Let the writing begin

My third visit with my mentor had my guitar playing abilities put to the test. Really, all I did was write down some note progressions; little riffs that I thought sounded good. It was rather difficult because I had to first figure out something that flows well and works with the overall theme, play it multiple times with slight variations to find the best combination, then finally STOP, put my guitar down and write it out on a tabs sheet. Of course, it was this incessant stopping that got me frustrated because sometimes I'd forget which string or on which fret to place the note. Therefore I would have pick up the guitar and do the whole thing over again until I figured out where that note was SUPPOSED to go.













I didn't get tons of work accomplished, but I got started on my way to actually writing a song. Now my fingers hurt real bad!

Entered the land of ZEN

My next encounter with my mentor had me sitting out in the backyard. I should say the back 'nature valley' as he has this awesome creek trickling through this forested valley area complete with rocks! Well, I sat down on a little bench and became entranced by the peaceful trickle of the babbling brook. This helped me to get in the 'mood' for letting music flow.


Sitting in the forest was very peaceful and playing my guitar made it so much better. It helped me to get my musical ideas flowing like the river. But after about 45 minutes of this, I returned to his loft house and started laying out what I had done. It wasn't anything solid, just something I had put together that sounded pretty good.

It's my first time

The blog is up and running and I've set everything up. I should explain a little about my project first because I know you're so ready to hear about it!

Well, the product is going to be an original musical composition with traditional Japanese elements including the use of an electronically produced Koto sound. A Koto is a traditional japanese instrument that is a 7 foot long stringed device that is plucked while laying on the ground.In my first session with my mentor, Michael Protheroe, I started learning the note scales for the instrument, and now I'm practicing, learning stuff. We also learned about each other; I got to understand more about his musical past which was pretty interesting. He plays all sorts of covers of various famous bands, all acoustical adaptations. Protheroe usally plays at open mics and bars for entertainment. He's a pretty cool guy. He asked some questions about my grad project and the details that applied to the product. All this while he was showing me chords and scales which we used in the product.

The first blog is done.