This is my final week to work on this project. Honestly, I'm surprised and proud of myself for getting this far while balancing school, family, and personal things along with learning this solo that I was very uncomfortable with. I started out with being overwhelmed and foreign to Van Halen's playstyle. Now I'm still overwhelmed at some points, but I expect it which makes the experience a whole lot better and makes it easier for me to pick up some of his new concepts. I'm happy with the progress I've made, but I also know that I could've done a lot better time-wise. There were times when I could have been working on this but I chose to wind down and not stress myself out. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing that I didn't concentrate all my energy on this, but I could've been doing this instead of something less productive.
In short, though, I don't think I will be able to learn the complete solo. I am still having troubles with the tremolo picking and the part before the tapping section I've heard is very complicated. So, my plan is to get the tapping section down first and then perfect the tremolo picking. I have already started on the tapping section and ironically it's the easiest part for me so far. Even more ironic is the fact that it's only really "easy" for me to play when I do it fast. This is also the section that I enjoy the most because, well, it sounds the coolest. The only trouble I'm having with it is moving my right hand at the right times in correspondence with my left hand. I should be done with this section by the end of today, and that will give me time to work on the tremolo picking and possibly the really difficult section. To show that I learned the solo, I'm planning on putting a video of me playing it on the slideshow. If I can't learn the part before the tapping section in time, then I'll play up to the end of the tremolo picking section, then cut the video, then show me playing the tapping section. I'm not proud of the fact that I couldn't learn that one part, but before I started this I never would have thought I could get even halfway through this solo, let alone dang near every part of it. Have you ever tried something new, and you think it's going well, and then you just hit that wall where it's getting more difficult to make efficient progress on it? Well, that's where I'm at. As mentioned before, balancing school and this is difficult, but when I do get the chance to work on the solo, it just gets harder and harder when I previously thought it would be getting easier because that's the trend that the rest of the solo was taking. Ironically, it's just getting harder and harder.
I have just managed to get the tremolo picking down, and now I'm just working on getting the phrases up to speed. The picking is up to speed, but the phrases that Eddie plays aren't- yet. The phrases that I'm talking about are basically a series of pull-offs and hammer-ons going down the fretboard. They're pretty easy patterns to get down, but the speed part and sliding my hand down to the next spot correctly in time is the difficult part, but working on it should smooth it out. Another annoying thing that happens to me is my hands sometimes just lock up or I know what comes next, but my left hand just freezes on the fretboard. It usually takes me telling myself over and over again in my mind "I'm gonna play it all the way through this time" for me to finally make it through. It's a weird psychological thing that I hope will go away as I approach the end of the solo. I think with splitting up my time wisely I'll be able to finish up this section of the solo and move onto the last parts. The very last part is the tapping section, but the part before that is some weird section that people actually call the hardest part of the solo. I described it in one of the previous weeks, but I'm getting more and more nervous that I won't have enough time to finish it all entirely, so maybe I'll just move to the tapping section first and then learn the basics of the weird part before it. Well, the end of the year is approaching, and that means more work. Because of that, I wasn't able to get a lot of work done on Eruption as I wanted to. When I do have time off from school related activities, I'm usually spending that time with my family and friends, because I value that. I was able to get some work done on the solo, but it wasn't as much as I wanted it to be.
The tremolo picking I surprisingly am still trying to grasp. I thought it would be a relatively easy concept to pick up, and I wasn't wrong, but I can't stay consistent with it which was my main struggle. If your right hand is basically having a controlled seizure, it's pretty difficult to keep it synced up with the rest of the picking patterns that you previously played. As always, I'm starting slow and working my way up to getting it to a speed I feel comfortable with. I like playing guitar, but when things like school get in the way, it's hard to do the things that I want to. I know it's not only me experiencing this, it's just how things go and I'll be attempting to find a way around it or to balance the two things out. Yes, I'm at the last part of the solo, but I don't want to cut it too short. That won't leave any room for buffing out the rough surfaces. I know this was way below 350 words, but there wasn't a whole lot of work done between school and home work. This was a much needed week for me. I was able to take a complete break from schoolwork, spend more time with my family, and just relax. With all this time I had on my hands, I was able to do some work on Eruption. I am proud to say that I am pretty much in the final stretch and close to having all of the parts down. My next step after this will be mastery, which will be a tedious process depending on how I decide to execute it.
