The almighty Lip Roll, Keep a Journal, and Song 2

Hey, how's it hanging out there in Internetland?

Remember from last post when I cryptically mentioned something about rock and roll camp?  Well that deal is inching ever closer to becoming a reality.  The way it sits now it looks like we'll have some rehearsals in the month of September (which I will cover here for sure) and a live gig in the October time-frame.  The way I look at this is that if it lines up the way I'm hoping, I'll have met my goal significantly quicker than expected, however it'll be a little artificial in that the band may not stay playing after that 1.5 month period.  We'll see, and I'll keep you all posted on that!

So you may ask, how am I preparing for this sudden twist in plan?  Two words: Lip Rolls.  Google that bad-boy.  Yes, I'm planning to get up there and play rhythm guitar along with lead vocals.  Wait, I don't really sing though?  Hence the lip rolls :)...

I picked up my "real" Fender last night and had some fun playing Song 2 by Blur.  I followed the video lesson (above) and it took no time at all to play this song pretty much from the beginning to the end.  I've found that guitar is as much of a confidence game as it is a skill game.  Find and pick songs that you can play well and keep coming back to them when you frustrate yourself trying to learn new and hard to accomplish feats.  I've been away for a while, but it's nice to know that in a matter of moments one can pick it up and make some good music quickly (the drop D power chords help too).  Anyways, if you like this style of music, and have to-date just played your squier against RB3; unplug the game, drop D tune, crank the amp to 11, and hammer away at this song, you will be glad that you did!

Finally, I've been thinking more and more about writing some of my own stuff.  I'm not sure why this intrigues me so much at this time (historically I've only cared about playing popular music).  Irrespective of that, I'm the type that sort of follows my gut when it comes to these things.  To that end I went out and bought a "special" journal to write ideas, thoughts, statements, etc so that I can use them in my writing process.  It's already turned out to be a very handy tool.  You'd be surprised at how much interesting material just floats past you on any given day.  My experience, if you don't record it you will forget it!  So write it down!

Thinking about one currently about "always double down", not only good blackjack advice, but speaks to a personality as well don't you think?

That's all for now!  See you tomorrow,

B

10 years and Rock Camp

What up players?  I took my boy (age 9) to his first live rock show last night at an all ages venue here in Saint Paul, Mn.  He's a huge fan of 10 years, specifically their latest Album "Feeding the Wolves".

What a great experience for him.  The show was lively as hell and 10 years just laid it all out there.  They even stuck around and signed his shirt!

The show did get me thinking a bit.  How many of you are considering writing your own music to play, along with covers?  I've been to a bunch of live shows over the past year and have noticed something really interesting.  When you are an unknown band, especially one opening for a much larger and well known artist, I think you need to warm the crowd to your original material using some good covers to sort of "get the vibe" going.

Last night was the perfect case in point for this.  The two opening bands, Downplay and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster were decent bands but maybe 20 people in attendance knew anything about them.  So while these guys are rocking the shit out people just sort of stand around.  It's all new material and it's hard to get the groove going.  I wonder if either of them had played something recognizable to get the crowd warmed up if the remainder of their act over their original material might have had more crowd energy...  Anyways, just my $.02 for what it's worth.

P.s. I'm looking into attending a rock camp later this summer, I'll keep you all posted.

B

Puddle of Mudd - Let's go again!

Look, I know its been a while since I've posted here, and frankly I haven't done much with the project since my last post.  Focus is a hard thing to achieve over a long period of time given the day to day responsibilities of life.  I doubt anyone is even following this project anymore.  That's OK.  That's expected shit right there :).  What can I say?  I'm just one guy trying to follow a crazy-ass dream and having some trouble getting and keeping going.  I imagine its stuff like this that stands in the way of many, many peoples shots at true fulfillment.  That said, I'm getting back to this.  It'll get harder the longer I don't and pretty soon if I'm not careful I'll have no shot whatsoever.  Let me tell you a little story of my personal inspiration:

The hot-wife (HW) and I love Vegas, and we love the Red Rock Resort and Casino.  So when I saw that Puddle of Mudd was going to be there I figured hell, let's spend a long weekend down there soak up some rays by the pool and see one of the bands that my HW and I really connect on.  Not too mention PoM is just a fun band to see live, they put on a great show and it's worth checking them out if you get an opportunity.  

