Dreams to Drawing Board and Beyond

Many years ago I dreamt of making my own "Tapping" guitar,  after months of attempting to come up with a good model, I found that a currently produced instrument could fit almost all of my requirements. So I purchased an instrument called the Megatar.  However, as time went on I began to picture some changes that would probably make my playing experience better. So I went back to the drawing board.. Literally:

It was at this point I had to make a decision on whether or not I was going to purchase the necessary equipment to build this or find someone who could without breaking the bank.

I looked at many custom builders online and was quickly swayed away due to the prices and timelines I was seeing. Then I looked again at Krappyguitars and on a whim sent an email to Kevin Siebold with my drawing and said ... Could you build this and how much? He said no problem other than having the necks be separate builds. I said deal!

Next, came my body template to send to him with the parts. However, this initial layout had some issues due to the position of the bass pickups and where the "Bridge units" would reside. Also the switches were too close to the edge so Kevin came up with a better solution that I signed off on.

Once the parts arrived to Kevins' shop he gave me a call to talk about neck woods. I sent him a mockup of what I was thinking about and here's what he sent me back a day later! Peruvian Walnut, Maple, Purpleheart sandwich!

Next came the fingerboard wood choices, I wanted a darker wood so he found some beautiful American walnut that he book matched for the twin necks:

Then the necks were glued up with truss rods centered within the center piece  of purpleheart

(note the truss rod access pocket)

I chose Padauk for the body after seeing some of his other Tappers, so once the necks were laminated he rough shaped the Padauk body parts, this is only a mockup of what it would look  like laminated.

Headstocks rough shaped and fingerboards laminated: (note the dowel pin holes toward the lower bout of the neck blanks, Kevin used dowels for final body assembly to assure exact body alignment)

To accommodate the custom Sperzel tuner, he added another laminate to increase the headstock size:
(note the 14 string neck blank and 12 string units waiting for fingerboards)

I also asked for matching Padauk headstocks. This mockup was right before body to neck lamination:

Then came the body part assembly in 2 phases:

(note the granite slabs he uses to do his flat lamination, I believe he used Epoxy to join the body to neck joints)

Once these assemblies were dry, he finished the final lamination:

Once the final Lamination was completed he began the tooling, for this instrument I chose 2 pickups for each neck with 3 way selector switches and 2 coil taps for the guitar side.

Holes for the Coil Tap and 3 way switches were added, then it was off to final sanding.

(note side holes drilled  for grounding the bridge plates)

Then final sanding and Oil finished applied and a few days wait, then I got this picture:

(Carvin - Alan Holdsworth pickups on the guitar side, Bartolini M34CBC pickups for the bass side and red anodized Sperzel tuners, the lowest 4 bass strings tuners are "Bass" tuners with thicker posts and slightly large housing)

The final piece was adding a stabilizer that filled the gap from my original drawing to the finished product. The stabilizer piece keeps the necks from being pulled towards or apart from each other which will provide a more stable instrument. The stabilizer bars are a laminate of Padauk and Walnut for strength. (Note the deep red color after the last coat of oil was applied!)

Kevin asked me if I wanted to hear him play anything particular on the instrument when it was finished so he could send me a demo, I asked for something from Steely Dan and he sent this:

Then Kevin said goodbye to his creation:

And now.....

Here she is home at last (well actually less than a month!)

Look at that gorgeous wood grain!

So far, I've only had about 40 minutes of playing time on this beast but I can tell you it plays and sounds great! Once I get my gear dialed in for the new instrument I'll posts a short demo of the sounds it can make with pickup selectors and coil taps. Until then.....

Happy New Year!

2016 Year in review - progress update

Where did the time go!
       2016 will go down in the books for a lot of reasons, luckily for me I will get to take away good memories in regards to my focus for the year - Music Mastery. This will go down for me as the first full year that I devoted 90% or more of my "practice time" to actual learning vs just playing or learning a few tunes. My practice times were in sessions of 30 minutes to an hour on average which doesn't sound like much to the classical musician but when you consider that this is a "daily" activity in which there are no segments of "just playing to play" but rather focus on exercises, fretboard navigation, rhythm and sight reading.

So where am I now and how did it go overall using this strategy? I think the best way to address this is to split it up into "Expectations" vs "Outcome".  So let me start with my expectations.


