blog Guitar Practice Notes, Files and Thoughts

[admin]

In these blog I want write about my practice routines on guitar to give you an impression what I am working on. Some exercises are really a long lasting project and some just for a certain time.

I always start my guitar practicing with these classical arpeggio exercises and I play all of them first slow, then medium tempo and sometimes I try them faster. One of the main problems on these exercises is, that the left hand fingering is quite challenging since the intervals are either 5ths or 6ths or similar and you need to skip the strings in certain positions and sometimes you need to make small barré fingerings - this in combination with the picking technique make this exercise really demanding but it is extremly helpful for flexibility in any improvisation situation where I want to play chords with a let ring effect and also for orientation on chords.

 

[admin]

Since I have a trio now with drum, bass and me one guitar I will work out more things which work out in a trio formation. It's quite a challenge to create a really cool sound. The goal is that each instrument has a lot of space for an individual expression and the guitar work will be challenging since this is some uncharted territory and I want to create a full sound with a combination of playing technique with chords, chords and melody at the same time and some " let - ring " licks and then add it up with delay and pitch shifter effects. It's going to be quite a challenge but I am looking forward to that.

The song material at the moment is quite simple. Most of the songs are covers from rock, pop, easy jazz and blues or blues rock.

[Greg]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

Since I have a trio now with drum, bass and me one guitar I will work out more things which work out in a trio formation. It's quite a challenge to create a really cool sound. The goal is that each instrument has a lot of space for an individual expression and the guitar work will be challenging since this is some uncharted territory and I want to create a full sound with a combination of playing technique with chords, chords and melody at the same time and some " let - ring " licks and then add it up with delay and pitch shifter effects. It's going to be quite a challenge but I am looking forward to that.

The song material at the moment is quite simple. Most of the songs are covers from rock, pop, easy jazz and blues or blues rock.

Looking forward to a combination with chords and melody piece!

[admin]

Here todays note on my Facebook page :

Quote

In the course of the current changes on the outside as well as on the inside, I have now decided to put my creativity at the center of my work again. This time I will pursue it more uncompromisingly than before my break. One of my decisions is that I will no longer play events as a musician (i.e. company events, birthday parties, weddings or similar), but will concentrate only on composition and my concert activities. These are my Farbmusik concerts and the Guitar Nights.
In this context - next Saturday 10.9.22 20:00 my next concert will take place. An improvised piano concert to colors in the small church in Seegräben. The next concert of 9.10. again in Seegräben I will then also play the guitar again. I had a personally very strict and demanding time the last months and I didn't have the time and energy to keep my guitar playing on " solo concert " level. But now I have started practicing again.
So next Saturday again only piano concert and then the guitar comes again in combination with the piano.

 

[admin]

On my last fullmoon concert which I started only on piano at the beginning of the year I announced that on the next concert on Oct. 9th I will bring back the solo guitar into the game. That means for me that I am starting to practice my finger style guitar songs on Farbmusik again and of course also my Touch Technique which more or less is in fact piano playing on the guitar. I must say this technique is really hard when you start to learn it. It's not only that you are doing 2 hand tapping. It's also the fact that you only have 6 strings on the regular guitar and the space is really limited. But I really love love love this technique on the 6 string guitar because it expands the creative expression on the regular guitar so much. But still I have bought a 7 string guitar now because I sometimes really would love to have one additional string.

Here you can download the tabs of a song played with touch technique free for all members :

And here you can listen to how it will sound at the end on a concert :

 

[admin]

Today I finally was able to start to work with my new concert sound system. I am doing small and medium solo concerts since 15 years and most of the time I have just been using an acoustic tranistor amplifier ( Roland AC 60 ) with the integrated digital reverb. It was always the big challenge to make the guitar sound full with only the minimal equipment. Creating the tone with only my main concert guitar ( Godin LGX with Saymour Duncan pickups ) the 3 different outputs this guitar has and the different pickup settings. It really takes a while till the playing technique matches the equipment - also in different room settings, meaning the acoustic of the venue one is playing. But it was time to let this equipment go and to have something more sophisticated and more suitable for the concerts which I am doing. But still I was nervous to change it because it took me years to get this routine on my old amplifier. So today I tested my new system. It's a pair of Bose SP1 Pro.

https://www.bose.ch/de_ch/products/speakers/portable_pa_speakers/s1_pro_system.html

They act like a small PA but also just as an acoustic guitar ampifier. The PA together with the sounds from my AXE FM3 live sound device is just awesome. These speakers are like studio monitors and bring a very detailed sound on the stage. But how is the sound just as the minimal equipment with only the internal digital reverb ?

