The trick to good practice involves several aspects, not the least of which is goals.  Have something simple and achievable for the half hour period but also be sure that you have a weekly, monthly, and yearly goal as well.  The monthly and yearly goals probably won’t be readily apparent until you’ve spent some time with the instrument.  My weekly goal for instance on piano is to play the first page of this jazz waltz I have.  My monthly goal for piano is to play the whole piece.  My day to day goals typically involve either memorizing a line or getting used to a change over.

Also metronome.  If you want to be a good musician you have to use a metronome when you practice.  Knowing where the beat is is imperative to rhythm and increasing playing speed.  And speed isn’t restricted to death metal.  Listen to David Bowie’s Lady Grinning Soul from the Aladdin Sane album for instance.  There’s a lot of speed there but its not a high bpm song.

Learn the whole song of whatever it is you’re learning.  Sure you might not be able to play the solo within the week but make it a yearly goal.  If you’re learning Dream Theater’s Erotomanic for instance, learn all the rhythm riffs the first month or two.  Then start learning a new song but save 5-10 minutes to work on the solos.  The hardest part about a Dream Theater solo is speed so those minutes could easily be spent ramping up the metronome while keeping up with a few scales.  If its a Megadeth song, Marty Friedman is a fan of neck wide appregios so work on those.  The trick is figuring out what the difficulty is derivative of and training that skill consistently over a regular period of time.

For me right now, its basic chromatic sixteenth notes with a pick on guitar.  Start on the low E, play 4 notes, change strings and move up a fret.  Then repeat back down.  I’m only at 150 bpm at the moment but I’m hoping to be up to 200 bpm by the end of the month since I used to be able to do that.  Occasionally I’ll switch to the model system and make up a quick neck run.  On piano its this book called “A Dozen a Day” or something to that effect of mechanical exercises and a song called “Waltz” that’s a little jazzy and this beginner piano book that I got when I was in high school.  Next week or the week after I might break out the sheet music to Muse’s “Apocalypse Please”.  The main difficulty in “Apocalypse Please” is being able to stretch.  Not like Rachmaninoff stretch but healthy large 7 to 8 note chord stretches.

And lastly don’t burn yourself out.  Limit your time.  I’m doing a half hour a day 3 or 4 days a week.  I haven’t gone as far to pick a consistent time each day but I’m typically doing it after work from 6-7.  Yeah sometimes you may want to spend an entire evening practicing.  The trick is to quit before you get angry.  And if you’re the type who starts out angry the trick then becomes simply not getting angry.  And on the other end of the spectrum you don’t want to only spend 5 or 10 minutes practicing.  To paraphrase my old martial arts teach once you’re worn out is when you start to learn.

The next one is requiring me to use a guitar pick again which I have horribly slacked on.  I’ve written two ideas for this one but I was listening to some old 80′s metal the other day (or 80′s rock by today’s standards) and came up with a fun idea.  We’ll see if it works in execution.

And I actually have two more projects beyond those I just mentioned.  One is a remix and one is a three tracks for a single party.  So color me excited!  Now I just need to get the endorphins flowing so I can write some upbeat music!   Well maybe not for the remix.

I do still have my next album in mind.  It’ll be 4-6 tracks and so far two of those are done.  Another of the tracks I’ve written like a 4 minute guitar track for and I’m pretty sure the song will write itself once I get around to recording the guitar.  The other 1-3 tracks are completely up in the air.  I might turn The Carousel theme in a full fledged song.  That one really depends though if I can make it better.  I don’t want to make a soulless crappy version of my podcast’s theme song so again, might not happen but its on the plate.  My goal is to sell the album for $5 so I need at least 5 tracks to do that but if March hits and I don’t have those done I may just do a cheap 3 tracks for a dollar bit.  I don’t want to sit on finished tracks for years again.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at.  Hope everyone is doing well!

