After I left Orlando, the vast majority of the friendships that I had developed there slowly began to fade away. It was sad to see this happen, of course, but it wasn't particularly surprising. Maintaining meaningful relationships with people who are far away is not an easy task. However, there was one female human (who shall herein be referred to as Special K) for whom the trend was reversed entirely: We were not particularly close friends during the program, but something clicked on the very last day that I was there, and so I made an effort to get to know her better in the subsequent months.
Special K, as the nickname would suggest, has since become a very important person in my life. A good number of my songs are about her, and at one point I was even so bold as to purchase a plane ticket to go visit her. Alas, not all was wonderful in the world: over time I began to realize that the friendship was largely one-sided. Many of our conversations took the form of "Hey, can I call you back a little later?" followed by several days of me wondering why I had even bothered. As deeply as I cared about Special K, it simply became too painful to be left to my own devices, wondering whether or not my affections were truly mutual. Having always preferred to let problems sort themselves out rather than resorting to direct confrontation, I was tempted to simply do nothing about the ever-increasing doubts regarding this friendship. A few weeks back, I pushed myself to do something different: I deleted her number from my phone.
----
While working on a production of Jesus Christ Superstar, I happened to find a long quarter-inch instrument cable tucked away under a pile of crud in the lighting booth. Since instrument cables are of absolutely no use in the world of theatrical lighting, I reasoned that it did not belong to the theater but to some nincompoop who had left it there. Since it was located under a pile of crud, I reasoned further that the aforementioned nincompoop had forgotten about its existence. From these two conclusions, I determined that the cable now belonged to me.
The problem was that the cable did not work. One of the ends was crooked and loose, giving the appearance that some rotund humanoid had stepped on it vigorously. Although I am quite confident in the ways of wiring and repairing theatrical cables, I am sadly deficient in knowledge relating to instrument cables. I suspected that the non-functionality of the cable was caused by a loose or severed connection, but I had no idea what tools would even be necessary to fix such a problem. And so the cable lay in a heap for several weeks, collecting metaphorical dust. I didn't want to pay to have the cable repaired, but I didn't want to throw it away either. Eventually it dawned on me that even if I completely ruined the cable by trying to repair it myself, I would at the very least learn a thing or two in the process. As the item had not been paid for and was utterly useless in its current state, I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying to fix it. On the night before Hurricane Irene hit, armed only with a Leatherman and a roll of electrical tape, I decided to try to repair the cable.
----
When I deleted Special K's number from my phone, I knew that this inherently emotion-charged decision would eventually find itself becoming the subject of a song. After all, the other important moments in my relationship with this woman had already found themselves similarly immortalized: "Never Before", the fifth chapter of Formation and Evolution, is about my last night in Orlando and the weeks that followed, and Coming Back for You is about my trip to visit Special K. Without putting any serious thought into the matter, I started jotting down potential lyrics on a piece of paper in my room. Sometimes I would put together complete verses with vocal melodies, other times I would just scribble down a sentence or two and hope for the best.
I'm not really sure why I decided to do this, as this style of songwriting is completely alien to me. In the past, I have always started with the guitar melodies, with vocals only added if and when they seemed appropriate. This is even true for pieces that I know will be about a very specific topic. The concept behind the aforementioned "Formation and Evolution" was planned out well before I began writing anything, but even so, I never collected scraps of lyrics on the off chance that they would be used later. I just focused on the guitar and let the vocals develop naturally. So while the scrapbook writing style may work wonders for Anthony Kiedis, it never made sense to me. This unfinished song about Special K, tentatively titled "The Silent Ultimatum", was no exception: after a while I completely forgot about the lyric sheet. Looking back, everything I had written seemed totally forced and melodramatic.
Last week, I was noodling around with a Steve Vai-inspired melody when, without any authority from my neural command center, I opened my mouth and sang "How far away do you think I am?". Clearly this song was going to be about Special K, whether I wanted it to be or not. Within a few hours, I had crafted all of the lyrics for the not-yet-recorded "One Last Lullaby", only one line of which is any way similar to the garbage that I had poured onto my bedside notepad. Writing lyrics in a way that was so obviously unfamiliar was an interesting experiment, and it certainly had the potential to open up new avenues of self-expression, but in the end it failed completely.
