Practice Blog 8/ Conclusion

Since this is the last week of my blog series, I decided to revisit some of the early areas I focused on in the initial first blog entries. This included the Pull Harder on The Strings of Your Martyr solo and the arpeggio inversions of the Dom7, Major 7 and Major 9 chords. I feel like not focusing on these objectives for a few weeks actually helped me, as I was able to make simple licks on the spot using the inversions I learned without putting as much thought into it as I did a few weeks ago. Similarly, I was able to play the solo along to the original studio track at pretty much full speed, although not all parts sounded completely smooth, however I am confident I will be fully able to perform all parts cleanly with two weeks. While I feel like I have vastly improved in all areas, I still need to work on every concept in the future as there is always more to learn. 

Thanks to everyone that read the blog, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’re interested, I post guitar and music related content including live performances and guitar covers.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA5aRuDpV-s5ny6W-QSa6cg

Practice Blog 7

I mostly focused on finishing writing a song for my band. Stylistically it is reminiscent of nu metal bands such as Deftones and Linkin Park. I had originally written the original version of the song a couple of years ago, however my band members suggested writing a new intro which led me to woodshed and compose a new riff to start the song. In retrospect, I agree with their opinion and I believe it was the right move. After the initial vocal lines and lyrics were written I revisited the new intro of the song and felt like it was too stripped down and required some more layers of sound around them, so I experimented with adding various guitar fills to make it feel more polished. I feel like going back to analyse an original song and see if there is room for improvement is a valuable habit that would benefit me as a songwriter throughout my career. I eventually came up with a lead melody which I then presented to the band. Everyone in the band liked this version of the intro a lot more so while the song is still a work in progress I feel like we are on the right path and with some slight re arrangements of certain riffs and vocal lines we will be fully finished.

Practice Blog 6

This week I decided to take a break from solo related practice and focus on my rhythm playing, particularly expanding my chord voicing vocabulary. The reason for this is because I feel like knowing many ways of playing a chord can open up ones options when composing a song, as well as being told by my college tutor Harry that it would benefit me to learn using different chord voicings of chords besides just root position bar chords. I then decided to expand on a concept I had seen in a YouTube video, which is learning inversions of a certain chord all over the neck using closed voicings(meaning I’m only playing the first four notes of each inversion.) I decided to apply this concept to the Min7 chord in the key of G. I would say the real challenge was identifying each interval of the chord after switching inversions rather than the shape itself. Needless to say I was able to find a lot of interesting new voicings of the Min7 chord that will help me spice up my song writing when needed. Contrary to my original development plan, I opted not to include working on my Lydian mode improvisation as I felt that I would benefit from a break from soloing. This week I also worked on my interval identification, using the site https://www.musictheory.net/. The exercise on the site consisted of me hearing a certain interval and choosing the right option. Surprising to me, I managed to identify most intervals easily, however I made some mistakes on extensions such as 9ths, 11ths and 13ths. Overall I’m quite happy with my progress this week as I wasn’t initially sure if I would do well, especially when it comes to ear training.                 

Practice Blog 5

I picked up where I left off on week 3 and begun learning the second inversions of the Dom7, Maj9 and Maj7 arpeggios. This meant that I would be starting on the fifth note of each arpeggio. As with week two, I was in the Key of E for each arpeggio. I again practiced them with a metronome at 100BPM for half an hour each for two days, and managed to get them under my fingers quite smoothly. I also decided to practice increasing my alternate picking speed by playing linear scale runs  using three note per string shapes of the modes of the Major Scale in the key of C. The modes of the major scale are Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian. I already knew the shapes off by heart, however I wanted to increase my speed when playing them as it will increase my soloing skill. I played them in various note groupings, such as 16th note triplets and sextuplets, both ascending and descending. I specifically focused on descending runs as I that is a weaker area of my picking. The fastest I can normally play using alternate picking is at 140BPM, however I managed to increase my speed to 150BPM this week. Needless to say, this week has been a success in both areas. 

Practice Blog 4

I continued to work on improvising using the arpeggios learn from last week, however I also decided to continue practicing the solo by Trivium. I decided to leave learning the rest of the inversions of the Dom, Maj9 and Maj7 chords for next week as I don’t want to tackle too many things at once. I feel like this was the right move as I managed to progress really well in both areas this week. My improvising became a lot smoother when using the arpeggios, and I am almost up to the desired speed with the Trivium solo. I feel like both tasks have started to increase my lead playing ability on guitar, and have taught me how to efficiently handle concepts I find difficult on guitar, and also use my ear when learning songs to cover, which will be efficient when I have to learn songs to cover when playing a gig with my band.

Practice Blog Week 3

This week I focused on practicing playing 4 and 5 string inversions of Dom7, Maj9 and Maj7 chords, ascending and descending using sweep picking. I have practiced playing these chords as arpeggios in the past, and can play them comfortable over two octaves, however I never learned any inversions of them other than the root positions. This made one of my main objectives for this week to expand on what I already know and begin learning other inversions of these chords. I begun by structuring out how I was going to organize my practice plan for this week, and came to the conclusion that in order to make the most progress possible, I would solely focus on the first inversions of each chord, play them cleanly to a metronome at 100BPM and subsequently practice incorporating them into my improvising. While I didn’t have too much trouble learning and playing the inversions along to a metronome, incorporating them into my improvisation turned out to be a lot harder. I had to break out of playing the licks I would normally use when improvising, and began paying more attention to how to utilize the chord tones of the chords efficiently. While I managed to achieve one of my objectives in playing the inversions cleanly to a metronome, using the inversions to improvise is still a work in progress which I will continue on next week.       

Practice Blog Week 2

This week my main objective was to practice the solo of Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr by Trivium. I had already learnt the solo a month prior, mostly by ear while also watching various covers and live performances, as I feel like learning songs and solo sections by ear will help me improve when learning songs I have to play live without the aid of guitar tabs. However I was struggling to  play all the parts up to speed with the song, so I dedicated this week to practicing the three parts I found the most difficult to a metronome starting at 100BPM. I did this for an hour a day over the span of three days, practicing the licks for 20 minutes each using a timer. At the end of the week I managed to play the licks cleanly at 120BPM. Overall I am quite happy with the progress I made on the solo even though I’m not quite up to speed yet. 

Practice Blog Week 1/ Writing a solo

For this week my goal was to write a guitar solo for a song my band Northoad is working on. Initially I was slightly lost as to how to approach since the section I was writing over is predominantly in 6/4 with a two bar section of 4/4.

Feedback: After two days of constant work, I finally had something I was happy with to present to the boys. One suggestion made by the drummer of the band was to change the ending run and make it more attention grabbing and “shreddy.” Needless to say we were all pleased with the rest of the final outcome.

Here is the audio of the solo

https://youtube.com/shorts/Amo0nvIAc7I?feature=share

Practice Blog Introduction

Hi, my name is Niko Valchev. In this blog series I will post weekly updates about my practice regimen over the span of eight weeks to keep track of my progress. Every week I will practice something different for at least three to four and make an evaluation based on how well I did. Hope you enjoy!