"In Training"

I finished writing my arrangements for Winfield, which was an incredible amount of work.  I've discovered that I am not a fast transcriber--I would far rather play a lick and then play another lick and then play the rest of the song, than play a lick and write it down.  Also, the longer the writing session, the harder it is to stay focused.  But I'm done writing now!

For those who care, here are the guitar tabs for the arrangements I'll be playing at Winfield:

Red Haired Boy (pdf and guitarpro)
The Old Spinning Wheel (pdf and guitarpro)
Beaumont Rag (pdf and guitarpro)
Liberty (pdf and guitarpro)

I will post Youtube videos once I have the arrangements down well enough to make videos.  Unfortunately, during the transcribing process I also did quite a bit of re-writing.  Now I need to learn the re-written parts.  My plan is to play each of the 4 sections 100 times for each of the 4 songs, then play the whole songs 100 times.  Then I'll evaluate what else I need to do get ready.

Of course, that amounts to 2,000 repetitions.  Which, by my calculations, will take about 37 hours of practice time.  And I have 28 days left until the contest.  It'll be busy!  So, yeah, I'm "in training" now, as boxers say.

I've been using this speed trainer as a practice tool.  I set it on a 10 or 15 minute loop and set it at an easy starting tempo and an almost-difficult ending tempo and do my repetitions while that click is playing.  The hardest part about practice is putting the guitar down at the end.  Especially when I know there's still so much work to do.

I'll probably post the Youtubes sometime around the first week of September.