**Side rant, I can't understand why more people don't know these guys.  Everyone has heard their songs, hell most can sing along to them but yet they still haven't found as much name recognition as you would think.  What I do know is that they have an awesome sound, Wes Scantlin and company produce amazing lyrics, and their shows are a riot. **

We arrive at the Red Rock on Thursday July 7, and right away something cool and interesting was happening.  Right there in the lobby, I mean not more that two feet from me stood Paul Phillips the dude in the photo below:

Completely unexpected, but sort of makes sense when you think about it.  These guys were staying here at the Red Rock too.  Later, into the next morning and after way, way too many Red Bull vodka's (the HW and I partied on the strip at Moon and the Playboy club), we got back to the Red Rock and bumped into Wes Scantlin at the Roulette table.  The casino was pretty slow and Wes was approachable enough to shake hands, pose for a photo, and share a tidbit.  "I like roulette because it's chill you know" - Wes Scantlin.  I told him we were really looking forward to the show or something like that, I was pretty buzzed up at that point :).

The crazy thing was, this stuff kept happening...  All weekend long.  The very next day the HW and I are hanging out at the pool and run into Wes again.  At this point the HW is teasing me to no end:  "you're totally stalking him", "oh look, there's your man-crush", and my personal favorite, "what if Wes, Nathan Fillion, and Bruce Willis were all here?  You wouldn't even know what to do with yourself".  All verbal jabs designed to rib me and amuse her to no end.

Night of the show, the HW and I are waiting for our reservation at Hachi.  Up walks another band-member, Adam (new guitarist), set to get his pre-show eat on.  "Don't you have like a rehearsal or something to do?" I ask as he walks up all smiles.  "No man, we already did sound check, I need to get something to eat".  I introduced myself and my HW.  Adam introduced himself and we wish him luck.  I didn't catch his last name, and my Monday night web searches have yet to find a reference to the guy, but he rocked it on stage.  You can see him at the mic over on the left.  At the after party, the HW and I are chillin in a pool-side cabana teasin our waitress (in a friendly/flirty way)and up walks Adam again.  "I saw you guys out there" he said in reference to the concert.  We shook and fist-bumped (trying to keep it cool around rock-stars ya know).

That was all fine and dandy, but the next shit was out of control, hard to even believe my-own-self.  After the concert, after the after-party, and back at the blackjack tables playing some hands with Wes.  Yes, the HW, Wes Scantlin, and I are now gambling together at the Red Rock.  Oh right, there are other people at the table as well, but they are not important (including the poor old Asian lady I reference below).  Wes gets up, loses his seat to some other drunken gamblers who don't seem to recognize him (how I dunno, he's like the only long haired dude in the place).  I motion him over to offer him my seat and he's like no man let's bet together.  So he's in for like 50 dollars to my 10 for a few hands as he and my HW chat it up behind me.  He's like a millionaire though so I'm sure 50 bux is no big deal :).  This goes on for a few hands and he takes off.  

Now I realize that these guys are just people like you and I, and that aside from their very obvious musical talent they probably have many of the same fears, insecurities, and warped minds as the rest of us.  In fact, I'm positive that they do.  It's one of the reasons their music, and other music connects with people.  Real-world shared experience.  The next part is the subject of why I wrote this post and why I want to continue on with my dream drawing inspiration from this weekend.  Musicians create energy and feeling.  They use tools that are built into each and every one of us and bring it together in a way that can not really be replicated by any other means.  The vibe, energy, emotion, or whatever you want to call it that is generated at a concert is palpable and real and it's like no other feeling in the world.  Sure, great songs sound great on CD/MP3/Radio whatever, but the musician led live sound is simply magic.  These guys do it better than most and I want to be at the center of that.

The weekend was not all party though.  I did learn some valuable, how to be a rock-star lessons.  I'll share them with you below:

• "Always double down" - even when holding K2 or K3, better yet do it with a K7 and hit it!
• It's sometimes OK to annoy little old Asian ladies who clearly have no idea who is sitting at the table with them :)
• Be a fucking smart-ass.  There are waaay too many serious folks out there
• Be goofy, and be real
• Even when you are a giant rock-star, spend some time with your fans, they'll appreciate you even more.  Hell, you never know when you might inspire the next crop of musicians

Peace,

~b 

https://www.facebook.com/puddleofmudd?sk=wall

http://www.redrocklasvegas.com/
http://www.puddleofmudd.com/

RockBand 3 Country Track Pack 2

My wife picked this up for me last week and I am going to crack it open this weekend.

