Practice Diary

Sun 12/01/14

• Today I learnt 'Respect' by Aretha Franklin. The song is very short so I played through it probably at least 4 or 5 times.
• I did this in order to familiarise myself with the structure

Mon 13/01/14

• Today I watched some Youtube videos of different interpretations of the song to see if I could try some different things. I worked more on what I think Steve called "chipping" which is like the sharp staccato top end of the chords.
• I did this in order to improve my tone through my playing and not just through amp settings.

Tue 14/01/14

• Today at lunch time I rehearsed 'Respect' in the live room with other people in the class before our performance later in the afternoon. Not necessarily our bands, just playing with Aidan, another guitarist and some singers.
• I did this because playing with other musicians helps me get a feel for how the song sounds live. I could work more on my tone too by working out some nice sounding amp settings.

Wed 15/01/14

• Wednesday's I normally give myself a bit of a break to have some fun and just play around. I played along to some Asking Alexandria tracks and a bit of Bring Me The Horizon. It's pretty challenging stuff especially on the right hand so beforehand I did some alternate picking exercises to warm-up.
• I did this to help improve my right hand technique and focus on challenging right hand rhythms.

Thu 16/01/14

• Today it was announced that over the next few weeks we would each have to perform three varied solo pieces. I originally decided that I would do 1 punk, 1 classic rock and 1 metal song for my three. I knew I'd have to do a 30 second demo of a song this time next week so I set to work practicing 'Letterbomb' by Green Day as it's a piece I'm already very comfortable with. To practice it, I first just played along with the song a few times to just familiarise myself with the feel of the piece, the tempo and structure. I then played along with a metronome at 180 bpm and aimed to bury the click. I found it took a few attempts to really play perfectly in time.

Fri 17/01/14

• Today I learnt 'Harder To Breathe' by Maroon 5 for Band A. I also decided that for my rock solo performance I would do 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' by The Darkness. It's an awesome song that I am extremely familiar with as I've been playing it for at least 8 years. I spent a while just playing the song over and over again from top to bottom, kind of just remembering how it goes and the structure and everything like that. Later on I'll focus on the 3 solos individually.

Sat 18/01/14

• Today I learnt 'Best of You' by Foo Fighters for Band B. This songs lead line, despite being 99% octaves is actually pretty challenging. Aside from playing along with the song multiple times to get used the to structure, I had to really narrow down my focus and start practicing specific sections. I practiced the solo section with the tremolo octaves over and over again, as even though it's 15 seconds long, it's the most challenging part of the song and required definite attention in order to get it up to speed.
• I did this because I had never really done tremolo picking across multiple strings before and I had to learn a new technique.

Sun 19/01/14

• Today I spent some time thinking about the other metal song I should do and narrowed it down to two songs: 'O.G. Loko' by Of Mice & Men and 'It Never Ends' by Bring Me The Horizon. I already knew 'It Never Ends' so I learnt 'O.G. Loko' and then practiced both. Both are really challenging to be honest, I actually made a cover of 'O.G. Loko' for fun which you can check out here, and here's a link to 'It Never Ends' that you can check out too if you want. Both songs have really challenging breakdown sections with triplets and quadruplets and odd rhythms and stuff. 'It Never Ends' has a section where it goes from 8th note triplets to 8th notes to 4th note triplets and then back to 8th notes again. I found that really quite hard at first but I used a metronome at 205bpm and played along until I actually managed to bury the click. Here is the section in question, again if you're interested.

Mon 20/01/14

• At this point, I'd left it kind of late but I decided not to do a metal song and to instead do 'Parisienne Walkways' by the late Gary Moore. The song is effectively 100% guitar solo, it's not fast or filled with notes particularly apart from one lick but it requires a lot of thought for timing and feel so I thought I'd give it a go. The aforementioned lick is at this part of the song and I had to learn it note for note incredibly slowly and I spent maybe an hour trying to gradually take it up to full speed. I have a lot of fun playing this song and I'm very happy with my decision to do this over a metalcore song.

Tue 21/01/14

• Today I rehearsed 'Harder To Breathe' and 'Best of You' in our respective bands at lunch time before the performance in our double lesson. 
• I enjoy rehearsing as a band in order to tighten up our timing and knowledge of the structure of the song

Wed 22/01/14

• Today I found a backing track for 'Letterbomb' which I added some hi-hats to at the start so that I knew the tempo before the drums started, as the guitars come in with absolutely no tempo indication in the real recorded track. The second guitar part was also missing from the outro but I didn't want to add that back in, instead I worked on my internal metronome and got much better at counting missing beats in my head during the moments of silence in the outro. I practiced by playing along to the backing track until it was basically second nature to play the song.

