Picked up some knocks during the basketball game today. Wasn't in a good form to begin with. Got rejected twice by some random shitty players. Goes to show how sluggish my actions were. Thankfully regained some of my pride by making some good shots, and played good defense. But overall i still think i'm a joke today. Ugh.
Offensively, i don't count on much. I mean i can score if i really want to. But the team has to play for me. Usually that doesn't happen. So usually i set screens for my teammates instead, since that will allow them to score better. I like to do more on the defensive end, by at least shutting down my man. I shut down 2 guys today. I really made sure they did not touch the ball as much as they liked. And i contested every single shot they made. And that's because they tot i was a joke. Then i made a few threes over them. Because they tot i was a joke. Basket.
Note to self: Shut down the man. Box him out. Deny him. Strip his ball. Hustle hard. Contest his shot. Fight the screens. Make him worry.
The thing about basketball is, unless u play regularly, u tend to get rusty. Certain things that used to be very natural to me, now i have to think twice. Like how to get pass my marker etc. And i can only do 1 thing a day. Run or ball. I like running alot, but i can always do the steve nash drill to compensate the running part. Oh well, maybe i shall alternate or something.
Anyways, i bruised my toe nail as well. So it's a nice blackish blue colour now, tho it's not as black as the time i painted my nails black. Cool, but painful.
Guitar Update: Lesson 16- 18
Basically the 3 lessons touches on moving the same lick from 1 form to another, creating variations of a single lick, and some introduction to the commonly used scales. Not many useful examples here to be excited about tho.
The moving licks section basically mean, for the same lick, u find different ways to play it. It's kinda like a "master your fretboard" exercise. Imagine u have a solo in root position, and u move it and play it using the D form. So that's 2 ways to play the same solo. It helps in figuring out certain more convenient ways to express a lick. Frank Gambale is one who is so versed in the fretboard that he almost modifies all the conventional licks so that he could sweep them. Yea he more or less sweeps everything. Check out his book for his killer sweep ideas.
Creating variations, well like i said before, is to be able to modify your existing like ideas slightly. A given lick can be modified by 1) playing faster/slower, 2) changing the rhythm completely while keeping the notes same, 3) adding or subtracting some notes, 4) changing some of the notes to bends/legato, 5) pushed up or down 1 octave, 6) accenting certain notes, and so on.
Many ways to change 1 lick. I've tried my best and listed 6 ways. How many ways can u think of?
I spent the entire practice session to just work on the solos of the 5 forms. Today's better, everything is more precise. Note searching is faster, but i still get lost sometimes. Can be improved further. Finger strength is improving. Bending near the nut is getting easier.
I then spent the rest of the rest working on one of the sequences from my song "You Wanna Be A Star". It's the run at the back of the solo, ending with a vibrato-ed bend. I just like that lick alot, cos it's really easy to play and sounds good. Basically it's just a chromatic + pentatonic scale idea, so nothing too tricky for the fingers there. What's more tricky is to ensure the even-ness between the notes.
After ball, i spent another 2 hours working on the lick with the metronome. I havent played a single lick for so long ever. Anyways, what i found out abt this 2nd session is that, to shred, your picking hand needs to be very disciplined, and it needs to pick very evenly. I just realised that my problem with shred is on my picking hand. It has the tendency to rush. At low bpms it can be smoked thru by slowing down later, but at high bpms, once i rush, it goes out of the metronome, and it becomes extremely hard to sync back. I hit a brick at 126 bpm. No matter how hard i tried i couldnt nail it everytime. It was hit and miss. Probably i was tired. I shall try again tml.
Remember, pick evenly. It helps to make shredding easier i realised.
Oh and Nick posted a really kickass webbie for all you guitarists. It's more E-books galore!
Enjoy ^^
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