The cable repair, on the other hand, turned out to be an enormous success. The wiring configuration was not in any way similar to that found in theatrical lighting cables, but after a bit of tinkering, I was able to disassemble the casing and jury-rig a secure connection with the electrical tape. Heart pounding from sheer nerd excitement, I reassembled the casing and plugged the cable into my amp. It worked! Nothing exploded! And best of all, by some weird miracle, my amp was actually buzzing less than when it was hooked up with the cable I had been using before.
----
Three recent efforts to push myself outside my comfort zone reached their conclusion during Week 9. I learned that my tried-and-true non-method of lyricwriting is, in fact, the best method for me. I successfully repaired a piece of equipment that I knew nothing about. Last, and certainly not least, one final pleasant surprise: Special K called.
----
Week 9 total: 28 hours
Grand total: 213.5 hours
Required pace: 173 hours (+40.5)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Excellence is Contagious
I have been paid to sit on a bucket while shining a flashlight at a piece of glass. I have been paid to hand-deliver a cylindrical green lampshade to an empty building in Manhattan. I have been paid to clean chalkboard erasers, fetch high-quality printer paper for a pregnant woman, and track the movements of a 3 foot tall puppet with a spotlight. As intensely satisfying as all of these tasks were, the greatest honor I have even been bestowed was the privilege to serve as a costumed character performer at Walt Disney World.
When I wasn't bouncing on one foot, trying to avoid the screaming 5-year-olds barreling towards me from all sides, or handing out my phone number to female co-workers, I spent a lot of my free time playing chess. I had known how to play chess for as I long as I could remember, but I had never taken it seriously before working at WDW. One day I noticed a chess program on my computer, played a few games, and was instantly hooked. I did everything I could to improve my game: practice problems, tutorial videos, articles, games against the computer, games against my roommates, day after day after day. None of this seemed particularly unusual to me -- by this point in my life, I was already well aware of my obsessive need to master random nerdy skills.
A few months into my employment, I was cast as a Toy Soldier in the Christmas parade. There was often a lot of downtime between shows, so, naturally, I would bring my Walmart chess set to the break room and challenge my fellow parade performers. There was only one person who could consistently match my abilities, a man by the name of Jimez. When I first met him, I could barely understand a word he said due to his thick New Orleans accent. So we didn't talk much at first. Just chess.
One day, Jimez decided to open up to me about his life, and there was a lot to tell. This guy had been through literally every horrible thing that can possibly happen to a person, despite the fact that he was only 23 years old when I met him. He was born into a gang of satanists, he had been shot, stabbed, knocked unconscious, and at one point he was addicted to heroin pills, something I had never even heard of. As an added bonus, he was in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. Somewhere along the line, despite (or perhaps because of) all of these vicious events in his life, Jimez found faith in God and renounced all of his old ways. He didn't drink or do drugs anymore, and the last vice that he was trying to kick was cigarettes.
After he told me all of this, Jimez looked me straight in the eye and said "The only thing that keeps my mind off of the cigarettes is playing chess with you." This was the first time that I felt an overpowering sense of purpose in my life.
----
There is a bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called the Cantab Lounge. Every Monday they host an open mic night. The host, Geoff Bartley, is an extremely talented acoustic guitarist who would play very difficult folk songs and make them look effortless. All of the other guitar-toting weirdos who showed up were the exact opposite: clueless morons who would choose easy folk songs and make them look very difficult.
It was clear to me from the very instant I set foot in that bar that I was not going to fit in. Everyone else had acoustic guitars and seemed happy to play folk songs. I brought my hollowbody electric, fully intent on showing off my highly technical repertoire of original music. I also wanted to get some experience performing solo in front of a crowd, something I had only done once before. After a humdrum first performance, I came back to the Cantab nearly every Monday for several months. For whatever reason, the open mic night would fluctuate wildly between the-only-person-listening-is-an-83-year-old-drunk-guy and so-crowded-that-the-only-available-time-slot-is-never-so-come-back-next-week. Frustrating? Yes.
On the very last Monday before moving back home to Connecticut, I showed up early and signed up for a good spot. As I was waiting to go on, a female human went to the stage with an electric guitar. My first thought was obviously "Holy shit, I may just have to marry this woman." Sadly, she was absolutely terrible. She stitched together seemingly arbitrary notes that vaguely resembled melodies. She couldn't remember her own lyrics, and when she did sing, it sounded like a drunk apatosaurus scraping its head against the ground. It was embarrassing to watch, and by this point in the evening, there were quite a few people watching. Nevertheless, she finished out her set, thanked the audience for their benevolent support, and quietly took her seat.
