Ever try a practice journal?
I’ve been lazy at practice for awhile. I’ve got tons of things I want to work on in my technique and tons of things that I’ve purchased that I have yet to even look at. I’ve decided to take a page from the playbook of a few other guitar players I know and try a practice journal.
There is no correct way to do this, but I’ll go ahead and outline my strategy.
- Only plan a week of practice at a time. This should help accommodate the changing needs of what I should practice.
- Always start your last practice session of the week by planning the next week so you don’t end up with a day with no plan.
- Write down what you want to work on, and that day write down what you actually worked on.
- Be descriptive, draw shapes, keep good notes.
- Keep something handy to record if you stumble upon something awesome.
- Mix it up, don’t spend multiple days on the same topic if you can help it.
- Put in some of the things you would otherwise avoid (transcription, reading music, etc.)
I think the beauty of this is that it’s a forcing function to make you practice. So often we’ll just jam and call it practice, or go days without practicing. Since I have a plan, I find a way to commit 30 minutes to an hour on some specific thing I want to work on.
Have you tried this? Did it work for you? Sound off!
A cheap DIY clean boost pedal
I was looking for a quick and dirty clean boost pedal a few weeks ago when I found this kit from AmplifiedParts.com. The kit comes with everything you need to build the complete pedal for $24.95 plus shipping. I think the cheapest boost pedal I’ve seen is the $40 Electro-Harmonix LPB-1 (I have one, and this kit is better I think) so this makes for a real bargain.
Of course it’s DIY, so you need to be handy with a soldering iron and have some time to spare. It comes very well documented and took me about an hour to completely assemble and wire up. It’s not a very difficult project at all, perfect beginner project if you haven’t build pedals before.
I did take a slight detour from the printed instructions to add a BOSS style DC jack on the back so it wasn’t a battery only affair. You can get the jacks for less than a couple bucks and it only adds two small wires to the project.
If you are in the market for a boost pedal or just want to get started building your own pedals, I highly recommend this little kit. It’s called The Piledriver Power Power Boost Effects Pedal Kit and is available from AmplifiedParts.com. They shipped pretty fast too!
The sample below is just a quick thing I recorded so you could hear how well this little pedal drives a tube amp into clipping. I was playing an Ibanez Jem77BFP guitar through just this pedal into an Egnater Tweaker 15w half stack.
I’m in the AxeFX Club and I am SOLD!
It came in yesterday. I have had about two hours of play time on it so far. It is I N S A N E. I can’t believe how it sounds, what it can do. I’ll do my best to record something this weekend to show it off.
I’m in love…..
A Dead Cat Tells No Tales
Hopefully I don’t sound like a dead cat :) Here’s a playlist of songs that I put together featuring me singing as well as playing guitar, bass, etc.
Yet another new song: Bite Your Tongue
Production Notes:
- Drums: Superior Drummer 2.3
- Guitars: Ibanez RG1527 Prestige/Pod HD
- Bass: Ibanez SR505/POD HD
- Vocals: Rode NTV/Universal Audio LA-610 mkII
- DAW: Logic 9, Waves Gold, CLA Vocal
