A Guitar Practice Diary

Hey, I'm Kat [16] and I'm trying to figure out how to not suck at playing guitar, since 2010. I have an electric guitar since Christmas 2017 and a keyboard since January 2018. Welcome to my practice diary, enjoy your stay...

[kat-plays-guitar]

Howdy!

I’m feeling like a cowboy lately… Or at least like somebody playing music that sounds like a cowboy is about to step around the corner any time soon.

What I’m trying to say is that played the first time with a bottleneck and instead of practicing I’m only messing around, trying to find the weirdest sound this thing can get out of my guitar. The actual reason I started playing with a bottleneck in the first place is ZZ Top’s “Tush”, a really really cool song imo. And playing along with it is ton of fun (but it’s only 2mins long so I gotta repeat it very often which propably annoyes my parents and neighbors by now...well, not my problem :D )

C U

Kat

01/31/2020

[kat-plays-guitar]

Playing with an orchestra...

...is much easier than I expected.

My “Hometown-Orchestra” consists of around 60 People, while the orchestra I played with yesterday only has around 15 members, so it’s a really small Group of People.

Also, they’re practicing together only once a week and they didn’t seem to know the piece all to well. So it was a Little confusing at first, for exemple I had to wait a whole bar until my next part to Play, even if there was only an eight rest noted. But it eventually worked out  and it was a really cool experience for me. 

C U, Kat

01/18/2020

[kat-plays-guitar]

Stress, Tears and Rock ‘n’ Roll

I’ve got sooooo much work to do at the moment, it’s terrible. There’s so much going on at school right now ( my finals are coming up in 7 or 8 weeks) that I don’t have much time left for practice.

The problem is, that my presentation about Django got delayed due to illness, so I still need to focus on “Minor Swing” until I will perform it in about 2 weeks. Additionally, I’m going to perform “Europa” by Carlos Santana with a local orchestra in March and need to work on that too. Fun Fact: The first rehersal is on Friday and I can’t play the whole song yet.

And as if that wasn’t enough, practicing is an absolute horror right now beacuse I have troubles with my fingertips. Since it’s cold outside ,my hands are very dry and due to the lack of practice in the last few weeks (well probably months) playing on the steel strings hurts really bad. Playing the Santana song is even worse because there are so many notes you need to bend in it, which hurts more than playing without bending strings. Maybe I should put thinner strings on my guitar next time I re-string it...

So as you can see, this new decade is starting in the most wonderful way one could imagine...

C U (hopefully soon, even though I don’t think so tbh),

Kat

01/14/2020

PS:If you’re wondering why I’m not tracking my practice time anymore: It made me feel like practicing was something I’m forced to do. But I’m not. Practice is something you should do because you want to, not because you feel like you have to. And sometimes a short but fun practice is way more effective than playing for hours but not really getting things done!

[kat-plays-guitar]

Practice Diary

I could say something like “I’M BACK, YAY!”, but thats what I did what feels like the last three times I posted and I never really came back, right?

So yeah, fuck it.

Still, here’s a little update of me and my guitars:

I started practicing regularely again. And in a few weeks, I’ve got a presentation in class about Django Reinhardt, where I will play “Minor Swing”, so guess what I’m practicing right now… But it’s actually fun to practice this song, so I won’t complain!

CU

Kat

09/20/19

[kat-plays-guitar]

Practice Diary: Summer Break and Videos

Now that I’ve got a few weeks off, I’ll try to start writing here again.

Also, I might start uploading Videos of me playing!

So CU, maybe even later today,

Kat

[kat-plays-guitar]

Practice Diary

Again, I learned a different song instead of learning “And All Things Will End”, this time “Living In A Dream” by Finger Eleven. 

“Living In A Dream” is so incredible fun to play, it’s probably my favorite guitar song out of all songs I played this year!

But now it’s time to focus on Avenged Sevenfold again (I’m curious which song I will learn next instead of learning that one).

CU

Kat

04/18/2019

341:26

[kat-plays-guitar]

Practice Diary: And All Things Will End? No.

I know I said I’m going to learn “And All Things Will End” but I really wasn’t in the mood for something like that today, so I learned “Sun King” by The Beatles instead…

This didnt’t take that much time, maybe 25min, so I’m going to work a little on Avenged right now, since I don’t have anything else to do today. Oh how I love not going to school!

CU soon

Kat

04/16/2019

338:49

[kat-plays-guitar]

YOOOOO I can play the breakdown now!!! (Those 2 bars took me two days to understand)

[kat-plays-guitar]

Practice Diary: I’m back I guess

The last few months were an absolute hell for me. I had so much stuff to do for school, that I only practiced every 4 or 5 days, not more.But now I have two weeks off and time to practice again!

The song I chose to learn in the next few days is “And All Things Will End” by Avenged Sevenfold, so the following posts will be about it.

I’m excited for two weeks of actual practice! 