Expectations

Material (Literature)
    1. Complete the Frank Gambale Technique book 1 and book 2
    2. Master the Jamey Aebersold  II/V7/I book
    3. Learn several more classics from the Real Book
    4. Learn some transcribed solos

Improvisation
    1. Gain a good foundation for basic improvisation over whatever piece I was learning.
    2. Focus on improvisation by constricting my note selection to whatever scale or mode I was
        practicing.
    3. Continue work on walking basslines.

Comfort level with 2 hand tapping
     No bullet points here, this was a "Huge" one for me! So what did this mean? This was from something I noticed last year, in regards to when I played Guitar. Although I never claimed to be a great Guitar player I did in fact have a good working knowledge of Guitar and could rise to whatever occasion came my way when I used to play in Praise and Worship groups. There was a level of confidence and "comfort" whenever I picked up the Guitar.

    On 2 hand tapping however from my first experiences with the Chapman Stick, I found myself often times struggling to get started on pieces not because of unfamiliarity but rather that the "comfort" level just wasn't there. I can't call it Mastery, but I think there's a level of knowledge of ones instrument that allows them to operate. A baseline of skills and techniques and all the physical aspects involved with said instrument.

Videos
   One video per month if possible.

Outcome

Material

   1. Got thru chapter 2 of Frank Gambale Technique book 1 -never touched book 2

   2. Completed 72 exercises in all keys for Jamey Aebersold II/V7/I

   3. Added one more song from Real Book

   4. Didn't happen

   5. Picked up 2 additional books, "Ramon Ricker -Penatonics" and "Jerry Coker - Patterns for Jazz"

   6. Began focus on "Bass instruction" - Scott Bass Lessons

Improvisation

   1.  Put in a lot of work soloing on my song "Safe Harbor" and "Red Clay" for the video    

         performances.

   2.   Applied this to #1 above.

   3.  Started working more on basslines using various online tutorials etc..

Comfort level with 2 hand tapping

    After I got thru the Jamey Aebersold II/V7/I exercises I did notice that my approach when picking up the instrument "cold" has gotten much better although I'm still not "there" yet.

Videos

   Produced 3 videos

Reflection

So looking at my Expectations vs Outcome one could say I really MISSED IT!

However the reality is, that I most likely skyrocketed past my normal mode of operation where I probably only learned a handful of "New" things to add to my toolbox! In fact the comfort level improvements alone were worth the effort. Additionally, I took on the bass anthem of "Teen Town" with rather surprising support from many people including a very prominent "Chapman Stick Master"!

The issues that I now see with executing my plans were distractions and a reality check on what is feasible in regards to learning "New" material.

Another benefit of this approach was in regards to composition! It makes sense that as one becomes more comfortable with Improvisation that ideas for compositions should flow! I've been able to come up with several potential pieces in just the very few minutes I've allowed myself to do so. However, I'm purposely not going down that road because my progress has been very good towards mastery that to start composing and recording would definitely eat up way too much time and my actual "progress" would be slowed. One could argue this point but I feel it is the right track for me!

So here's to another year gone and a New Year around the corner. I hope that you have a Productive and Blessed New Year!!

Playing "Like" Eric Johnson and Jaco Pastorius

A few years ago, before my epiphany of heavy music study on the Megatar, I was noodling around on my electric guitar and decided to try something heavy. So I looked back at a tune I had tried learning a long time ago Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover"! Sure, I could play the main melody and about 1/2 of the intro but not at tempo and not with a lot of conviction. So it was time to prove to myself that I could do it. The awesome thing about learning things today is we have so many resources at our fingertips, I relied on various YouTube covers and a few "lessons" online. The problem was some items handled finger positions great while others showed great examples of musicality and better explanation of the techniques etc.. I broke it down into sections spending a great deal of time on the second verse where things got a little different and then some serious times for the solo section. The solo section on this tune was insane! I've never had to move my fingers like this being more of a jazz fusion/smooth jazz guitar player.