It's AWESOME - even better then before. Very detailed, with some slight compression - not too much and with a very balanced signal which makes the guitar sound clear and crispy but still having a good bass buttom which is need for guitar solo performances with only guitar. First performance will be on oct 9th in the church in Seegräben. I am looking forward to it. All playing techniques work better then before so I hope I soon get back to my normal creativity on solo guitar on concerts. That might take a few shows since one needs to get back to the routine which can not be practiced at home.... 

[admin]

I am currently working on a new arpeggio technique beside the normal arpeggio technique with 7th chords. In this case I want to make them sound more open and more lyrical by adding a 9th extension at the end of the arpeggio. The 9th extensions are adapted from the modes which go along with the chord progression so that on the last chord the G7 you have a b9 extension and not a 9.

I want to make them sound as legato and fluent as possible so I decided to mix up the techniques with a hammer on at the beginning and then add sweep picking in some parts of the arpeggio. In fact it also works with alternate picking but still doing the hammer on at the beginning but if I do the sweep picking inserts then when I go to higher speed in fact it sounds more legato then only with alternate picking. I love these arpeggio ideas and it will take a while till I can include them automatically into any soloing. But that's the goal: to make the arpeggios sound more wide and more dreamy.

Here you can try them yourself if you want and listen to how they sound at the end.

 

[admin]

I am currently working a lot on open string chord progressions where I keep one open or more open strings as a pedal point in a compositon or a chord progression inside a composition. This one note which always rings through the progression is giving the whole sound a pedal like sound such as you might know from the piano and also gives it a mystical and lyric vibe. Here is a small example of a chord progression I am working on. It's in Am and goes through the chords Am9 / Fmaj7#11 / Dm6/11 / Cadd9 G6/B

E |--------------0-----------------------0-------------|
B |-----------0-----0-----------------0-----0----------|
G |--------12----------12----------12----------12------|
D |-----10----------------10----10----------------10---|
A |--12----------------------12------------------------|
E |----------------------------------------------------|

--------------0-----------------------0-------------|
-----------0-----0-----------------0-----0----------|
--------9-----------9-----------9-----------9-------|
-----7-----------------7-----7-----------------7----|
--8-----------------------8-------------------------|
----------------------------------------------------|

--------------0-----------------------0-------------|
-----------0-----0-----------------0-----0----------|
--------5-----------5-----------5-----------5-------|
-----3-----------------3-----3-----------------3----|
--5-----------------------5-------------------------|
----------------------------------------------------|

--------------0-----------------------0-------------||
-----------3-----3-----------------3-----3----------||
--------0-----------0-----------0-----------0-------||
-----2-----------------2-----0-----------------0----||
--3-----------------------2-------------------------||
----------------------------------------------------||

 

[admin]

Here now the start of the " new " HPCrazy initiative. New photo's, new logo and a new concept with more guitars - these will be integrated more over time. This is the Godin nylon guitar for flamenco and flamenco lounge or similar and new still the 7 - string guitar for new deep and earthy sounds. This ends my almost 3 year " forced - break " as a professional guitarist. I have a lot of ideas and it has indeed taken a few months until all the processes on the guitar have worked again as usual. And of course the body and the hands have to get used to the high loads again. I didn't think it would take so long. And the focus now goes clearly on my brand " HPCrazy " and guitar music in any way. Creative development of the instrument with modern means, sounds and playing techniques and what is very important to me - free from commercial expectations. Just let the art flow....

 

[admin]

Currently I am working a lot on sounds, playing techniques with sounds, expressions of notes with sounds just to make the guitar sound unique and that I have the ability to express each note like a singer would do. Which vibrato fits to which pickup, delay, reverb and amp setting. It's quite a work but I feel like this is a next step to my personal development of guitar playing. When you look back to the history of guitar players it was those players which had their unique sound embedded in their playing style which stayed even though there are in fact many great guitar players on this planet. This is what I am currently working on and it's really exciting... 

[admin]

These arpeggio exercises are currently in my daily practice routine. I play the full program every day which takes me like 45 minutes

and then I go for the mode exercises which I practice with different types of picking technique which are circle picking and tremolo picking on different speeds. This takes another 45 minutes of my daily practice work.