Anyway, so new plan on the whole album thing.  Forget full 10+ track albums, I do not have the time for it.  I mean I’m what, trying to write and talk about videogames and get someone who can hire me to notice in a positive way, work a 40-50 hour week engineering job, nurture a relationship with my fiancee, teach guitar on Saturdays, write music for MusiM, do music commission work, and do soundtracks for my friend’s Youtube videos?  Like that horribly written string of words I just wrote that I’m calling a sentence, its just not feasible.  The last few weeks have been filled with social and family obligations too.  So new plan.  4-6 track EP’s.  Boom, almost done with my first one.  Should have thought of this years ago.  Might even be able to afford cardboard sleeve or box style hard copies too.

Anyway, I have to start doing cardio again so I can channel my inner happy kid, I have another podcast song to do!  Endorphins are how I stimulate happiness.  Hopefully I’ll get some free time this weekend.

Suffice it to say, I am out of practice in the department of ze writing of ze muzak.  So I’m going back to the jam out for an hour and upload it to Soundcloud routine.  Anyway, I have a new commission of sorts I’m working on for an upcoming podcast so my jams will at least start out with the intention of running closer to chiptune, although the one I started last night certainly dropped that ball pretty quick.

I started out using the TriForce VST but after layering reverb, distortion, and then padding out the riff with a dry sine from Massive it turned into a pretty raw and thick noise.  And it was about this point in the project when I realized I don’t have any of my custom Absynth patches on the computer yet.  But that’s not always a bad thing as it forced me to go through the Absynth library which is pretty top notch.  I did run with C#-ish minor for the key even though I’m stereotyping myself by going that route.  Really C minor, C# minor, and D minor are the keys that are easiest to me.  The trouble is having the patience to learn a new key well enough on piano to improvise with it.  One of these days I’m going to take piano lessons again.

Anyway I have a guitar gig next week so probably a lot of my music time will be practicing for that.  Nothing big, just background music for a dinner.  But ya know, I get paid.

Either way I’m not convinced too many people actually understand that the riffs I post to Soundcloud are incomplete thoughts.  Reflections in muddy water at best.  Notes made on paper that I thought would be fun to upload.  I’m not trying to belittle anyone or anyone’s favorite genre or anything.  I just got a piece of criticism that kind of unnerved me a bit (I am a sensitive guy).  For me, Soundcloud is a dart board of ideas that other people can watch and that lets me interact with other people in hopefully a positive way.  We all see and experience the world in different ways, which means we can all be right about quite a few things, especially where art is concerned.

I swear one of these days I’m going to sing on a track too.  It’ll be crazy.  Of course you can hear one track I did vocals to on my Myspace.  Note that I never check the myspace anymore.  I should probably also warn you its a comedy track.

Also none of those review sites ever reviewed me.  Anyone have any favorite review sites I should submit to?

You know not to sound trite but I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that music doesn’t impress me in some capacity.  Today I’ve been kind of down, a little nauseous, and tired as hell.  Normally I think of depressing music as making me depressed.  But today I opened up Spotify and was like screw it, lets bathe in the depression and started up my “Just Kill Me” playlist.  This list includes things like REM’s Everybody Hurts, Johnny Cash covering Hurt, Buddy Guy’s take on Killing Floor Blues, Gary Jules on Tears for Fears Madworld, and Bola’s Aguilla.  The odd thing that happened is I felt all that depressive energy being absorbed by the music and am now in a good mood.  See usually the way it works is I listen to a bunch of depressing music and become depressed.

But really in reflection I suppose this realization is a long time coming.  A decade ago I was nowhere near as genre open minded as I am now.  I wouldn’t be caught dead to listening to anything like REM or Dave Matthews.  My tastes were also exclusively to the goth club scene so much so that I knew of local Norwegian noise bands looking to get on Cold Meat Industries.  I mean its really no wonder music affected me in such an inflicting way back then.

Also this whole concept really gives the music I’ve made a new sense of hope and purpose that I intend to use.

