if I am a member of the band; get some hand percussion instruments and practice basic rhythms along with recordings of cool rhythm sections…

  • Harmony: fingerstyle playing, analyze the chord progressions in the Howard Morgen fingerstyle arrangements; reharmonize some tunes so I can begin to morph these fingerstyle arrangements into my own style; continue on with Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony, doing all the exercises in multiple keys, sing the various voices in solfege, play them at the piano and on guitar, develop any exercises that could become jazz changes for practice and composition; sing stuff at the piano, reading from scores; work on my piano playing so I can again use it for composition; work on my midi skills…

  • Melody: fingerstyle playing; the Real Book & various lead sheets I have collected since Berklee; the Charlie Parker Omnibook, literally everything is priceless, but focus on blues and rhythm changes, including “Barbados” as a blues form; work on my pickstyle single-note playing; work on my electric bottleneck technique, developing slide melodies for tunes in various keys in both Open-D/E and Open-G/A; work out whether I like the more slack Open-D and Open-G tunings for electric, or the higher tuned Open-E and Open-A, I think Derek Trucks prefers Open-E, I suppose also I should learn what my vocal range is like in these tunings;
    • let me think for a minute on the various keys I can play in various open tunings, in open-D I should be able to play in D, G, A, while in open-E I can play in E, A, B; if I tuned in open-D I could get used to using a capo for stuff that could be in open-E-flat (capo first fret) and open-E (capo second fret), open-Eb tuning brings in the keys of E-flat, A-flat, and B-flat, and if I could stand a capo at the 3rd fret I could get the keys F, B-flat, and C;
    • All of the keys that can be played from open-D and using a capo: D, E-flat, E, F, G, A-flat, A, B-flat, B, C
    • Keys available in open-G tuning with a capo: G, C, D, A-flat, D-flat, E-flat, A, D, E, B-flat, E-flat, F
    • Work on the strengths of various keys in the basic open-D (D, G, A) and open-G (G, C, D) tunings; get more comfortable with the capo; try singing in each key, measuring my vocal range in each key
  • Timbre: work on getting my tone together for both fingerstyle and pickstyle guitar playing; setup an instrument for electric bottleneck playing so I can begin getting my sound together; swap my 410 Fender amp for a Princeton Reverb or a Twin Reverb, preferably an amp with tremolo as well as reverb; try some sort of an analog reverb pedal to try out pedal reverb versus amp reverb, loads of great guitarists on the Rig Rundowns are using reverb pedals, some even using cool digital pedals, which I normally hate, but I’m beginning to see how they might be helpful, man, I want to get my hands on a Digitech Whammy pedal, it sounds so incredibly cool the way Vernon Reid and Doug Wimbish use that pedal…