 

[admin]

I am currently doing a lot of technique exercises with Mrs. Blue. This guitar has really some much more dynamic possibilities in the expression of the pure sound then any other guitar I experienced in my professional career and this opens up a world which I always wanted to explore. I always used a lot of delay effects in my guitar sounds in order to make the sound more rich and wide but with this guitar I want to put it first to it's pure sound and so I am doing mainly exercises and practice work with a simple Fender Deluxe amp with a 2*12 cabinet and spring reverb.

I studied jazz guitar but somehow in my professional life I drifted away to blues and rock and I must say that my guitar soul is in blues and rock guitar but I also loved jazz a lot. But what I always thought is that the typical jazz guitar sound lacks in emotional deepness as you would find in blues. So I want to make my jazz guitar style get this really bluesy vibe but with jazz material. There are some guys who play jazz in a blues fashion by adding blues licks and blues lines. But I would like to have jazz lines but with the emotional touch of typical blues guitar. And that's what I am currently working on a lot. The great thing is that I think with this guitar I will get where I always wanted to be in jazz guitar. My goal is to present the first results of my work on the guitar night of the 22th of Sept. - so if you are interested save the date and tune into the livestream then.

 

[admin]

At the moment I'm working a lot on "jazz guitar" - my goal is to combine a fusion of traditional jazz guitar in the style of Kenny Burell, for example, with the funky style of George Benson but with a bluesy / rocking expressive tone of Scott Henderson, for example. Is a lot of work for the fact that jazz is not necessarily a popular genre. Anyway, the goal is to present such a program to my community at my Guitar Night on Sept 22 ( online ). Plus influences and sections with Stanley Jordan and Joe Pass style.

More to come soon...

[admin]

I struggled quite a while on what to do on this upcoming guitar night. I wanted to do it mainly on jazz - but the problem is that I don't have enough cool jazz backing tracks and it might not be so fun to watch for the audience. I really want to bring up more jazz but it takes more time than I anticipated. I want to take my jazz improvisations on a new level on the new guitar. The concept I am working on is to find the best sounding spots on the guitar for specific notes and lines and connect it into the whole improvisation. That means that I will break up my existing patterns and lines I have learned but it is worth it. I am already doing this on rock and blues which is way easier since there is only the blues or the pentatonic scale but on jazz it takes longer than anticipated but I think it will be worth it. Just follow the guitar nights and see how it develops. Also the big players in the past reached their maximum expression after performing and playing for a longer while and a playing style has to develop while performing and recording. So that's the current goal - don't miss the next guitar night if you are interested. That was the main reason to start them again - just get back to performance routines with new material.

 

[admin]

I am currently back on a practice routine of 4-6 hours or more per day. I am working hard on technical exercises which are the 3 note per string patterns of major and minor and also harmonic and melodic minor in several speeds. I am also working on doing those patterns with tremolo picking which in fact is quite a challenge for me because I considered myself a legato player before and I always skipped those exercises. Beside these exercises I really want to take my chances now on sweep picking techniques. This is really hard for the fingers and it needs many many repetitions to get it all right so that you can start to use those passages in regular playing. My goal is to get a more complete player and so it is necessary to go through this. It's really something which also needs regular sports exercises besides to not get into injuries because playing guitar is not a natural movement for the body and so besides that practice routines it is necessary to do sports at least on a 2 days or better daily rhythm.

Beside the scale and pattern practice and working a lot on the development of a truly emotional guitar sound with puristic sound settings such as a Fender Deluxe with only a spring reverb and medium distortion sounds and dynamic playing with pinch harmonics and dynamic pic work during runs and phrases. It starts to work out fine - especially on my new guitar which really displays all little nuances of the playing technique. I also work on a fat and emotional sound with the slighly distorted Fender Deluxe sound in the very high positions from the 15th till the 24th fret. There I have the problem that my fingers are too big for the small frets so thats a challenge to get things sounding great up there and to have full tone control.

And last but not least I am upgrading the jazz department. My goal is to get this new emotional guitar sound and playing technique into regular jazz standards in improvisation from 60bpm till currently 220bpm. And therefore I am working on the jazz standards in the list below to always follow each chord in the improvisation. Thats the keypoint in jazz guitar improvisation from my point of view.

So here is the list of the jazz standards I am currently working on :

Misty
Blue in Green
Autumne Leaves
All of Me
All The Things You Are
Fly Me To The Moon
Cold Duck Time
Girl From Ipanema
Jazz Blues
Oleo
Flintstones
Footprints
Night In Tunesia ( I love love love this one here )
Stella By Starlight
Take the A Train
There Will Never Be Another You

And last but not least don't miss the next guitar night livestream on Oct. 21st at 20:00 Zürich Time.