Finally getting around to migrating off mastodon.social - waiting for my account to be approved on metalhead.club :D
| Work stuff | https://www.condense.live/ |
| Music | https://soundcloud.com/neonmachines |
Dan Fairs
@danfairs
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New account over at @danfairs
So it's not "holding" close to the fretboard, it's just "relaxing" close to it.
Almost all of my speed and accuracy improvements over the last 6 months have come from increasing levels of relaxation while playing, letting go of any tension. This is no exception.
Relaxation and gentle precision seems to be the key to higher speeds and cleaner playing for me.
To see this in action, just watch someone like #plini play.
Except - I've just realised that this is completely the wrong way to think about it. My fingers are all in the right place when they're relaxed. So this means I shouldn't focus on "holding" my fingers close to the fretboard; instead, it's just that the single finger which is fretting a note should have just the barest tension required to hold the string down (which really isn't much) and the rest of the fingers should be perfectly relaxed.
Sudden guitar insight. Like a lot of folks, I suffer from the "flapping finger” problem on my left hand. For may people, this is the pinky; for me, it's actually that the middle finger like to try to curl up when I'm not using it. I've been working on holding those fingers close to the fretboard when they're not in use, so they can just drop onto the frets. 🧵
I just watched my first ever TikTok video (on the web, don’t have the app). I guess it lets you overlay canned audio? The quality is _atrocious_, even worse than Spotify.
Ugh. It’s been about a month now: Covid, then cold, then chest infection, and now (I suspect) another cold. Pretty sick of it.
This Is My GlasgowThis is something I encountered on my climb up Ben Lawers on Saturday, and it's a phenomenon I've wanted to see for a very long time. The shadowy figure in the middle is called Brocken Spectre and it occurs when your shadow is projected onto cloud lying below you on a mountain. The circles of colour are known as a glory, and these are often, but not always, associated with Brocken Spectre.
Cont./
#glasgow #benlawers #scottishmountains #brockenspectre #hillwalking #hillwalkingscotland
Argh. Plastic clothes pegs which degrade under UV are just a stupid idea.
I mean - I guess I know what they meant to say but to me this sounds like an app that’s constantly whispering things to you like “everyone is judging you” and “this is going to be a disaster”. Or “people who found this a worry were also panicking about…”
So yesterday I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Colin Greenwood (bassist from Radiohead) at his book signing for “A Portrait of Radiohead”. As it happens I’ll see again him next week as I’m going to Nick Cave’s show in Birmingham. Colin contributed bass parts for Cave’s new album, Wild God.
