More Notes From the Beginning Guitarist

Went to David and Nancy's in Redwood City last night and had dinner with them (note to self: Thai mint chicken is good, get that in future). It was really great to see them again. Haven't seen David in months and Nancy has gone on to better things at shutterfly, so no more impromptu lunches with her any more. :-( They both seem to be enjoying their respective gigs, so that made me happy to know. I got there kinda late because I was representing my peeps in the coretech band at their sweet gig Friday night.

(Side note: Work was actually tolerable Friday (sort of) given I didn't get in until late and left early (5pm) and there was a baby shower in between. Not that I got much work done, but that's another story.)

After dinner I went into David's recording studio (formerly their 2 (3?) car garage before the Great Remodel) which is now stuffed with gear. I learned a number of things:

• My hand position is pretty bad:
  • My left thumb needs to pinch the guitar more (with the flesh pressing along the neck, not the the thumb tip) to allow better rotation and put less stress on my wrists, instead of rolling over the top (except for barre chords) or pointing down the neck of the guitar.
  • I need to loosen up my stance on my picking hand, letting my ring finger and pinky drift onto the pick guard as needed.
• You can make different sounds (and I mean really different sounds) with the same chord pattern just by changing how you strum.(!) I was watching David strum some riffs and noticed his chording hand wasn't moving at all. Damn.
• Chords are based on mathematical relationships between the harmonics of the primary notes. What exactly this relationship is is not clear to me (got kinda lost) although I guess frequently (often?) they use the odd numbered sections (1-3-5-7) parts of the subdivided frequency (in triads - groups of three notes) in scales. Like I said, I got kinda lost in the details. I need to get a book on music theory or something, because it's all very mysterious to me.
• Guitars are strung to make these chord patterns easier to play physically (and it mostly works out).
• I need to get a metronome.
• Try playing sus chords (which differ from their related chords by 1 note) to learn how to be able to do transitions from chords. Also, get the muscle memory of where the chord patterns are so I can move between the chords without having to think about the hand position. (duh)
• Scales (chords?) are frequently arranged to create tension (dissonance) that we want to hear resolved (consonance).
• Pay attention to my practicing and I if I get sloppy with my hand position or the sound or the timing, stop and reexamine what I need to be doing. Do lots of fingering exercises to improve my strumming patterns, timing, and stretching.
• My guitar strap, despite my earlier claims to the contrary, can be lengthened. Dumbass.

Well, guess I should get to practicing some more. :-)

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Listening to: N.I.B. from the album We Sold Our Soul for Rock'n'Roll by Black Sabbath