[Musim out]

I also finished the Airship Down commission earlier this week which is awesome!  And now I kind of want to change the name to “The Airship Down Commission” because I like the idea of not only there being an Airship, but a committee that wants to do a political play to blow it up.  If you’re curious about my process I posted a mix of the end of all my sessions to soundcloud.  Just go here to play it from beginning to end http://soundcloud.com/musim/sets/airship-down-from-start-to.  Or just skip to the final version.

Now I’m thinking it might be time for a musical break.  I mean really, I’ve done a lot this year.  Released an album of tracks that I mostly wrote in other years, released an EP that all my friends did all of the work on…..  Actually come to think of it I have a certain song for the sis to write.  I have to do whatever else I’m going to do this year before Skyrim comes out.  In all honesty it has been a lot of work.  The end of doing an album is always a ton of EQ work with some possible rearranging.  And EQ work for me is the most grueling part of the process.

I can’t decide on what to do for my next album though.  I basically have three ideas: (1) a pseudo chiptune album, (2) a compilation of theme songs and commissions (which would include full versions whether a full version exists or not) and possibly remixes, or (3) an all guitar album.  Voting might help but eh, not too many people read this thing anyway.  Heck maybe I’ll do it all at once.  I keep thinking about starting a guitar Youtube channel like all the kids do now a days.

Hope everyone is well.

Also did some more updates on Airship down and posted it over on Soundcloud.  More detailing the song than anything.  Also did some EQ’ing and lost some volume in the process.  Will fix that later.  I also can’t seem to get away from a certain patch.  I always find somewhere to through it in.

So when my computer was fried it appeared my RME interface was as well since it would constantly crash my new computer.  I sent it in to Synthfax and they told me it was fine.  I got it back a couple days ago and then set Windows 7′s power mode to high performance which seems to have fixed everything.  Wish I had gone through a troubleshooting email with Synthfax first as I could have saved myself $50.

I haven’t recorded the guitar bit I was talking about a couple posts ago because my thumbnail broke.  And certain techniques I use on the song hurt without that edge on my thumbnail.  So waiting time on that.

Once I finish Airship Down it’ll be back to plotting for my next album.  I have two ideas in mind, its just a matter of which wants to be written/finished first.

In other news we should all peer pressure Stretch to finish the AllThisisMeaningless album.  Go bug him at allthisismeaningless.com.  If you aren’t familiar with his music go check it out on the C/Fe sampler on Bandcamp at http://carbonironrecords.bandcamp.com/track/the-temptation-of-st-anthony.

Just did a check on redeemed codes for the single and found out some fascinating things.  First off, Suzy is way more popular than me as half the codes she gave out were actually used.  Next up twitter people don’t like free stuff.  Facebook and the people who read this blog do though.  Still stirring the pot in terms of message board experiments.  I figure I should give those a day or two.  Several of the other bands are doing some pretty easy get a code free bit for either clicking like on their page or mine and no one seems to have taken them up on it yet.  What else is fascinating is I expected the other bands to use a code for themselves but only myself and one other band did that.  Another band actually bought the single (thanks!).  Whatevs, its my dollar now.  :P  But seriously thank you, you didn’t have to do that.

I didn’t think ahead when doing codes for In the Worship of Monsters so I can’t really keep track of who redeemed what there.  I do however know that two of the websites I submitted to have already downloaded it.

Its kind of a fascinating road to travel, trying to figure out how to get people to notice your work with minimal to no interaction.  I’m not so much a people person.  See I don’t mind people but I’m pretty judgmental about people being judgmental.  Yeah we’re all human, we all screw up, do we really need to talk about it for hours on end?

Anyway I uploaded a track titled “Airship Down” to SoundCloud.  Its pretty much two riffs right now without any changeovers.  Once I get a better idea of the song is going to contain then I’ll work on the changeover and builds a bit more.  I was going to include some guitar with it but the guitar parts I wrote changed the tone of the song too drastically.  I’ll probably record the guitar sometime in the next week and upload it as a separate tune.

Anyway, hope everyone’s doing well.  Feel free to reply with your thoughts.