This was a long process for me as it was totally different than other things I've done with music and being close to 50 probably wasn't helping things either. So weeks went by before I had the fingering down for all the sections, now it was just a matter of getting the solo section up to speed so I could play the song with a backing track at tempo. My wife and daughter heard me playing one day and were really enthusiastic as to what they heard! I was beaming! I was beaming until... I went online and saw a live version of Eric Johnson play "Cliffs of Dover" with a long improv intro. When he got to the tune and started playing, it dawned on me that although I was playing something that Eric Johnson "had" played, I sure wasn't in the ball park as to "How and What" he can play. The light went out and the journey was over. I realized my effort to "prove to myself" was not as fulfilling as I had expected. After all, there are kids on YouTube that can play this tune. However, I learned an invaluable lesson! With enough effort and serious study, there's nothing that you or I can't do!  I haven't played the song since that day and that's fine. But, this exercise helped me so much in overcoming challenges in music, so much so that years latter it would be a big part of why I accepted the challenge to take on the bass guitar anthem "Teen Town" which I covered on the Megatar.

Check out my cover of Teen Town here: Teen Town cover by Pete Gonzales on Megatar

Covering "Teen Town" by Jaco Pastorius, was the same process as covering "Cliffs of Dover", but this time I had to add "Two hand tapping" in addition to learning how to play the bass solo with the accompanying chord in the right hand. Now there are plenty of lessons on learning to play "Teen Town" for sure, however tapping adds some new challenges like getting the proper "Attack" with just one hand and playing notes that would have been open strings as fretted notes when playing Touchstyle guitar. Unlike "Cliffs of Dover", as I approached the full tempo of the tune, some fingering wasn't working at faster speeds so I did one of the hardest things I've had to learn. How to Unlearn fingering! If your a guitarist, you know how difficult it can be to retrain your fingers to not follow a "pre-learned" pattern. The minute you get stressed or fatigued all those old fingerings just show up! So with the fingering changed and the tempo getting much closer to the recorded speed of the tune. I found other sections needing new fingering as well! Oh brother! So there I was once again relearning portions of the tune that I've been playing for almost 2 months.

The final push!
Unlike, "Cliffs of Dover" I had planned on recording "Teen Town" as a video from the start. So I had the tune worked out and felt great about it, I setup the umbrella lights and blue screen and got ready to record all my hard work finally. Well... I got everything set, I hit record and then it all fell apart! Argh!
What happened? The intro was great then the verse blew it, then the intro and verse was great but the ending was terrible. On and on it went so after about 30 takes I said. STOP!!!  I had to think about what was going on! So when the camera's were off It sounded fine.. hmm.. Ok, so I went to the internet again and searched on "learning fast guitar solos etc.."  Found it!!! So the masters seemed to concur on one thing, if you're going to master playing fast you need to be able to actually play it faster than what you're going to use in actual performance, that way there's no struggle!   Eureka, that was it!!!  So "Teen Town" is recorded at about 128 beats per minute  so I actually began practicing the tune at tempos up to 140 bpm. When this was sounding good not "great" I went back to 128 and it was sounding great. So I setup once again about a week later and recorded the video on my channel in about 10 takes. It still wasn't as smooth as when the cameras were off, but it was time to wrap this up and move on.

So what did I gain from these efforts? Well, I feel like "Learning new things" is always a good thing and these efforts have proven to me that learning specific tunes doesn't make you a master, so to be a true master there's more. Right? Wait, perhaps to a degree there might be "less"? What if the difference in the grand scheme was the mastery of the little things or better yet mastery of the individual components that make up the language of music. Components like Scales, modes, harmony, intervals and chord structure. But knowing what tones make up scales and chords is not enough, we need to be able to hear them and use them in a manner that creates true music and not just rehearsed patterns. That's why Eric Johnson can take his tune and add 5 minutes of free improv over the tune with ease. When I watch lessons by the masters like Joe Satriani and others they have such a great understanding and feeling for the components of music that I can't think there's a magical formula or bloodline for playing great just true mastery of all the parts.

Of course, its easy to recognize these items but yet another thing to actually be able to do them! So now I ask myself how bad do I want it? Every time I want to throw the instrument out the window I need to remind myself of where I once was and how far I've come. Its never fast enough for us but then again what great thing happens in overnight? There's a saying.. "It takes about 6 years to become an overnight success"!
Well I have at least 4+ years before I hit that milestone I guess? Time to get to work!

