Did you miss me?

Had a stomach bout yesterday, and stayed home. Didn't really do much of anything but lay about, honestly.

The weekend was busy. Had a fundraiser for the Ka-Tet show on Friday, and tried to get my $25 worth. This led me to drink more than I would. Which, is usually close to nothing. Saturday was shopping/errands and my big comic book bill for the week. (**sigh**) Sunday was laundry, rehearsal, dinner and a movie.

I managed to get the "Reeses" track put to bed. Aside from vocals, of course. I feel I've been more than clear about the new process for approaching music work, and I'm not going to go over it again. I finished up the guitar solo on Saturday. Next to the vocals, guitar solos are where I struggle. I am not a fast player. I do not "shred."

My goal with every guitar solo, especially with this new work, is to find a melody line to play. I concentrate on hitting the rhythm, and building a melodic phrase around the chord progression. In the past, I could get fixated on trying to hit notes as fast as I could, and it ended up mushy and kinda blah. So, the idea is to get a little more in control of what I'm doing.

We'll see. I feel pretty good about things, so far. I do, however, need to work on my speed. Some of these tracks have wanted to run a bit, and I've been maybe too focused on what I set out as the goal. Not too worried about it, however. I have to go back for vocals, anyway...I can change the solo if need be.

Also started setting out a drum track for a much slower track, which I've dubbed "Gamble." The aim is something more akin to a Pink Floyd track, in my head. More textural, I guess, is how I'm thinking. It's gonna be slower than what's come before. I'm running at about 85 BPM for the first pass. I may have to speed it up or slow it down, depending on how things sound.

Generally, it's just a shot at a new sound. Again, if it doesn't work...you'll never hear it.

Also spending a lot more time poking around the different pre-sets on the drum machine. Lots of interesting stuff to play with, I think. I was getting lots of ideas.

It's been nice. After a LONG dry spell, I actually fell some inspiration to play right now. I feel like ideas are coming at me, and I'm ready for them. My skills keep growing, and I hope that's gonna be evident over the first two CDs. When this one is done, that is.