What's happening February 2016

I have been doing hand and wrist stretching for around a month now, and apart for pushing the stretches too far on one occasion it has been great.  My pinky pain has gone away and I have found that the fingering that was previously causing me issues is not causing such a problem anymore.  I'm recommending that we all do hand and wrist stretches.  Don't push too far, and don't stretch when your hands are cold and stiff.  There are plenty of good videos on YouTube about it, my personal favourites are pushing your hands back at the wrist, and stretching your fingers apart.

I'm working on three arrangements again, it always ends up being three, I don't know why. "The Chain" is basicaly done, ready to be recorded.  I saw Kel Valleau do "Smells like Teen Spirit" on YouTube a while back, as always he did a great job.  Was enough to inspire me to have a crack.  I remember that song back in the day, one of the guys I worked with at the time loved singing it.

What inspired me about "Smells like Teen Spirit" was that it is only a few phrases to learn but they looked quite challenging. I've also basically finished with it and am ready to record a video. I reckon I'll write a post about it sometime soon, it's worthy of a story.

While practising it, my wife remembered another grunge song from the era which we both liked, Collective Soul "Shine" which sparked an interest in me.  I didn't notice any existing fingerstyle arrangements of it so I had a quick crack based on some tabs I found.  As with any fingerstyle arrangement adding the melody line is the trick.  And as I've found before, pushing all the music back down to open chords helps, and this particular song suits Drop D tuning.  I still really enjoy Drop D tuning.

And grunge, ha ha, what a style of music :-)

Meanwhile, I am gigging again, at a cafe in Mt Claremont in my home town of Western Australia.  Great to be back out there,  Since I've been away for so long I have found my performance anxiety levels are back to high, and my tunes were rusty.  I played a demo a week back and played a proper session over the weekend.

Perfect crowd for me, correct age group. I love it when I ask if anyone has a band request, and I happen to have a song from that band in my setlist! I kept playing even when there wasn't so many people and they weren't as engaged. I played songs I was very rusty with, which made it a good practise session too.

I ended up playing more or less non stop for about 2 and half hours.  Longer than I should have, but I wasn't experiencing pain or discomfort so why not.  Towards the end I was starting to drop notes and my hands were getting too sweaty so I knew it was time to stop.  I always carry a clean cotton rag to wipe the sweat off my hands and fretboard from time to time while playing, which is a good tip I came across a while back.  Even wiping the strings after playing, the amount of sweat and oil I had added during the session really deadened them.  Later in the week the bass strings were still very dead, so I took them off and gave them a clean, and restrung them backwards.  Another good tip I came across - reversing them gets the fret wear on the other end, exposes a bit more unplayed string and brightens them up.

At the end of my set the cafe owner pressed some folding currency into my hand, I look forward to the next!

JAW