Before I began my set, I felt compelled to dedicate my performance to her. "This one goes out to Dana, because she had the courage to come up here and show us what she's got, and that takes some serious fucking balls." I launched into I'll Do it by Myself, followed by Multifaceted. It was, without any doubt, the best set I had performed there. I even got a round of applause for a guitar solo, something I had never seen happen at the Cantab.
After I was done, Dana came up to me, looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'm a better person for having seen you play." This was the second time that I felt an overpowering sense of purpose in my life.
----
As warm and wonderful as both of these memories are, I had never made any connection between the two until yesterday afternoon. Some might think of them as the workings of fate or some higher power. Some might think of them as two series of interesting but insignificant coincidences. I think of them as a reminder that, besides helping me to grow as a musician and as a person, my 1000-hour quest may just have the power to inspire others. Excellence, after all, is contagious.
When I wasn't bouncing on one foot, trying to avoid the screaming 5-year-olds barreling towards me from all sides, or handing out my phone number to female co-workers, I spent a lot of my free time playing chess. I had known how to play chess for as I long as I could remember, but I had never taken it seriously before working at WDW. One day I noticed a chess program on my computer, played a few games, and was instantly hooked. I did everything I could to improve my game: practice problems, tutorial videos, articles, games against the computer, games against my roommates, day after day after day. None of this seemed particularly unusual to me -- by this point in my life, I was already well aware of my obsessive need to master random nerdy skills.
A few months into my employment, I was cast as a Toy Soldier in the Christmas parade. There was often a lot of downtime between shows, so, naturally, I would bring my Walmart chess set to the break room and challenge my fellow parade performers. There was only one person who could consistently match my abilities, a man by the name of Jimez. When I first met him, I could barely understand a word he said due to his thick New Orleans accent. So we didn't talk much at first. Just chess.
One day, Jimez decided to open up to me about his life, and there was a lot to tell. This guy had been through literally every horrible thing that can possibly happen to a person, despite the fact that he was only 23 years old when I met him. He was born into a gang of satanists, he had been shot, stabbed, knocked unconscious, and at one point he was addicted to heroin pills, something I had never even heard of. As an added bonus, he was in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. Somewhere along the line, despite (or perhaps because of) all of these vicious events in his life, Jimez found faith in God and renounced all of his old ways. He didn't drink or do drugs anymore, and the last vice that he was trying to kick was cigarettes.
After he told me all of this, Jimez looked me straight in the eye and said "The only thing that keeps my mind off of the cigarettes is playing chess with you." This was the first time that I felt an overpowering sense of purpose in my life.
----
There is a bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called the Cantab Lounge. Every Monday they host an open mic night. The host, Geoff Bartley, is an extremely talented acoustic guitarist who would play very difficult folk songs and make them look effortless. All of the other guitar-toting weirdos who showed up were the exact opposite: clueless morons who would choose easy folk songs and make them look very difficult.
It was clear to me from the very instant I set foot in that bar that I was not going to fit in. Everyone else had acoustic guitars and seemed happy to play folk songs. I brought my hollowbody electric, fully intent on showing off my highly technical repertoire of original music. I also wanted to get some experience performing solo in front of a crowd, something I had only done once before. After a humdrum first performance, I came back to the Cantab nearly every Monday for several months. For whatever reason, the open mic night would fluctuate wildly between the-only-person-listening-is-an-83-year-old-drunk-guy and so-crowded-that-the-only-available-time-slot-is-never-so-come-back-next-week. Frustrating? Yes.
On the very last Monday before moving back home to Connecticut, I showed up early and signed up for a good spot. As I was waiting to go on, a female human went to the stage with an electric guitar. My first thought was obviously "Holy shit, I may just have to marry this woman." Sadly, she was absolutely terrible. She stitched together seemingly arbitrary notes that vaguely resembled melodies. She couldn't remember her own lyrics, and when she did sing, it sounded like a drunk apatosaurus scraping its head against the ground. It was embarrassing to watch, and by this point in the evening, there were quite a few people watching. Nevertheless, she finished out her set, thanked the audience for their benevolent support, and quietly took her seat.
Before I began my set, I felt compelled to dedicate my performance to her. "This one goes out to Dana, because she had the courage to come up here and show us what she's got, and that takes some serious fucking balls." I launched into I'll Do it by Myself, followed by Multifaceted. It was, without any doubt, the best set I had performed there. I even got a round of applause for a guitar solo, something I had never seen happen at the Cantab.