Wait this wasn't in the Script!

So this entry isn't addressing Music but it is pertinent to all our quests and that is Life itself!
Now we all have our own story and some are more eventful than others but all have value and all live's have an impact on an unimaginable amount of people in the grand scheme of things. So this is just my little story. The story that lit a fire under me to get things done and stop wasting so much time. Here goes:

In the summer of 1993, I was a newlywed to my second wife "Laura". She was a school teacher and I was working at an electronic's manufacturing facility and had also just enrolled in a computer programming course at DeVry University. Life was good, crazy and busy with 4 kids in the mix!

Around July the wife and I went on vacation to Sedona, AZ and were enjoying ourselves but I started getting a pretty bad cough and got some dizzy spells. Upon returning home I made a Dr. appointment and found that I just had "Bronchitis". This "Bronchitis" lasted about 2 months overall and gave way to an "inner" ear infection so they thought. The coughing stopped but the dizziness was getting worse, then one day I got up to go to work and I could NOT get my balance and stumbled back into the bed.
On another day I got a funny taste in my mouth on the way to work, I pulled over and threw up a large amount of blood! I returned to the doctors and also noticed something odd with my vision! For some reason everything I saw was shifting downward to the left something like this:



After dealing with this for about a month, I noticed that the vision continued to slip ever to the "left and downward" then I began to see "Stars" similar to when you get hurt! I went back to the dr and long story short was sent to get an MRI.  The MRI Scan revealed that I had a large brain tumor underneath the cerebellum and was pushing up against optical nerves etc.. There was fluid massing up and the pressure from this was causing the vision distortion and vertigo.

Up to this point I had been working and going to school as normal including driving myself as I had no solid reason to NOT being doing these things. Up till now I though I had inner ear issues never did I or my doctors suspect a Brain Tumor! My Surgeon told me I had to get this removed or I would die pretty soon! So I had the surgery just 3 days later.

Here's where the tumor was removed, see the matter scooped out in the lower left.


The Power of Prayer
One of the most memorable experiences about the surgery was the coming together of family and the support I got from friends and family. Somewhere during the procedure, I got the clearest picture of my Father and uncles huddled around each other and singing the old Mexican songs of my heritage like "Las Mañanitas". I actually felt the love from everyone and was overwhelmed with emotion, it was like healing virtue was running all thru my body! Later I found out that while I was in surgery, my father and uncles were in fact huddled around in the waiting room, praying out loud over me!

The Miracle Recovery!
It was early October of 1993 and Just 5 days after major brain surgery I was back home. My head looked like something from the movie "Hellraiser" I had 26 staples going from the top of my head to mid way down my neck! In the 3 months I was back to work with my vertigo completely gone and my vision restored to about 95%!  Yes to this day I still see everything with about a 5% shift to the left! But aside from that no "serious" complications!

There were a few small complications however, the first being a numb spot on the left side of my head that to this day feels a little bit like when your foot is falling asleep, do you know that "tingling sensation? Well I've dealt with this for over 20 years now.. The second issue was the tremendous amount of tightness in the back of the neck due to the muscles and nerves being pulled back together and stapled closed after the surgery. They had to remove a chunk of bone at the base of my skull about 3/4" and that was not replaced by any prosthetic material just covered up by pulling the tissue together.

Enter Acupuncture!
After discussing my state of discomfort a friend suggested that I try Acupuncture to remove and or release the tension in my neck. So I did just that and after about 10 sessions of Acupuncture, cupping and herbal remedies, my neck tension was diminished to about 80%. The cupping treatments especially seemed to help in releasing the tension and stiffness in my neck but I wont' lie it HURT like crazy. It felt like 3 large lamprey's sucking on the back of my neck and it left huge welts! Thank God for cupping! It worked!

So that's it, that's how I got an extension on my lease in life! And it helped me go on to graduate with honors from DeVry and pursue a degree in Computer Information Systems. I definitely have a better perspective on life and an attitude to get things done now more than I did prior to my wake up call.

We only have a limited time here in this world so I suggest we all try to make the best of it, lets put aside our stupid differences that will, in the end, not add a minute to any of our lives. I love how motivational speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer said "Don’t Die With Your Music Still In You"!

Time to get back to practicing!

How I got to this moment in time!

