The plucky ones

A few months ago, I started a new book with lots of fingerstyle pieces. I've nailed down the two or three that I like and want to know by heart, and started pulling out some of my many other books to find one with pieces that would be fun to work on.

I found one in the stack that I used to play from all the time that's all about Celtic and American flatpicking fiddle tunes. Real nice. There were a bunch that I used to play and that I'd marked in the book and it's been fun going back to these, finding my fingers almost remember them.

There are a few new ones that I've gotten hooked on and those are fun too. I'm noticing that my "guitar memory" seems to have improved. That is, I seem to be better able to memorize lines at a time. I'm also noticing that I'm more comfortable playing tunes with a greater fret range. Where previously I preferred the tunes where I could pretty much anchor my left hand, now I'm much better with moving the left up and down the fretboard.

Dead strings

I realized today that when I play strumming songs, that I occasionally have damped/dead strings. When I'm fingerpicking, these are easy to spot and fix, but it's harder when strumming.

Buzzing strings are easy to catch with either technique.

I'm always worrying about the "quality" of my strumming, and I'm thinking now that unnoticed damped strings may be part of the problem.

Second time around

I haven't posted in a while, but practice has been going pretty well.

I've been focusing on memorizing a finger-style piece that had been a problem for months. I'm about halfway through now. Slow going, but it's working.

I did have a little epiphanette the other day: when I go through my practice routine, sometimes pieces are rough. I'll occasionally go back to play them and they're typically much cleaner the second time through. It could be because I've simply already played it, but I'm thinking now that it has more to do with focus. The first time round, I'm trying to get through the whole repertoire; the second time through I'm focusing on just that piece.

Yet another strumming epiphany

My practice schedule has been off lately as I'm in the middle of dealing with a kidney stone. All should eventually be fine, but the moral of the story is: keep hydrated!

The strumming insight, which is really a continuation of one from two posts back, is that I realized that when I strum, I now hit all the strings that I'm supposed to. I think that's actually wrong though. It sounds lots better if I pass over or only lightly graze the bass strings (making sure to hit all the treble strings per two posts ago).

Now I could just be imagining this. Or it could be an effect of playing a "boomy" dreadnaught. Or it could be a huge new step in the right direction.

I'm hoping it's the last.