Woodshedding

It starts tonight.

A few years ago, I bought a bunch of guitar video lessons off the internet that looked like exactly the type of help I needed. (They're called "Stevie Snacks" by a guy named Andy.) There's a bunch of them, and I got the two series that I thought would help me the most. I can play guitar. That's not an issue. My issue is that I'm not good ENOUGH. I have no idea what I'm doing outside of chord changes and a few bluesy riffs I've lifted over the years. And I'm now in the arena with people who are WAY better than me, and I don't like it. I needed help with knowing WHAT to play WHEN. Example: The chords are I-ii-V-IV :| I want to know why 'box 1' or the minor pentatonic scale sounds good over the I and V chords but not the ii. And I want to know how to get the TENSION or RELIEF of other scales to lay over the IV chord. Where's that come from? These videos are good about showing how to wrap your head around that. However, like most things, I never really got into the details, and just breezed though them without REALLY digesting them.

Tonight is the first night in a goal I'm gonna call "woodshedding."

I'm going through these lessons like I should have a year ago. 2 Lessons a week. One of the "5 Blues Boxes" series and one of the "Fretboard knowledge" series. Hopefully by the end of the lessons, I'll be noticeably better.

Before I die....

I saw this on a tumblr post today, and I thought it was cool enough to share. A condemned house in New Orleans gets turned into a public bucket list.