I am officially out of my guitar playing rut. Thanks to my wife running on the treadmill.
We have started a new thing - when she goes to the basement to run on the treadmill, I come with her. My guitars and amps are down there in the same room. Our treadmill has loud ass built in speakers that you can hook an iPod up to. She picks out the music, I grab an axe and plug in to my amp rig, and I play along with whatever she is playing.
It has been awesome for me (and her).
I think the key to why it's been so good is
1) It's not the same old stuff I always play. Because she picks the music. I have been playing the same 5 Mayer riffs for the past 5 years. Huge part of the rut - no new learning going on.
2) I am forced to do something, because I have an audience. I don't care if it's just finding the bass notes and plucking singes on the E string, you are forced to do something when there's an audience.
I highly recommend something like this if you can - have an audience of 1, but where that person has something else to do, so it's not the creepy "watch me play it will help me." Yuck.
Anyways, she is also quite turned on by it. She told me so yesterday, I paraphrase "It's sexy - I love hearing you play with distortion - I am tired of hearing those same 3 John Mayer songs over and over again - I like seeing you rock again."
YES MA'AM!
Rig of choice is the white LPC to my newly converted EL84 Hot Rod DeVille 2x12. This week we did The Temper Trap's "Conditions" and The Juliana Theory's "Emotion Is Dead" albums.
We have started a new thing - when she goes to the basement to run on the treadmill, I come with her. My guitars and amps are down there in the same room. Our treadmill has loud ass built in speakers that you can hook an iPod up to. She picks out the music, I grab an axe and plug in to my amp rig, and I play along with whatever she is playing.
It has been awesome for me (and her).
I think the key to why it's been so good is
1) It's not the same old stuff I always play. Because she picks the music. I have been playing the same 5 Mayer riffs for the past 5 years. Huge part of the rut - no new learning going on.
2) I am forced to do something, because I have an audience. I don't care if it's just finding the bass notes and plucking singes on the E string, you are forced to do something when there's an audience.
I highly recommend something like this if you can - have an audience of 1, but where that person has something else to do, so it's not the creepy "watch me play it will help me." Yuck.
Anyways, she is also quite turned on by it. She told me so yesterday, I paraphrase "It's sexy - I love hearing you play with distortion - I am tired of hearing those same 3 John Mayer songs over and over again - I like seeing you rock again."
YES MA'AM!
Rig of choice is the white LPC to my newly converted EL84 Hot Rod DeVille 2x12. This week we did The Temper Trap's "Conditions" and The Juliana Theory's "Emotion Is Dead" albums.
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