What Are You Working On Right Now?

[TSJMajesty]

Focusing mostly on the Innocence Faded solo, among many other riffs/solos/exercises tonight. Took me about an hour to get comfortable again since I hardly played this past weekend. But I got that Dsus/D arpeggio up to the tempo I have the rest of the solo, finally!

Right now I can play the whole thing clean & accurately at 91 bpm. I'm going to run through this thing several times at each tempo, and bump it up 1 bpm at a time, and see where that gets me. I'm actually gonna save the preset each time I finish for the night at that tempo, and see if the next day I can pick right back up where I left off, without needing as much time as I did tonight.

I'm gonna play for about another hour, and see if I can get to 95 before I'm done. (It's 128 bpm)

 

[TSJMajesty]

95.

Plus I noticed an inefficiency in my picking that I started working on to correct. When I do inside string changes, w/ downward pick slant, when changing to a higher string, my strokes stay tight, and straight. But with an upward pick slant, (still inside string change) I have this habit of forming a circle as I change to a lower string. Like I'm trying to "jump over" the string, instead of using the escape of the pick to clear the string.

So I slowed a few riffs down, and focused on getting those movements better. It only happens when I'm pushing the tempo. Which tells me I haven't yet committed this to 'muscle memory.'

I thought I was aware of any remaining bad techniques/habits, but I was wrong.

So IF was only about an hour tonight.

I actually sped it up to about 110, and was able to get through it, but it wasn't nearly as clean, and my wrist motion got real erratic.

Working on this stuff properly really starts to put things in perspective, regarding just how much repetition Petrucci and the like had to apply to get to the level they're at. I'm gonna ask him about this when I meet him in August. (I actually plan to have a list of questions! haha)

"Hey John, where did the ideas come from for that whacked-out solo in Just Let Me Breathe? Cuz that has got to be one of the weirdest things I've ever heard you play."

 

[TSJMajesty]

I'm getting it, slowly but surely (Innocence Faded solo.) Worked on a lot of other things tonight, at slower tempos.

I go between pushing myself to faster tempos, to slowing things down to dial in the details, and tonight that's what I focused on. Then after a few hours, I went for it at 115. Had to break it up into sections, and it highlighted where I need to take a few riffs, and just practice those in isolation.

I spent a fair bit of time on sweep arpeggios too, which is a whole other thing, when it comes to keeping unused strings quiet, especially around the harmonic nodes.

I love this shit, and I'm still learning ways of adapting my technique to the particular sequence of notes.

It partly sucked though, because for the first hour my left hand kept getting tingly. That hasn't been an issue for me in many weeks. It would not stop!

And I slept in today, so this may be another "til 3 am" session!