After I was done, Dana came up to me, looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'm a better person for having seen you play." This was the second time that I felt an overpowering sense of purpose in my life.
----
As warm and wonderful as both of these memories are, I had never made any connection between the two until yesterday afternoon. Some might think of them as the workings of fate or some higher power. Some might think of them as two series of interesting but insignificant coincidences. I think of them as a reminder that, besides helping me to grow as a musician and as a person, my 1000-hour quest may just have the power to inspire others. Excellence, after all, is contagious.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Oil and the Spoon
A curious young boy asked a wise man to explain the meaning of life. The wise man handed the boy a spoon and poured three drops of oil into it. "I will gladly explain the meaning of life if you are able to complete this challenge: You must explore my entire estate without losing a single drop of oil from the spoon." Step by careful step, eyes fixed on the spoon, the boy slowly made his way through the entire castle and its gardens. Hours later, he returned to the wise man and, still staring at the spoon, exclaimed, "I've done it! I've done it! I didn't spill any oil at all!" The wise man smiled and softly asked, "And what did you see along the way?" Puzzled, the young boy thought back on his journey and realized that he couldn't remember anything except staring at the spoon. The wise man spoke once more, "You must try again, but this time, I want you to take in everything around you. Don't simply walk through my estate, explore it!" The young boy walked away once more.
----
When I first began my 1000-hour quest, I thought that success or failure would be determined by how much I would be willing to sacrifice. How early would I be willing to wake up to start my daily routine? How many nights would I be willing to spend alone? What other interests would I have to put on hold in order to make time for guitar? It is true that I have made some of those sacrifices in order to insure the successful completion of my journey. I almost always have at least 2 hours of practice time completed before I eat lunch, and there have been some weeks in which I haven't spent a single night out with my dudebros. Wikipedia, which I have been passionately editing for the past 5 years, now finds itself on the back-burner.
However, it is becoming apparent to me that blindly cutting everything out my life is both impossible and highly undesirable. Last week, my best dudefriend invited me to join him on an epic all-day kayaking adventure; the next day, I was ordered by my matriarch to clean the upstairs bathroom; this entire weekend was reserved for a surprise birthday celebration in New York City for a close friend from college. As tempting as it was to just activate hermit crab mode and stay in my room, I did each of these things without hesitation, as they were all completely necessary in their own way. I look forward to paddle-powered aquatic shenanigans every summer, and it was simply not an option to let this adventure pass me by just because of my practice goals. As much as I absolutely detest the clubbing scene (to the point that I almost had a panic attack while dancing at a ridiculously overcrowded gay bar), I was happy to set aside my own preferences this weekend for a woman who has done the same for me countless times in the past. And cleaning bathrooms just fucking sucks, plain and simple, but I concede that it is something that should be done from time to time.
More so than any other part of my challenge thus far, Week 8 has taught me that the key to success is not the arbitrary excision of those elements that do not directly relate to music, but instead being able to balance my central goal with the other necessities in my life. I suppose this is probably true for any aspiration, but I think the idea of balance is especially important for artistic pursuits, as one must not let the time spent reflecting on one's experiences overrun the time spent having experiences that are worth reflecting upon. Jamming and songwriting have always served to help digest those experiences that have shaped me as an individual. This may seem obvious for songs with lyrics, but it is also true for instrumental pieces. This is not to say that there is always a one-to-one correlation between events and musical riffs; it's not as if I say to myself, "Oh boy, I can't wait to write a song about scrubbing shit particles off of my toilet." Instead, there is a sort of general connection between the range of emotions I have recently felt and the range of melodic ideas that appear in my music.
----
The boy eventually returned to the wise man, his face covered in dirt, flower petals in his hair, and a half-eaten scone in his hand. "Well! It looks like you've had a fun time, eh?" asked the wise man, playfully. The boy nodded, happily munching on the treat he had pilfered from the kitchen. "And where is the oil?" asked the wise man, sternly. The boy slowly swallowed his last bite as a look of sheer panic ran through his eyes. He looked down at the spoon in his hand, casually hanging down at his side without a single drop of oil in it. "As you now know, it is easy enough to focus on the spoon, and it is easy enough to focus on the world around you. The meaning of life lies in one's ability to do both."
