Week 1: I have my idea for what I want to do for my 20% project and I want to compose a song using an electric guitar with effect pedals.
Week 2: My project has evolved since last week, since then now I know what genre of music I want to make song in. I hope to be able to create a garage rock esc song, and hope to use effect pedals to provide flavor to the song
Week 3: This week I'm working on string alterations and practicing scales and arpeggios. I have got the scales down, and can alternate strings between them all as well as play it in seconds, thirds, or fourths. I got the major arpeggio chord down but I'm still working on my minor scale. The pentatonic licks are to increase my vocabulary in music, I can use them to improvise in solos or when making music, I haven't learned them all yet but I'm working on most of the page 1 licks and some page 2 licks.
The song I've been practicing outside of my lessons is Sestri Levante by Tame Impala, I think I want to make my final song something like this where it's purely instrumental.
Week 4: This week I learned more music theory, how to correctly write chords, scales, or notes, as well as practicing the tone of where everything is one the guitar. As far as practicing I still practice basic arpeggios and scales. The song I'm practicing this week is Apollo by Last Dinosaurs. As far as the song I'm making for the project I've been experimenting with major and minor shell chords and I think I'm going to try to incorporate that into my song. I think for what I'm going to try to do next is find a chord progression I like and then build off of that.
Week 5: This week I've been doing more technical practice and I've been working on Apollo this week as well. I can play the song but I've been working on playing it up to the speed the actual song is. I have been working on what I want my song to sound like, I think I will open with chords and move into single string notes or vice versa. I really like working on the high strings of the guitar and I'll probably keep my guitar in that key. On top of all this I'm going to get a new guitar soon to upgrade from my stratocaster, I think I'm going to go for a mustang or jaguar style of guitar.
Week 6: This week I've been practicing with the chromatic scale to increase by dexterity and speed in all my fingers. I've also practiced reading tabs and preforming them by learning the opening riff to some songs. I've also been trying to improve my pulling off and hammering on ability with my strings.
Week 7: After my presentation to the panel I learned that I should start focusing more on the community benefit. My overall content was good and I think I had everything I needed for the presentation, but again community benefit seems to be what I needed to improve on. As for spring break I will now have more time to practice and work on my song. My goal for this spring break is to try to complete the main riff for the song if not the whole song.
Week 8: This week I made up the rhythm guitar portion of my song using two shell chords, 2 minor and 1 major. I play these chords like an arpeggio, so one at a time. The sound I have right now is really calm and chill and I kinda want to maintain that sound as I continue to write. The practice I am doing is I am playing arpeggios on the 5th and 6th string, which I am starting to solidify and get better at.
Week 9: This week my teacher made up a sample of the chord progression I made up last week. From this I can start adding more to my song like a chorus or more riffs to it. I am still doing the basics for my practice, however this week I added a finger exercise where I play on 4 frets on fret at a time for each string in a different order each time.
Week 10: I think my symposium went really well, I think it was really well received. I was really proud of my graphics and the set up of my project. Everyone enjoyed the song and thought it was very relaxing, and now the final steps of the project is completing and mixing the song. The song is now written out and I just have to finish all the finer details as well as start testing out what it sounds like with different pedals. I am also getting a new guitar over the next couple weeks so I may be able to get a different base sound out of that guitar than my stratocaster I have currently.
Week 11: Today I'm going to order my new guitar, It's a Fender Mustang, this is a guitar that professional use and is much higher quality than what I have now. I'm not sure if I'll get it in time for the recording of my song, but I'm planning on recording it very soon, I plan to release it before the 20% project so I can get some reception on it. For my presentation I want to show part of my song but not all of it, because I want to explain the process of how I made it.