So CU

Kat

04/14/2019

334:49

[kat-plays-guitar]

Practice Diary: Band Practice (?) and Joe Satriani

Yes, I'm still alive (even though I question that from time to time myself). And I think I’m in a band now (a very small one but who cares)

Okay here we go: The weekend was awesome, I finally met with the drummer I told you an eternity ago about. Well she's pretty cool, as well as her family and we get along quite well thus far. We'll definitely meet again, maybe next week or so. Here are the songs we played: 

Come as you are by Nirvana

Nothing Else Matters by Metallica 

7 Years by Lukas Graham

50 Ways to leave you Lover by Paul Simon

Some german stuff you don’t know :D

What we both realized is that it’s way easier to play something like Nothing else matters, where the guitar has sort of a lead Melody rather than playing Nirvana or something like that where you barely recognise the song because you’re only playing some chords. Nevertheless it was a shit ton of fun to play Nirvana songs!

What else to say? I used my Katana 50 and it probably reached it’s limits trying to be louder than the drumkit. But it still sounds good, even when cranked all the way up.

But now the weekend is over, so things aren’t that nice anymore. School is freaking me out and so is the fact that I need to be able to play Always With Me, Always With You until wednesday and still haven’t practiced. At least I know how I should play it, but it’s way too fast to do so. I guess I’ll have to sit down and practice an hour only this one song… but there are worse things to do I guess.

CU

Kat

02/25/19

[kat-plays-guitar]

I'm motivated again. A little at least

Sooo... I'm meeting with the drummer on Saturday, yay! We agreed on playing some Nirvana, so that's what I played with my teacher yesterday. But there was some time left so we started with "always with me, always with you" by Joe Satriani. The beginning is fun, but we'll see if that changes throughout the song ...

CU

Kat

02/14/19

[kat-plays-guitar]

Update

The last few days or weeks were horrible. I barely have time to practice anymore and when I do, I'm just tired from school and everything else. So basically I don't really practice, when I get to spend time with my guitar I'm playing songs I already know very well.

Furthermore, I didn't play the concert because the guy I planned performing with got sick.

The good news is, that I'm talking to a drummer right know, so maybe we'll meet up and jam together every now and then. Well we didn't talk about what kind of music we want to play, so maybe she says country and then I'm out, but we'll see I guess...

So CU

Kat

02/11/19

[kat-plays-guitar]

Concert Practice Diary

For the song we're performing I need exactly 3 chords. I'm just not sure yet whether I'm going to play them as open chords or has bad chords somewhere around the 5th fret. I think I'm going to decide this together the guy who's singing it.

I hope he also likes the bar chords better because they are a lot easier to play. If I told this my younger self I wouldn't believe a single word, but bar chords became second nature for me.

And there is a very short little intro I theoretically know how to play, but the original is performed with 2 guitars and since only I am playing guitar on stage there'd be no rhythm guitar at this point and this sounds pretty crappy in my opinion. But again, 8m going to talk about that with the vocalist.

CU

Kat

300:51 (Hell yeah, 3%)

[kat-plays-guitar]

Concert Practice Diary

I'm playing at my school's annual concert again, yay! The concert is in three weeks and I'm playing Havana by Camila Cabello and the guy I performed with last time is singing again.

I'm so excited!

01/24/19

[kat-plays-guitar]

Practice Diary: Nightmare and CAGED

Was I too lazy to post here in the last few days? Maybe.

Actually I wanted to finish my goals for 2019 post, but who cares anyway..

My guitar teacher had the fantastic idea to make me learn all five positions of the pentatonic scale until next week, so that's what I should be practicing. What I'm actually practicing is Avenged Sevenfold's "Nightmare". I can play 90% of the song but I never learned all these little solos and licks between the "real" rhythm parts, so I'm gonna learn these now. I also tried to play Syn's solo, which isn't that hard, only way too fast for me, so I'm going to stick with Zacky's part there.

Also, I've learnt Stairway in my last guitar lesson, which is awesome to play!

CU

Kat

01/20/19

296:06

[kat-plays-guitar]

Looper proplems

I got my (very first) looper pedal (BOSS RC-1 BK) yesterday and I’m somehow to stupid to make it work… First of all, it took me half an hour to find the battery compartment…  I’m able to turn it on now (yay!), but it still isn’t working. I plugged my amp into the pedal and the pedal into my guitar but all you hear is silence… YouTube Videos here I come! 

01/09/19

[kat-plays-guitar]

IT'S FINALLY WORKING!!!11!1

[kat-plays-guitar]

I’m not the biggest fan of art classes, but as long as you can choose the person you’ll draw… does anybody recognise him?

[kat-plays-guitar]

And here's his singer

[kat-plays-guitar]

Looper proplems

I got my (very first) looper pedal (BOSS RC-1 BK) yesterday and I’m somehow to stupid to make it work… First of all, it took me half an hour to find the battery compartment…  I’m able to turn it on now (yay!), but it still isn’t working. I plugged my amp into the pedal and the pedal into my guitar but all you hear is silence… YouTube Videos here I come! 

01/09/19