----
Week 8 total: 24 hours
Grand total: 185.5 hours
Required pace: 154 hours (+31.5)
----
When I first began my 1000-hour quest, I thought that success or failure would be determined by how much I would be willing to sacrifice. How early would I be willing to wake up to start my daily routine? How many nights would I be willing to spend alone? What other interests would I have to put on hold in order to make time for guitar? It is true that I have made some of those sacrifices in order to insure the successful completion of my journey. I almost always have at least 2 hours of practice time completed before I eat lunch, and there have been some weeks in which I haven't spent a single night out with my dudebros. Wikipedia, which I have been passionately editing for the past 5 years, now finds itself on the back-burner.
However, it is becoming apparent to me that blindly cutting everything out my life is both impossible and highly undesirable. Last week, my best dudefriend invited me to join him on an epic all-day kayaking adventure; the next day, I was ordered by my matriarch to clean the upstairs bathroom; this entire weekend was reserved for a surprise birthday celebration in New York City for a close friend from college. As tempting as it was to just activate hermit crab mode and stay in my room, I did each of these things without hesitation, as they were all completely necessary in their own way. I look forward to paddle-powered aquatic shenanigans every summer, and it was simply not an option to let this adventure pass me by just because of my practice goals. As much as I absolutely detest the clubbing scene (to the point that I almost had a panic attack while dancing at a ridiculously overcrowded gay bar), I was happy to set aside my own preferences this weekend for a woman who has done the same for me countless times in the past. And cleaning bathrooms just fucking sucks, plain and simple, but I concede that it is something that should be done from time to time.
More so than any other part of my challenge thus far, Week 8 has taught me that the key to success is not the arbitrary excision of those elements that do not directly relate to music, but instead being able to balance my central goal with the other necessities in my life. I suppose this is probably true for any aspiration, but I think the idea of balance is especially important for artistic pursuits, as one must not let the time spent reflecting on one's experiences overrun the time spent having experiences that are worth reflecting upon. Jamming and songwriting have always served to help digest those experiences that have shaped me as an individual. This may seem obvious for songs with lyrics, but it is also true for instrumental pieces. This is not to say that there is always a one-to-one correlation between events and musical riffs; it's not as if I say to myself, "Oh boy, I can't wait to write a song about scrubbing shit particles off of my toilet." Instead, there is a sort of general connection between the range of emotions I have recently felt and the range of melodic ideas that appear in my music.
----
The boy eventually returned to the wise man, his face covered in dirt, flower petals in his hair, and a half-eaten scone in his hand. "Well! It looks like you've had a fun time, eh?" asked the wise man, playfully. The boy nodded, happily munching on the treat he had pilfered from the kitchen. "And where is the oil?" asked the wise man, sternly. The boy slowly swallowed his last bite as a look of sheer panic ran through his eyes. He looked down at the spoon in his hand, casually hanging down at his side without a single drop of oil in it. "As you now know, it is easy enough to focus on the spoon, and it is easy enough to focus on the world around you. The meaning of life lies in one's ability to do both."
----
Week 8 total: 24 hours
Grand total: 185.5 hours
Required pace: 154 hours (+31.5)
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Overprepared?
By now my family members have gotten used to hearing loud music coming out of my room. Occasionally someone will enter to request that I use headphones, or to deliver word that there are burritos to be devoured. If anyone had walked into my room today between the hours of 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM, they would have seen me standing there with my guitar... and nothing else. I was completely naked.
----
One of the reasons that I never get bored of playing guitar is that it is incredibly easy to keep my practice routine fresh and interesting. In addition to writing my own material, there are essentially three realms through which my journey progresses: drilling technique, learning songs by other artists, and practicing old songs. The fun begins when you realize how much variation there is within each individual realm.
I usually start each day with an hour of just drilling straight technique. First, there's the traditional (ie, boring) stuff: scales, arpeggios, alternate picking, economy picking, etc. Then there are the more unusual playing methods such as slapping, tapping, and harmonics. I'll take each of the techniques in my mental library and run them through different tempos, modes, time signatures, and hand positions. Sometimes I go through drills while listening to a metronome to make sure my timing is 100% accurate. Occasionally I'll mute the metronome and just rely on flashing lights to indicate the tempo. The first time I did this, I quickly realized how difficult it is to maintain a perfectly steady tempo. I'm tapping my foot, eyes glued to the iPad, and everything's going fine. I quickly look at the fretboard to make sure my left hand is in the correct position, and when I look back at the screen, suddenly my whole shit is completely off! "What the fuck!? How did I lose the beat that quickly? This is bullshit!"
