Day 41. First cover in a while

I finally released my first cover after 7 years of silence on the YouTube channel! Also thus I completed one of the goals for this week, which is great. But I practiced other stuff as well.

1234 exercise

1234 on the 1-12 frets

16th notes at 90 bpm. Tried to increase the speed today. It went quite well. Tomorrow I’ll polish my performance and finalize the week.

1243 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm. Still trying to improve.

1324 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm.

1342 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm.

1423 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm.

1432 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm.

12-13-14-23-24-34 on the 5th fret

8th notes at 120 bpm. Increased the speed. 24 and 34 are the most exhausting ones.

Strumming

Module 12

120 bpm. Final video on this exercise.

When I Come Around

Here is what I spend half day on. It’s not perfect but pretty good. And it was really time to record this cover already. I stuck at practicing this song for too long. Maybe someday I’ll revisit it and make a new version.

Summary

One milestone through there is no time to hesitate. Tomorrow I’ll set some new goals for myself.

Day 40. Nailed the bass line

Today I finally played 1432 combination across the fretboard and almost fully mastered the bass part for When I Come Around.

1234 exercise

I played the final combination across the neck today – 1432. Hopefully by the end of this week I’ll be able to consider all six of them done to start practicing new ones.

1234 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 170 bpm. Almost perfect this time. Tomorrow I’ll try 16th notes at 90 bpm.

1243 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm. I wasn’t warmed up enough so this attempt was not my best. Will try to improve it tomorrow.

1324 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm. Played it decently.

1342 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm. There were some minor issues but still pretty well played.

1423 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm. Fun to play combination.

1432 on the 1-12 frets

8th notes at 150 bpm. Finally I tried to play it on the whole fretboard. It was much better than my similar attempt to do it a few days ago.

12-13-14-23-24-34 on the 5th fret

8th notes at 110 bpm. The hardest combinations are 24 and 34. They really made my hand feel some muscle pain which is not completely great. Thought I would practice them separately for a few times to get my hand used to them.

Strumming

Module 12 pattern

120 bpm. Repeated this exercise at the same speed to get cleaner sound.

When I Come Around

I played full song for a several times off-camera while the videos I recorder were transferring to my computer in order to free some phone memory and record the last video for today. That’s the result. I played the song along with the original recording at the full speed. My hammer-ons and pull-offs are not perfect, definitely needed more power. But I suppose I just got tired of all the attempts that were made off-camera. Think I’m ready to record the cover.

Summary

Well, the day has come. Tomorrow I’ll start the cover recording.

Day 38. Smoother and smoother

Today I completely repeated yesterday’s routine to make everything sound cleaner and smoother. And I made some progress in all of it.

1234 exercise

Repetition is a key to success. Not sure if anybody said that this way but surely I heard that somewhere. So I continued to play the same combinations at the same speed to increase my skills of playing them consistently.

The same issues apply to all of combinations, so I’ll just write them here not to repeat myself 6 times. The main struggles are:

  • Playing the E string with my pinky at the upper frets
  • Going down the neck with moving my thumb down as I go

1234 on the 1-12 frets

Played it at 340 bpm. It’s much cleaner than before. Still a few struggles up the neck and on the way down.

1243 on the 1-12 frets

Practiced it at 300 bpm.

1324 on the 1-12 frets

300 bpm as well.

1342 on the 1-12 frets

Played it at 300 bpm.

1423 on the 1-12 frets

Practiced this combination at the same 300 bpm.

1432 on the 5th fret

Played it pretty decent this time. Tomorrow I’ll try the same speed at the 5th fret again and maybe proceed to playing in across the fretboard. 300 bpm.

12-13-14-23-24-34 on the 5th fret

I changed the approach to this exercise. Now I play each combination for a minute and them switch to the next one. 24 and 34 are the toughest ones for me, need to pay more attention to them.

Strumming

Module 12 pattern

I repeated that pattern at 120 bpm to make the sound cleaner. And despite the fact that I mixed the chords a bit it went great. The second pattern made me make some stupid mistakes without any reason but it’s still okay.

When I Come Around

Today I started the bass practice at the original speed of the song – 98 bpm. It’s not clean, but I suppose it’s cleaner than yesterday.

Yesterday I played along with the original song a few times. Today I wanted to do it again and get it on video but my phone ran out of memory in the middle of the song so it’s not complete. Still not close to perfect – will practice more.

Summary

I’m getting to my weekly goals. Let’s do it!

Day 37. Finally something else

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!

Day 35. Finalizing the week

Somehow I thought that it was one more day till the end of the week. So unfortunately I didn’t manage to learn the bass line completely. So I practiced the same stuff I had done yesterday.

1234 exercise

Today I did my best to record all the combinations the best way possible.

1432 on the 5th fret

Played it at 300 bpm. Still struggling, mainly with my index finger – a lot of dead notes had been played instead of strings it was pressing. But the main issue here is not with the index finger but still with the ring and pinky ones. Will practice more.

1423 on the 5th fret

Fun to play combination, but the motion surely should be reduced. Will see what I can do with that. 300 bpm.

1342 on the 5th fret

Nothing new here. Played at 300 bpm.

1324 on the 5th fret

Another easy and fun combination. Played it as 300 bpm again as well.

1243 on the 1-12 frets

Yesterday I tried to play this one across the neck and today I repeated this attempt. It went better than yesterday, but that’s still work in progress and much more practice needed in order to play it smoothly. 300 bpm.

