Today I finally added new routines from Module 12 and managed to play the bass part for When I Come Around along with the song at the original speed.
1234 exercise
I continued playing all these combination across the neck in order to improve consistency and reduce the amount of errors.
1234 on the 1-12 frets
I see the progress at 340 bpm. A few more days and it should be possible to play it almost perfectly.
1243 on the 1-12 frets
I still struggled with this variation but surely it went better than yesterday. 300 bpm.
1324 on the 1-12 frets
Improving at 300 bpm.
1342 on the 1-12 frets
To the issue with the one with two same notes being played one after another the second one was added. Now the problem lied in my thumb usage. It stayed in place while moving down the fretboard and then had to make a jump through several frets at once, making it harder for me to maintain the speed and precision at the same time. Need more practice. 300 bpm.
1423 on the 1-12 frets
The same issue with the thumb here. Will practice more to improve my performance. 300 bpm.
1432 on the 5th fret
I took a step back to 5th fret only because yesterday my performance was awful. And it was really smooth today! I was surprised how relaxed I was during the practice of this exercise. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try to play it across the neck again. 300 bpm.
12-13-14-23-24-34 on the 5th fret
I decided to practice all these variations at once. I started at 240 bpm but then reduced the speed to 200 bpm. Maybe I need to choose some of them to practice separately, mostly 34. Tomorrow I’ll do it somehow differently.
Strumming
Module 12 pattern
The time had come to play on the acoustic guitar. I’m not a huge fan – the electric one is preferable for me in most situations, but the snare sound just doesn’t work on the electric guitar – it’s awful there. So here it is. Played at 120 bpm. I won’t increase the speed, instead will work on making the sound cleaner.
When I Come Around
Finally I got this close to recording the final version of the cover. First I practiced the bass line at 70 bpm just to become more consistent with my pinky usage.
Then I played more off-camera to increase the speed to 80 bpm. After that I recorded my attempt to play it at 90 bpm and then at the original 98 bpm. It was quite ok.
Unfortunately at that point my phone ran out of memory again so I didn’t film the last part, but I played along the song a few times to get used to all transitions from intro to verse, from verse to chorus and back to verse. I wasn’t good enough to record something yet, but I’m getting closer to this point!
Summary
Finally got more time and more will to practice than the last few days. I’m excited to finally master the bass line and also to start new routines. Let’s go!