Thu 23/01/14

• Today I performed my 30 second demo of 'Letterbomb' which I thought went fairly well.

Fri 24/01/14

• Today I decided to practice 'Parisienne Walkways' some more because even though I'm leaving it until last, it's by far the hardest piece I have to perform this term. I found a really good backing track and because it's all solo guitar, I don't have anything to hide behind. That requires me to really focus on the way I play. I decided to really practice my bending today.
• I did this because my bending technique is frankly terrible and this song is a great opportunity to focus on my bends and pitching them perfectly.

Sat 25/01/14

• Today I learned to play 'Locked Out of Heaven' by Bruno Mars. 

Sun 26/01/14

• Today I had an interesting day where I decided to practice the hardest parts of all 3 of my solo performances. I didn't play any of the pieces all the way through, I just worked on: The solo and outro from 'Letterbomb', the 3 guitar solos from 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' and the fast blues lick from 'Parisienne Walkways'.
• I did this because when you just practice the entirety of a song every time, the bits that require more practicing to really perfect get kind of glossed over.

Mon 27/01/14

• Today I recapped Locked Out of Heaven. I'm not going to lie, this song is insanely boring to play, I don't like it and it's horribly repetitive. I practiced it through a few times and left it at that.

Tue 28/01/14

• Once again, today I went up to the live room before our double lesson and practiced 'Locked Out of Heaven' with some other people.

Wed 29/01/14

• Today I practiced 'Letterbomb' loads. I like to practice things standing up as well as sitting down because I think playing something standing up feels different and is more like the real performance. I played along to the backing track lots as well as focusing on the intro, solo, outro and also thinking about where I'm going to use the amps foot-switch to change between clean, crunch and overdrive.
• I did this to thoroughly prepare for my performance tomorrow.

Thu 30/01/14

• Today I performed 'Letterbomb' all the way through for the first time in class and I thought it went pretty well. The guitar cut out at the start of the solo, which is basically the worst place it could have done so, but I pulled it back together immediately. The bit at the end could have been better timing wise, but in a situation like that time estimations tend to be quicker and therefore I was a little bit early.
• To improve, I will work on my timing more.

Fri 31/01/14

• Today I had a bit of a break and jammed around with some of my favourite songs and worked on writing some stuff too.
• I did this because I just think it's important that a practice routine doesn't get stale.

Sat 01/02/14

• Today I learnt 'When You Were Young' by The Killers for Band B. There really weren't any specifically challenging parts of the song so I didn't feel the need to focus on any part in particular. I just did my normal thing of learning the song with a mixture of tab and by ear and then practicing by playing along.

Sun 02/02/14

• Today Band A decided on 'Inhaler' by Foals which is the first song I've done on this course so far that made use of any guitar effects. The songs main riff and lead part uses a really nice delay which was interesting to learn seeing as the rhythm I play isn't the rhythm I hear but I got used to that fairly quickly.

Mon 03/02/14

• Today I practiced 'Inhaler' and 'When You Were Young' because I learnt both over the weekend and felt like I really needed more time to practice both before tomorrow. I played through both songs but decided I really wanted to start focusing on the end section of 'Inhaler'. The timing is very weird and to be honest I didn't really get it figured out 100% in time.
• To improve I will definitely work on that end section.

Tue 04/02/14

• Today I performed 'Inhaler' and 'When You Were Young' in class. I thought both performances went fairly well although to be honest I wasn't particularly confident with the structure for 'When You Were Young'.
• To improve I will learn the structure more for 'When You Were Young' by maybe studying it and writing it out or something similar.

Wed 05/02/14

• Today I thoroughly practiced 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'. I played along to the backing track and after that I played along to a click. Following that, I focused on playing the 3rd solo over and over again until that was perfect. I also thought much more about my tone in order to have a really nice powerful sound that isn't overly distorted.
• I did all that as preparation in case I have to play it tomorrow.

Thu 06/02/14

• Unfortunately today I didn't have to perform 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' so that was a little disappointing. Taking that into account, I decided to practice it a little bit more at home but too much as I really don't want to start getting sick of playing such an awesome song.