This week I worked on the next part of the solo, the tremolo picking section. This, as I mentioned previously is the rapid movement of the right picking hand on one string. Similar to the prior sections in the solo, this part is rather speedy and will take some getting used to for someone like me who doesn't play like this too often. Since I'm not the greatest with this technique yet, all I'm doing is memorizing the regular frettings, getting them up to speed, and practicing them again and again. When I do this I'm only picking them once. When I have all the frettings memorized and up to speed, I'll start to work on the tremolo picking in hopes that my only trouble will be getting the picking to be fast enough. While this section shouldn't be too hard, the following part will probably be the hardest of them all. This part occurs in between the tremolo picking section and the infamous tapping section. I really can't describe what it is accurately. It's all over the fretboard. There's a mix of pull offs, slides, and hammer ons all over the place. If you look up any Eruption covers on YouTube, it's common that most people covering the solo will only play a few of these because of the sheer difficulty of them. In that case I really don't know what I will do. If I'm really having trouble with them, then I'll just move on to the tapping section since it's easier and shouldn't take as long. I guess I'll figure out what to do as I move on. Another good week going in the books. Since I got through the beginning parts, things have become easier for me to tackle. I've noticed that Eddie has used the same techniques throughout the song, but slightly different. Recognizing this and applying what I already know to it make it a ton easier to thoroughly learn what I am playing. At this point, I'm actually excited to learn the new parts of the song when I'm usually nervous that I won't be able to completely get them down. While I wasn't able to devote a ton of time to playing this week, I was still able to make some solid progress on the solo. Last week I had started the section where it's really far up on the fretboard, now I'm quite close to being finished with it. The beginning part of this section was pretty easy, but more difficult to get up to speed as always. Towards the end of this section there's a part that is much like the beginning of the solo- rapid pull offs and hammer ons. If it was on a similar spot on the fretboard as the beginning sections, that'd be relatively simple to get down. But, as you go farther up the fretboard, the frets get smaller. So essentially I'm doing the same thing on frets that are half the size as usual: As you can see in the above picture, the frets get smaller and smaller as you move up, so mobility is severely limited. Alas, I should be able to apply what I already know about stuff like this and pull through that difficult section.
I'm looking forward in the solo, and I'm realizing that everything after the high part on the fretboard is pretty much the concept, which is just rapid picking by the right hand. There is one part I'm worried about though- the tapping section. This is the final section you hear before the song ends. I've heard it's easier to learn than it sounds, but then again I have no experience with tapping whatsoever. So when I get to that part, it sure will be interesting to see how I do. This past week was a brilliant week for this project. I was able to actually sit down and perfect the new and old parts of the solo that I needed work on. I was able to finish my schoolwork for the following day the previous evening, just as I had planned. For this past week, I kind of went back on what I said about "Quantity over quality". I just focused on adding a little bit of new stuff and then perfecting everything that needed touching up as well as the new stuff that was added. I really think doing that was a good use of my time. It won't be something I do every week, just here and there.
I pretty much just picked up where I left off the week before last. I found out that if I take breaks frequently while playing, I don't get as discouraged and usually practice longer. So, I've started taking breaks every ten minutes while I practice and it's been working pretty well for me. If I want a break from the new stuff, I usually just play through all of what I know up to that part in the song. If I have trouble anywhere, I stop and go through it until it is near perfect. There still are some rough spots in that in between part I was talking about a couple weeks ago, but that should be fine with a little work. The stuff that I learned was around that part that was up on the fretboard I mentioned last week. I pretty much perfected the bends that begin it. After the bends there's something I guess you could call a "turn around" where its just a little lick that carries over into the next section. It is played relatively fast, like most things Van Halen, and there were some notes that repeated at different times. It was difficult to memorize but once I did I perfected it in no time. The parts after that were a little hazy though. When a song is played quickly, learning it is pretty difficult because I have trouble putting it all together to make it sound like the recording. I did learn the base of it and I plan to do more work on it this afternoon. All in all, this was a good week for me, and I'm hoping I can be more responsible like this in the following weeks. As of right now, the worst part is over. I'm moving away from the beginning of the solo to the second part of it. Don't get me wrong, it's an Eddie Van Halen solo. It's going to be challenging no matter what. At least for now, I am in a comfortable spot. Alas, I cannot let this get to my head, because if I do, then I will slow down with my work and then all of a sudden, I'll be behind. I think the hardest part about this project is not the solo itself, but being committed to it.
