Monday, August 18, 2008

New floors and the guitar

We're having new floors put into our living room and den. The work isn't done yet; the floors are down, but we want them to come back and fix the edging. This means all our furniture...or most of it...is still stuffed into other rooms.

This has meant that I've been practicing occasionally in rooms with a bare floor with virtually no furniture. This, in turn, means that there is a whole new acoustic dimension to my practicing in those rooms; I can hear all sorts of things I don't normally hear.

I've found that when I'm playing fingerstyle, my fingernails occasionally bump up against neighboring strings. This isn't a problem if those strings aren't vibrating, but I'm playing fast enough and more complex pieces where that's now often the case. When those neighboring strings are vibrating, I get a noticeable buzzing when I bump.

I suppose this is normal. The better and better one gets, the more little bad habits one notices and wants to correct.

The alternative analysis is that I'm getting worse!