1234 on the 1-12 frets

Still trying to play it perfectly at 340 bpm. Now “perfect” is not really how I would describe my performance 🙂

When I Come Around

As I said I thought it was another day till the end of the week. So I was completely sure that I could practice the bass line today and record the whole song tomorrow. Not only I mixed up the days but I hadn’t got much time to practice. So I just filmed my current skills of playing this song.

On the guitar (the same verse-solo-chorus transitions).

And on the bass (at the original speed of 98 bpm).

Summary

Despite the fact I didn’t reach the When I Come Around goal this week I’m still into all this stuff. I’m excited to proceed further so it’s a matter of time for me to finally make this cover real. Hopefully I’ll be able to record it next week.

Day 34. 1243 on the whole neck

Today I finally started to add the combinations played on the 1-12 frets instead of the 5th fret only and made a huge progress in the bass line for When I Come Around.

1234 exercise

I practice When I Come Around a lot so my guitar is tuned half step down to match the original. I forgot to tune it back up, but it doesn’t matter for these exercises anyway.

I decided that 5 minutes per combination is too much. At this point there are too much of them. So I reduced the time for 3 minutes per combination, so the time to practice all 6 of them were 18 minutes, which is ok.

Now I try to look away from the fretboard while playing to let my muscles do the job without using much brain power. Also to spice things up I tried to play 1243 on the whole neck today and it worked out … -ish.

1432 on the 5th fret

Played it at 300 bpm. I wasn’t too warmed up so the first half is pretty rough, but by the end of the video I got better. Still more practice needed.

1423 on the 5th fret

Played it at 300 bpm as well. There is a lot of movement here, definitely need some economy of motion for my left hand.

1342 on the 5th fret

Not so tricky, but when I looked away the fingers started playing the wrong things. Besides that I nailed it at 300 bpm.

1324 on the 5th fret

One of the easiest combinations but without my eyes on the fretboard sometimes I missed notes. So that’s a reason to practice more.

1243 on the 1-12 frets

I started trying to play new combination on the 1-12 frets from this one because that’s the second one I mastered after the 1234 variation itself. Considering the fact that I still struggle with it on the single fret, the whole neck exercise went not so smooth. But that’s a start! Did it at 300 bpm.

1234 on the 1-12 frets

Still trying to reduce the number of mistakes at 340 bpm.

When I Come Around

It was a day of bass practicing. I spent, like, 2 hours on the single bass line. The day before yesterday I figured out the way Mike Dirnt plays it and my enthusiasm way lower that ever because I thought it would be almost impossible to play it that way at the original speed in just a few days. I even skipped the bass practice yesterday because of that.

But luckily today I fully engaged in playing this bass line and surprisingly started to nail it much faster than I supposed I would do. So there are some progress videos. In the first one I played the main bass line at 80 bpm.

Then I played it around 10-15 minutes off-camera and achieved the original speed – 98 bpm.

Then I went to watch how the chorus part is played and found out that every 4th bar there is one note change in the bass line, so I had to reduce the speed significantly to implement this change – to 70 bpm.

After 10-15 more minutes of playing my left hand and my shoulder became so tired that I decided to film the progress and finish the practice for today. That was played at 80 bpm.

Summary

At first I didn’t have the mood to play and record stuff today. I even thought about stopping the daily uploads and instead to film the progress once a week. Then I realized it was because my routines had been repeating every day and nothings changed.

So today I had played every finger combination for 3 minutes instead of 2 of 5 and tried to make 1243 on the 1-12 work. Also with my huge bass wise project the desire to record and share this things appeared again, and I wasn’t as willing to write this post for some days now, so it’s a win!

Still need to practice the bass line more in order to maintain the speed and consistency to play full song non-stop at the original pace. I really want to record a full cover of it in the next 2 days and I will. I just won’t publish it on my channel and leave this version unlisted in order to record the cleaner version in some time.

Day 32. Learning the bass line

Today I continued to make progress in my bass playing skills for When I Come Around and got the 1432 combination sloppy played at 300 bpm.

Pressure control

Still not entirely sure what is the best way to practice it, so I continued to randomly play different variations of 1234 at 300 bpm to then implement pressure control while playing them.

1234 exercise

1432 on the 5th fret

I wanted to start at 240 bpm today but after I tried this combination during the pressure control routine it appeared that I could play it faster. So I started from 260 bpm.

Then I increased the speed to 300 bpm to reach this week’s goal. I played it quite sloppy but there was no need to increase the speed gradually – 300 bpm is not that much of a deal.

1423 on the 5th fret

I continued practicing this combination at 300 bpm.

1324 on the 5th fret

300 bpm.

1342 on the 5th fret

300 bpm.

1243 on the 5th fret

300 bpm.

1234 on the 1-12 frets

Still was trying to play it at 340 bpm. Not perfect but I’ll get to it eventually.

When I Come Around

Still practice the verse-solo-chorus transition to play it perfectly no matter what.

Then I practiced the bass line for a while.

I watched too many videos of live Green Day performances today trying to see what Mike Dirnt was playing here and there, as all covers I saw was approaching to the bass line differently and I wanted to play it as in original. Finally I sort of found out the fingering and all pull-off/hammer-on actions hopefully. Tomorrow will practice it that way and increase the speed to the original.

Summary

Need to play more bass, the bass line is trickier to play properly than I thought. Will focus on it the following days.