Back around 2001, I was attending a church were I was the head musician for Praise and Worship. We had several line ups that changed from time to time but the one constant was the lack of a dedicated Bass player.

Enter the Internet..
One day while browsing the Internet for guitars I stumbled onto a picture of an instrument called "The Austin Douglas guitar" made by Mark Warr. It was then I realized I had to get one of these and my Bass player woes would be gone! Well.. as things would go it didn't turn out to be an easy transition and long story short.. I ended up purchasing a used Chapman Stick instead after what seemed like an eternal wait and not without its own drama!

Ironically, by the time I finally received my used Chapman Stick I was no longer attending that church! Life is so full of irony isn't it? So I began my journey with 2 handed tapping using the "Freehands" technique as taught by Emmet Chapman. Rather quickly I found this instrument to be a wonderful composing tool for me! Much more than keyboard because of my Guitar background.

At this time, I started attending a new church and found that just participating in the congregation was a nice change after years of playing music in church! I was doing pretty good with learning and attended a few Stick seminars in Oceanside CA with Greg Howard and Tom Griesgraber. This was  a great time for learning and composing!

Then, the praise and worship leaders of my new church learned of my musical background and asked me to join them but on Guitar and perhaps working in Chapman Stick when possible. So there I was once again playing guitar for church. However it did in fact work out that I was able to incorporate the Chapman Stick with some of my original tunes, although it was not very frequent.

The Start of Jacob's Ladder...
Tragedy struck our awesome church, our senior pastor (Jim Roam) became fatally ill and actually departed from us with much sadness. The transition of pastors was difficult but we ended up with an interim pastor (David Wright)  that was incredibly supportive of my Chapman Stick work. In fact it was this pastor that asked me to work up a set and play a jazz concert at a park for our "Friends Day" picnic. This event would inspire me and 3 of the musicians from this line up to form the band  "Jacob's Ladder".

The Recording Project...
The timing was right so I purchased some gear to get a ProTools recording setup at home and went to work recording all the songs I had composed on Chapman Stick.

The project featured myself on Chapman Stick, Guitar, Bass and Keyboards with additions from:
  Joseph Gonzales (my son) on Drums
  Jon Heideman  on Keyboard
  Darrell Owens on Alto Sax
  Matt Horne on Alto Sax
  Tim Freeman on Trombone.

I had the CD replicated in 2007 and then we started gigging as Jacob's Ladder with an additional musician on Bass Guitar, Curtis Clark. This line up lasted about a year with a handful of performances but it was a tough time for me physically due some health issues so we didn't get out as much as I wanted to and because we were all adults with families of our own, time was at a premium.

Our bass player moved on to form his own Jazz trio, so we regrouped with an additional musician (Andrew Ferrell) on Guitar. In his audition, he was supposed to audition for Bass but when I heard him play guitar, I told him STOP. You're playing Guitar! I'm playing Bass!

2 Pots on the Stove...
As things would go, Jacob's ladder continued to rehearse and play a few gigs. However I got approached by my former pastor (David Wright) to fill-in for his guitarist during a hiatus and would only be temporary. So I did! There I was back once again, playing guitar for church and the temporary status ended up turning into 2 years! It was at this time I pulled the plug on Jacob's Ladder! Things were starting to feel too much like work with playing at church and trying to get 5 grown men with fulltime jobs and families to make time and effort to learn new songs and the gigs we were getting were not what I was hoping for. It was a sad time but the last gig we did was the nail in the coffin for me! We did a great performance and our sets went without a hitch however the hiring client and some of the hosts there were so rude!! I told myself, I'm done!

Departure from the Chapman Stick...
So as time went on I began spending more time on Keyboard and less time on guitar and almost NO time on Chapman Stick. Not sure why, it just didn't appeal to me anymore, so I sold it back to Stick Enterprises. I spent most of my time after selling the Chapman Stick on Keyboard but my composing stalled out.

Enter the Megatar...
After about 2 years from selling my Chapman Stick, I got the bug again to get back into 2 handed tapping guitar but perhaps on my own "homebuilt" instrument. So I ran the numbers and even made several "clay" models to figure out what this instrument would look like.. So of course after a lot of consideration I began to look at some other instruments out there and I came across an instrument that I swore I'd never own but you know the more I looked at it, I realized that the instrument I was going to attempt to "build" was already there waiting to be purchased. So I sold off  a few instruments and ordered my Megatar.

