Practice Log for Friday, 18 May 2018

Scales

I practiced little repeating patterns to practice the pinky issue I looked at last time. It would be fine to use a different finger for the different string, but it only works below about the 15th fret, and it involves a fair amount of wrist torsion.

One more problem to add to the pile: when I try barring with the pinky to the 6th string, I usually push it off the fretboard. This didn’t use to happen before I had the frets redone a few years back, but there aren’t too many choices around here for luthiers…

Repertoire

“More Than Words” is actually a pretty long song, but I never noticed before. Since I started so late today, I just listened through the song, and looked at the chords of the intro and verse. The song is in G flat (just Eb-standard tuning on the guitar), with a simple I - I6 - IV - ii7 - IV - V chord part.

N.B. I noticed Gary Cherone always seems to be covering his bottom teeth with his lip when he sings in the video. I know music videos can’t be trusted as references for technique, but I figured I’d write it down anyway.

This reminds me of a lesson I took with my classical singing teacher when I was in high school. It was a simple lesson, one that’s easy to ignore: make sure your mouth is open when you are singing. The rule of thumb he provided was the width of three fingers between your teeth, which was (is) difficult for me because my jaw’s hinges sort of dislocate at that angle.

Notes

One thing that would be a great help would be to stop practicing every three days and start practicing every day. It’s way too easy for me to focus all my energy on a minute detail like the design of the website. Knock it off, will ya?