Wow, I’ve been (once again) rather remiss about this site of mine… but it’s not surprising. I’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern for many months since Tom and I first started to try to reignite our interest in our remote recording collaboration. Similarly, I have been treading water in the learning/practicing department, sometimes going back over stuff I’ve worked on in my Mark Lettieri JamPlay course but not moving forward, and similarly with a couple of books I’ve been trying to work through for a couple of years now. I also have gotten mired in my Rick Beato ear training courseware. For some reason I have been having an inordinate amount of difficulty telling major and minor third harmonic intervals from each other; similarly, perfect fourths and fifths. With all of these things I often neglect them for weeks at a time and have to pick them up and start over from near the beginning, more or less.

The good news in all of this is I’ve been gradually getting better and better at navigating through chord changes in my improvisation. I’ve been working on some fundamental fretboard knowledge stuff, like working on all inversions of all triads across and up and down the neck, and on locating the thirds and sevenths in chord progressions, and scales played in thirds, fourths, etc. I’m also trying to force myself to play over backing tracks more often and to transcribe solos that I like.

Then there’s the band, No Static. We weren’t terribly aggressive about lining up gigs after the New Year, and our first didn’t happen until late April. We’ve added a couple of tunes to the repertoire and had some rehearsals, about once a month. I’ve been trying t identify the parts I struggle with and focus on those more, and it’s been paying off – I seen to be getting more comfortable and supple overall. At this point (mid-May) we have about 7 gigs on the calendar from now until early September, and a couple of others in the works that I expect to firm up.