A good guitarist just knows.

Today I decorated this "Gingerbread Dance Club" with my cousin Aiden. 

I love him so much and was super happy to see him. He's 6 now so we can carry on little conversations and he cracks me up because he's clever. 

It's Monday and tomorrow's Christmas eve. I don't really get all fired up over counting down the the days or anything, but now that it's almost here I'm getting excited. I finally finished my shopping today.

This morning I got up around 10:30 am. My Grandma and parents have always gotten up earlier and this morning I overheard my Dad talking to my Grandma about the guitar and how I'm starting to "create my own style with it." He also of course mentioned his awesome guitar-playing, pot smoking cousin Carl that once told my Dad that the key to getting good at guitar is Practice, practice, practice all the time. Lol thank you Dad for sharing this insight. Anyway that complement meant a lot to me... For some reason I'm always much more flattered when I overhear a person talking about me than a complement to my face that my playing is good.

Whenever someone says I'm good I just tend to deny it. Even after all this work I feel like I'm not close to where I want to be. I am so critical of my playing cleanliness, making mistakes, and the fact that I have such a difficult time memorizing things. I don't know any guitarists that have to grab a big binder of tabs to play for their f**king family, a good guitarist just knows. They know how to both improvise AND play songs. They can confidently perform pieces without forgetting sections and having to figure out where that damn measure is located so I can keep playing...

That perfection is what drives me to practice the way that I do. That confidence just isn't there yet... Even playing in front of my family in the living room that I haven't seen in a year in a half I found practically impossible. I was frustrated because I didn't have my nylon string acoustic and had to borrow my Grandma's steal string. I didn't have the Nothing Else Matters tab nor do I have Guitar Pro on this computer so I had to print it in ugly rough tab form from the ultimate-guitar website. The tab that I printed was laid out very confusing so I couldn't find the solo.

Yet everyone said it was good and I'm just screaming to myself in my head, "No! It's not!! I'm so much better than this, I just wish I had my acoustic.. I just wish I had the tab." And it's always been that way. I can sit here and play alone for hours upon hours and move from song to song seemingly effortlessly yet when I get in front of family or people like Jake that are way better than me I just become a disorganized, excuse making mess.

I'm so tired of that... I need to get my shit together and put more effort into memorizing songs and not skipping from song to song. I need to stick with just three songs at a time and make routine progress on them until I complete and memorize them before I stow them away and print new shit. I did sooo much of that my first year and a half of playing (note that I've been playing 1 year, 7 months... Jake only recently really cracked down on me for being ADHD with songs) and it's what's lead me to where I am now and I know the changes I have to make to get there now.

Wow, I was supposed to be writing about having a good day but now here I am crying.

I guess just being able to show my family what I can do after all this work is important to me. Somehow not having copies of two of my recital pieces was a complete b*tch and even if my family was impressed I still felt like sh*t about it. Oh well, guess there's always next year.


Okay let's talk about something other than guitar...

When I say playing for my family I mean my Mom, Grandma, Mandy, Zoe, Zoe's boyfriend, my sister, Adam, Aiden, Adam's neice and my Dad. My Dad and I had just gone Christmas shopping at Ross so I got a change to grab some last minute stuff that makes my amount of money right now a little less obvious. My Dad's been kicking me a lot of cash on this trip because he says he feels "bad for me" because my sister's loaded from working at Roasters. Well that's what I get for going to school full time I guess.

Next quarter I still will be. I'll just be taking that online class and having one class a day so I have zerooooo excuse NOT to get a job. I'd go stir crazy if I didn't. Terry and I are both convinced we are going to do a lot better this quarter than last, but that means I have to stay on top of things better than I did last quarter. Working might help me schedule my day better, who knows.


peace.

Phil Demmel PDX-2 contest, electronic snobs and MORE! haha

"Guitar Hermit" would be descriptive enough to tell you about my day today. I practiced a lot as well as texted Josie a little. I have not talked to Josie in a long time, and at the same time I'm really trying to better memorize the pentatonic A minor scale by Thursday so I haven't hardly texted Brendan. He told me he was hanging out with his friend all day today anyway, figured we'd give the texting with him a little rest and see what Josie's been up too.

She's working at Best Buy. I could see that, I'm sure she's having fun there. There's always a lot of cool yet sort of snobby electronics people in that store. It's sort of like when you go into a music store or a car dealership. You're kind of at the will of the dealer because they specialize in the product that you're searching for. Of course, any intelligent person that's making a major purchase should really put a little extra time and effort into researching about the large purchase they're making.

Personally I've trusted the judgement of Best Buy people in the past and haven't had too much grief with it... except for that laptop that I treated quite badly and had overheating problems. I'm pretty sure all the dropping of the machine was what caused it to have that damage. That was back in about 2008, that laptop served it's purpose.

We had an insane wind storm last night that actually caused school delays this morning. Isn't that crazy, a delay for the wind! I can honestly say I slept through most of it last night, I'd gotten home at 12' and I was pretty swamped after that long day. Today's been a lot less eventful because I've felt a need to rest to avoid getting sick.

Christmas eve is in a week! Woohoo how fun! You know what would really make me EXTRA happy this holiday?!

If I won this flying V neck guitar, autographed by Phil Demmel lead guitarist of MACHINE HEAD. I entered this today, lol.

It would be sick as hell to have this baby in my collection. I love my Ibanez and I don't necessarily need another metal guitar but if I won this contest I would be quite excited. You can't ever have too many guitars. Every 1,000 hours I plan to purchase a new guitar, I'm sure one of them will be Jackson down the line.. I probably can't imagine how I will evolve as a player in the next 9,500 hours to mastery.

peace.