A New spin on the same technique...
Now the Megatar is NOT a replacement for the Chapman Stick and to say that it is, would be a rather silly statement!

The Stick has a very proprietary ergonomic all of its own. In addition to that, it has a sharp fast attack when the strings are struck and very "Bright" sound overall. The Bass strings have a sound somewhere between slapping and plucking, a very unique sound all its own. The string spacing on the Chapman Stick is tighter than that of a regular electric guitar so it makes forming chords on the bass side very easy especially due to the inverted 5ths tuning. It's very easy to accompany the melody side by playing both bass notes with tritones or simple triads on the bass side of the instrument. This is called the "Pop Baroque Technique".

The Megatar has a much more traditional electric bass guitar sound and feel with Bartolini pickups and wider string spacing. The attack is not as sharp but does have added sustain, the overall tone is much more of  a "Fender Bass" rounded out sound. The thinner melody strings have a very "Humbucker" tone also vs the bright single coil sounding "Stickup"(think Les Paul vs Strat). The difference is so apparent, that Chapman Stick Players often say the Bartolini pickups on Megatar's and Warr Guitars sound dull and lifeless. After playing the Megatar for over 3 years now, I just hear "Bass Guitar" but when I hear the Chapman Stick even in my own recordings I can really hear the bright fast attack.

The Next Steps...
So this leads me to where I'm at now. My goals have shifted over the years but this year I've drawn a hard line in the sand. I'm determined to find "Mastery" in music on Touchstyle guitar in the genre of Jazz/Fusion or whatever its called these days! Progress is slow and steady but I haven't noodled around like I used to in about 6 months! The past 6 months have been very deliberate and almost a day hasn't passed where I'm actually playing or working on something new or that needs more work! True practice as opposed to the horrible ruts I found myself in most of my adult life!

Looking forward to bigger and better things!

Moving In and Unpacking

What to do next! So the new place is all cleaned up refinished and ready for business, now all I have to do is move everything in and get everything in its correct place. Let the dust settle then get working! The problem is there's just too much stuff to unload and then unpacking everything is going to clutter up the new place so bad that it will probably look worse than before we moved in! Add to that where to put everything! What a nightmare that can be, there's only so much free space to work with. Oh great, here comes that "overwhelmed" feeling again. Well then this is a good time to take a break and hey I'll have more clarity tomorrow morning! Oh wait, its only 10 am.. Hmmm...


So this is me right now, KNOWING what needs to be done but making it into such a mountain that I find it hard to even attempt moving one pile of junk into the other room or even just throw it away! Sound familiar? So yea here comes the music thing... Ok so I have all these basic foundational things that need to be done, but not just done, MASTERED! I mean really get this down deep so the fingers and heart play the notes, not me thinking ok here comes the ii V I. So I turn on the beatbox, pull out the exercises and get playing them in all 12 keys. Ok one down! Whew I'm exhausted, I think I want a break now! Then comes that guilt and the overwhelming thoughts like "I'm too old for this" yada yada...


The first goal then, has to be getting to the house warming party! Yea that's it a party! Now we're talking, that would be fun! Here's the dilemma, how do we make the basic rudiments feel and seem fun and even enjoyable? You know something with an instant reward right? We're all about instant rewards aren't we? Nobody wants to wait 4-6 weeks for shipping these days! No, we pay premium so we can have it tomorrow! Same with our work etc.. Its easy to talk about but how do we address this, how do we stay inspired in the day to day grind. Its not like my job is going to pay me to practice at night after I leave work so theirs no monetary reward at least not yet. Most days I'm pretty exhausted from being at a computer all day, now I need to sit or stand in front of sheet music and metronome for how long each day? If I can turn this into "fun" then hey I'm there, isn't that a reward in of itself?


I don't think there's an easy answer to this, I wish it were easy but something keeps popping into my head.. Something from a movie. Yea that's it, "Million Dollar Baby"! In the movie, there's a quick scene with the actors talking in a boxing gym. Behind them is a huge poster that says simply "Winners do, what Losers Won't!".