Fri 07/02/14

• Next week is going to be a fairly complicated week as Tuesday I'll be doing 'Respect', 'Harder To Breathe' and 'Best Of You' and then Thursday I'll most likely be doing 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'. With four songs to practice, today I started practicing one per day and I'll continue to do so over the next four days. So today, I started with 'Respect' as it's been about 3 weeks since I've played it. I listened to the song and played along to refresh my memory and played the new lead parts that I'd improvised in the lesson.

Sat 08/02/14

• Today I practiced through 'Harder To Breathe', spending some extra time focusing on the solo and seeing if I can memorise some of my favourite improvised parts so I can reuse them.
• I did this because I think it's a little bit easier to only improvise say 75% of the solo and then remember 25% and reuse those same bits everytime.

Sun 09/02/14

• Today was 'Best Of You' day. I just played through the song but I decided to focus more on my dynamics and the way I play the octaves.
• I did this because dynamics are an important part of performance and I don't normally practice them.

Mon 10/02/14

• Today I gave myself a bit of a break before tomorrow because I have to perform 3 songs in our double lesson and I just feel like a break. Wednesday I will practice 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'.

Tue 11/02/14

• Today our performance lesson was cancelled but I went to it anyway just to see if people wanted to practice anything and I did get a little bit of practicing done with some of my band mates that showed up.

Wed 12/02/14

• Today I practiced 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' some more in preparation for tomorrow. I feel like I've focused on specific areas enough previously so I just played along with the backing track like 5 times.

Thu 13/02/14

• Today due to a really long story that I'm not going to go into, I was unable to perform 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' yet again and now I'll have to wait until Thursday 27/02/14. With that in mind I'll probably wait a while before I practice it again because it's half term tomorrow.

Fri 14/02/14

• Today is the first day of half-term! To be honest, I'm not sure how much I'll be practicing college stuff this half-term, I'll probably leave it until more towards the end of the holiday. 

Sat 15/02/14

• Today I thought I'd just learn some songs instead of practicing stuff that I already know. I learnt 'Chelsea Smile' by Bring Me The Horizon and 'Creature' by Asking Alexandria. 

Sun 16/02/14

• Today I played some acoustic guitar for a change. I wanted to work on my finger-picking so I learnt an arrangement of 'My Heart Will Go On' made by Sungha Jung. It's quite a challenging arrangement as you have to play both the melody and fragmented chords simultaneously.
• I did this to improve other styles of guitar I don't play often enough

Mon 17/02/14

• Sticking to some more acoustic stuff, I decided to practice some stuff on my 12 string acoustic. I played a lot of David Bowie and some Pink Floyd.
• I did this because I think it's good to be varied and I really don't play 12 string enough.

Tue 18/02/14

• Today I did something I don't do that often. I found several blues backing tracks on youtube in different keys and tempos etc and spent an hour or so soloing around.
• I did this to improve my improvisation and lead technique.

Wed 19/02/14

• Today I practiced working songs out by ear. It's something I do a lot of already and I think it's much better than learning from some inaccurate tab you found. I worked out several acoustic Mallory Knox songs by ear and I had the added challenge of trying to figure out the tunings too.

Thu 20/02/14

• Today I did something different and had a five hour rehearsal in my living room with my proper out of college band. We play almost entirely originals now and it's really nice to have a change of scene from all the covers we have to do in college and rehearse our own stuff for upcoming gigs.
• I did this not only for fun but to practice with a full band for an extended period of time.

Fri 21/02/14

• Today I decided to learn some of the music from Sherlock the tv show. I don't know why but it was actually very fun to work out by ear

Sat 22/02/14 

• Today I decided to really get started in preparation for Tuesday where I have to perform all 6 songs I've done with my two bands last half term. I started with the song I'm probably the least confident with, 'When You Were Young'. I wrote out a complete structure and played through the song 3 times looking at the structure and now I am way more confident with the song. Okay, next! I practiced 'Best of You' twice and my previous practicing of this song has definitely paid off as I completely nailed it both times.  The exact same thing happened with 'Harder To Breathe' which is pretty awesome. I love the fact I improvised the solo so it's different every time. I had some trouble practicing 'Inhaler', I don't have a delay pedal and on an amps built in delay, it's very hard to get the delay in time with the track.  'Locked Out of Heaven' was the same thing as best of you, just played through it twice with no problems. Same with 'Respect'.

Sun 23/02/14

• Today I had another band rehearsal with my outside of school band because we have a Battle of the Bands audition coming up as well as a gig in Brighton. We also recorded a demo on my computer which is pretty cool.