Remember last week when I said that I would finish all of my schoolwork on Monday night so that I would have more time to work on the solo? There was one problem with that. The Pre-ACT. My plan was to just stay up late on Monday night and do my work, but I wanted, heck I needed, a good night's sleep. So, that really screwed me over. Later this past week though, I was able to do some work at least. After the little whammy bar section, there's a small section that is filled with high-note bends and pull offs and hammer ons. This part was relatively easy for me, as I was fairly used to bending high notes farther up on the fretboard. But, it's Eddie Van Halen. There's always a catch with him. What I was not used to was the speed at which it was played. Again, using the same technique as the past couple of weeks, I was able to get it up to speed. Another thing that I was not prepared for was the rapid movement of the right hand rather than the left hand. The most active hand, usually, is the left hand because it is on the fretboard and moving all around it. Contrary to that, this section starts to use rapid movements of the left hand to put out more articulated notes. You can hear this at the 26 second mark of the song. I've done some work on it, but I don't think it should be too hard to get it under my fingers. Like last week, I'm having the same issue of getting too caught up in school and not having enough time to really sit down and practice this. Yes, I know. Wednesdays are the days to work on this project, but I still have other work for other classes that take up a large portion of my day. So, rather than staying up late on one night to finish all of my work, I'm going to start getting up earlier in the day to finish the schoolwork up in the mornings. I'm hoping this will help me spread out my time and be more responsible in general You know, I'm starting to think that this project is a little more than just learning a new skill. I think it's about learning how to properly manage your time and being responsible with your actions, as well as being able to balance different activities. This past week was a little tougher for me to work on this project. As I'm sure a lot of other students can relate to, I was just really weighed down with schoolwork. I still did work on the Genius Hour project some, just not as much as I should have or wanted to. Nonetheless, I did make some pretty good progress this week even though I didn't have much time to work on it.
I finally was able to get the second lick pretty much down and up to speed. I need to spend some more time perfecting it before I can say it is completely perfect. The same theory for the first lick I used worked just fine with the second lick. I just took it slow at first, then moved up to speed and worked more on it as it got faster. As for the in-between parts, I'm still struggling with them. They're so finicky, I have to slow the song down just to hear them better, and even then they're really vague and I can't exactly tell what it's supposed to sound like. I just got a general idea of how they were played, and moved on to the lick I was really concentrating on. After that part, I moved on to the next part which was quite a relief. It's just a section of about five seconds that are just descending quarter notes on the D and A strings. Pretty simple stuff compared to everything else in the solo. Then it moves onto a part where he uses the whammy bar, the fun part. If you don't know, the whammy bar is a slender piece of metal on the bridge of the guitar that lets you lower the pitch of whatever you're playing by just pressing it down. It is an easy thing to get the hang of if you know what you're doing. I have an idea of how I want to change this part of the song up to make it more personalized. I don't want it to be a carbon copy of the exact solo. With now only nine weeks left and only being through about seventeen seconds of the song, I need to really get a move on. It is a very difficult solo, especially if you aren't experienced in that style of playing. However, I have a plan on what to do. This week on Monday night, I'm going to do my schoolwork for the next following days so I won't have nearly as much to do. During the following days, I'm going to spend as much time as I can on moving forward with the song. Nine weeks seems like a long time, but is it really? This first quarter went by in no time at all, and that was nine weeks. No, I'm not saying I'm behind, but I need to pick up the pace. I hate to say this, but I'll start focusing more on learning the part without it being 100% perfect, but good enough to where it wouldn't take me long to get it perfect. The last couple of weeks I will work on perfecting everything and rounding up the rough edges. If you read last week's post, I mentioned that I was struggling with the first series of licks that Eddie plays in the solo. After practicing them extensively, I was able to get them nearly perfect, which is great. My plan is to get used to the stuff at the beginning in hopes that it will carry on to the other sections of the song.
Now since I'm good with the first few seconds of the song, I'm moving on to the next section, and it's much like the first set of licks, except more challenging, as there are more movements that have to go on with the left hand. Just like the last one, this lick is repeated a few times, but difficult nonetheless. Similar to the previous ones, I will just work on going slow first, and then building up the speed gradually so my fingers get used to the fast movements and don't lock up. This strategy worked well for me on the first lick so I don't see why it wouldn't work on something similar. Disregarding the licks themselves, the real challenge for me is what's in between. What you don't hear very well or what is played quickly in the song is quite difficult for me to learn. During the song, there are parts that sort of "link" two more important parts together, and are often just afterthoughts to the listener. In fact, they're quite important. Since you can't hear them very well and they're played quickly, these link sections are really challenging to learn. It's hard because I don't know what they sound like or what they SHOULD sound like up to speed without slowing the song down. This is the case with a lot of different solos, and it's really not the most fun process to get it to sound like the recording, but it's part of playing guitar. When I'm working on his solo, I can't help but question myself. When I'm moving at the rate that I am every week, I don't know if I'll be able to finish it before the end of the 12 weeks. I'm not slacking off, heck no, but having to stop and practice a lick over and over again takes a while. I think once I get through a good portion of the song, I'll be able to pick up new concepts better while being able to master them quickly. That's also something I think will carry on to other parts of my life. |
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