So its getting later into the evening and I want to call it quits. I push myself for about 15 more minutes of intense practicing. NO NOODLING AT ALL!!! I've learned that is the fastest way to ruts and wasting time. So now with 45 minutes of solid "real" practice (learning mode) I have to take a break. I do something else for about 20 minutes and guess what? I'm thinking you know I could put in another 20 minutes at least. So this is how it is, some days I'll put the instrument down about 4 times but still pick it back up a little bit latter. I got the idea of shorter practice sessions from Kenny Werner the author of "Effortless Mastery" a book I think all non-prodigy musicians should spend some time on.


  Where is it written that you must practice for 4 hours each day without pausing? I used to do that when I was young but after a lot of reflection I realized that those "so called" practice times were also filled with a lot of random noodling and brainless rehashing of things I already knew! That's not "practicing" in the sense of becoming a master, that's staying where you are! Well I'll tell you I have come to  realize that I probably spent about 20 years of my life in that mode! Lets think about this, seriously! Aren't we all supreme masters of dental hygiene by now? I mean we brush our teeth everyday right, so we must have really improved on it? Hmmm.. interesting concept. Kenny Werner asked a simple question about "how much is enough/ how well do I need to know the basics etc.." then he said.. "How well does the tight rope walker know his craft before stepping out onto that wire"? Yikes! I think you get the point!


Stay tuned!

The Old Manufacturing Plant

So I have an old manufacturing plant. Its been mine since I was about 16 years old. Its full of many things, some completed units, many unfinished and some assembled with parts missing. Definitely few items worthy of leaving the plant to be sold. The walls and structure are in need of repairs and refinishing if we want to open up for business once again!

Where do we start? Well I can start by cleaning up thru a process of categorizing items into "Trash" or "Save". Then move on to essential repairs, then refinishing. Think of those times when you make even more of mess in order to cleanup things right! When all this is done, we can again open the doors and hopefully do business like never before!!

Ok so I lied, I don't have a manufacturing plant perse! But what I do have is years of performing music in several different environments; Weddings, Parks, Festivals, Dinner shows, private parties but mostly in Church as part of a Praise and worship team. However things like "LIFE" happened and for whatever reasons that contains, the music venture came to a stop, a full stop. One of the biggest reasons however was the lack of mastery that haunted me constantly. I new there were holes in my playing and for whatever reason, I continued to ignore these!

Time passed by.. then suddenly (last year) I had an epiphany about playing music as a sort of Partial retirement or who knows what! The Torch of Inspiration had been rekindled once again with a new and refreshing aspect. The new aspect being, fix and repair all the holes in my music knowledge and performance ability. Add to this. that unlike before, my goal is to master music using 2 hand TouchGuitar (In my case the Megatar) versus standard Electric Guitar which has been my mainstay since I was 13 years old!

So why pursue Mastery? Is it even attainable? Well.. There's a lot of folks that think that is attainable but then again the term mastery could mean different things to different people. Is it merely attaining a state of proficiency in the language of music or say specifically "Jazz Music" (which is my passion)? Or is Mastery broader than this?  Does it not include being able to connect with an audience or write music that is received well? Is it having your own voice after learning to speak the language of music? Is it being able to deliver a solid performance night after night, week after week?

I would have to say the answer is most likely "all of the above" and that's a daunting task. Much like the old saying of how do you eat an Elephant comes to mind! And yet performers do this everyday!

Onward.. So where I'm at right now, I'm back to basics and I mean "basics" but going after "Mastery" at every turn. No longer will I breeze thru exercises that seem mundane or not really helpful only to get to the "good ones"! NO, those exercises are there for a reason, even Charlie Parker was known to run thru some very very rudimentary exercises when he warmed up backstage! So everything needs to reach the smoothness that I'd want to hear myself at my favorite artists concert.


So how will it go? What will be the outcome? We'll have to wait and see.

However, if the years have taught me anything, its this: "Doing everything the same way will get you what you already have". Also, doing nothing will get you nothing!

My Father in-law always says "The Years are going to pass whether you do something or not". So the way I look at it now, I don't have any more minutes to waste!

Please stay tuned and follow me on my Journey!

Pete.

P.S. Please check out my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNm63wMiuSh3-8Y4f_LUDvw