First song on my list => Ring of Fire

And the Song List:

Song title	Artist
"That's How Country Boys Roll"	Billy Currington
"Single White Female"	Chely Wright
"Alright"	Darius Rucker
"Awful Beautiful Life"	Darryl Worley
"Sideways"	Dierks Bentley
"Intentional Heartache"	Dwight Yoakam
"Man of Me"	Gary Allan
"Twang"	George Strait
"Crazy Town"	Jason Aldean
"Ring of Fire"	Johnny Cash
"Backwoods"	Justin Moore
"Kiss a Girl"	Keith Urban
"Perfect Day"	Lady Antebellum
"Giddy On Up"	Laura Bell Bundy
"Rain is a Good Thing"	Luke Bryan
"Mama Tried"	Merle Haggard
"Summer Nights"	Rascal Flatts
"The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia"	Reba McEntire
"Party for Two" (With Billy Currington)	Shania Twain
"Settlin'"	Sugarland
"Ride"	Trace Adkins

I do have readers... I really do :)

Hi folks!

Thank you for the emails and tweets about this project and this site!  Yes, I am still working away at this project.  Unfortunately, travel for work has picked up slightly so I've been lagging on the updates bit.  No time like the present I always say.

After some reader advice, I switched tack a little bit.  I am no longer progressing through the "hard" setting in RB3 pro guitar.  That advice I received suggested that I should just plow ahead on expert.  Man, what great advice!  Here's why.

When you practice on hard, the game skips beats and certain strums and finger positions to make it easier to play, seems obvious right?  What I didn't expect is that when you make the transition from hard to expert the insertion of the additional counts, beats, and strums really throws you off actually making it harder than if you were to start on expert from the beginning.  True you will spend more time in the training mode but the pay-off is worth it.

My advice, based on other advice and proven is this:  If you want to learn the song and expect to one day do expert, just start with expert on Rock Band 3 pro guitar.  Put in the time and practice and you won't regret it!

~
B

Keep on movin on

Hey all!

All three that read this blog so far :).  I'm touching base on my progress over the last couple of days.  I'm working hard on the Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson.  This is a cool song with very identifiable riffs.  It didn't take much effort to be able to play this song at full speed on the medium level however on medium I can tell that many notes and much of the recognizable portions of the song are much shortened to accommodate players at this skill level.  I quickly began training on hard which does sound like the full song.

For the first time since owning my Rocband 3 Fender Squier I plugged it up into my Vox 30 Modeling amp to play along and hear the song from my own fingers.  It took me a good 10 minutes of screwing around with this arrangement to get the hang of hearing that feedback, looking at the TV, and positioning my hands correctly, but once I figured that out, man!  What an experience!  It sounds good (even at 80% speed) and you get not only the on-screen visual cues and scoring but also you can *hear* your sound as you play.  I should note that I drop 'D' tuned the Squier (I quickly realized tBP is not standard tuning) by fretting the 5th fret on the A string and plucking both the E and A string tuning down the E string until the notes sounded the same.  I then added a little crunch through the Vox Modeling amp to give it a little bit of a grungy feel (distortion).  Cool setup, I messed around on this song for over an hour just working on the rhythm and tempo and finger placement.

Some people on forums around the net have complained about missed notes and other issues like that while playing with the string damper dis-engaged.  I didn't run into any issues like that, at least across the top three strings.

The Rockband 3 Fender Squier guitar did sound really good for the price point!  I have a Fender Stratocaster American Deluxe that I also mess around with and while the American is a much better guitar (I paid over a grand for it), the tone out of that little Squier is not horrible AT ALL.  Those waffling over the $279.99 price, rest assured that you are buying a real piece of musical equipment and it does sound good!  You can always get awesome on this guitar and buy big once you start hitting the stage ;).

That's all for now, got some plans this weekend and will hopefully shoot a video on Sunday of a practice session!

Peace and rock on!~

B

Beginning Lesson Plan

So now I have the initial framework down for how I intend to approach this goal, albeit at a pretty high level.  Next, let me share the lesson plan that I am starting with.  I promise I will keep updating this and reposting as I move down the path so you all can follow along and see the progress being made.

I have essentially three buckets of time to allocate to the garage band project.

1.) Morning before work
2.) Evenings before bed and spouse time
3.) Unstructured weekend time

This AM (start of day 3) I woke and practiced for 20 minutes before hitting the showers and leaving for work.

AM Practice Session

• Want to keep this as fun as possible
• Song oriented
• Bridge from Medium to Hard during these short but fun sessions

PM Practice Session

• Work Technique
• Start new songs, or break them down and practice
• Take pictures for the blog

Weekends - Not sure yet :)

Please share your feedback!

Until next post, thank you for reading!

Brent