I'm always learning new material, particularly songs written by Dream Theater. John Petrucci, their guitarist, is one of the most technically proficient musicians on the planet, so his songs always have a few challenging/impossible sections. At one point, I went through a very brief phase when I thought that I was good enough at guitar that I could keep improving without having to learn anyone else's songs. I snapped out of that pretentious phase in a hurry when I remembered that Petrucci can play so many notes per second that the general theory of relativity takes over, enabling him to travel back in time so he can abort my unborn fetus. I knew that I would need to be able to play fast enough that I could preemptively counter-abort him, which is why I continue to learn Dream Theater songs to this very day. Survival of the fittest.
In addition to learning hypertechnical metal masterpieces with an average of 37 brazillion notes per second, I also try to keep my repertoire diverse. Today I finished transcribing "Peril", an orchestral piece from the soundtrack for Halo 2, and a while back I learned the Christopher Parkening arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring for classical guitar. I suspect I am the only human who has ever learned that piece who has also killed a seagull with a kayak paddle. In any case, the intersection on that Venn diagram has got to be pretty goddamn small.
Lastly, there is the ever-present need to play through those songs that I have finished writing or learning in order to keep them fresh. My long-term goal is to be able to accurately perform any song in my repertoire at any time, regardless of whether or not I have had time to rehearse for that particular performance. This is no small task when one considers that I currently have about 2 hours of music stored in my noggin, with more conspicuous junk being added to the heap every week. I break this process down into two modes: "problem-solving mode", in which I find and work on rough spots, and "concert mode", in which I play from start to finish without ever stopping for mistakes.
In order to keep the repertoire maintenance process exciting, I constantly look for little changes I can make to my playing environment so that I will be prepared to perform anywhere. I usually play up in my room, but sometimes I play in the living room so that my inquisitive Australian Shepherd can enjoy the fun. I prefer to play while sitting down, but I try to make sure that I can play everything standing up as well. Sometimes I play with the air conditioner on at full blast, sometimes I leave it off for hours and practice in jeans and a sweatshirt. I'll play uber loud with ear plugs to simulate a crowded arena, and I'll play with headphones to simulate a recording studio. Sometimes I'll play with headphones and ear plugs just to confuse the fuck out of my temporal lobe.
Today I took this idea to the next level by playing an imaginary concert while completely naked. Once my bare skin had acclimated to the freezing cold guitar body, I adjusted the strap so that the body hung much lower than I would normally prefer -- I wouldn't want the imaginary audience to be distracted by my dangling appendage poking out from underneath the bottom of the guitar.
While parading around buck naked may be a bit overkill, the point of these exercises is not to prepare myself for particular situations. The point is to be able adapt to any playing environment, no matter what kind of shenanigans I have to put up with to make it happen. I'm not going to be one those OCD shitbags that won't perform unless every little detail is perfect. I intend to be the kind of dude who just makes it happen. Sweating like an Egyptian porn star? No problem. Dressing room is a broom closet? No problem. Clothes got eaten by kangaroos? No problem. The show must go on.
----
One of the reasons that I never get bored of playing guitar is that it is incredibly easy to keep my practice routine fresh and interesting. In addition to writing my own material, there are essentially three realms through which my journey progresses: drilling technique, learning songs by other artists, and practicing old songs. The fun begins when you realize how much variation there is within each individual realm.
I usually start each day with an hour of just drilling straight technique. First, there's the traditional (ie, boring) stuff: scales, arpeggios, alternate picking, economy picking, etc. Then there are the more unusual playing methods such as slapping, tapping, and harmonics. I'll take each of the techniques in my mental library and run them through different tempos, modes, time signatures, and hand positions. Sometimes I go through drills while listening to a metronome to make sure my timing is 100% accurate. Occasionally I'll mute the metronome and just rely on flashing lights to indicate the tempo. The first time I did this, I quickly realized how difficult it is to maintain a perfectly steady tempo. I'm tapping my foot, eyes glued to the iPad, and everything's going fine. I quickly look at the fretboard to make sure my left hand is in the correct position, and when I look back at the screen, suddenly my whole shit is completely off! "What the fuck!? How did I lose the beat that quickly? This is bullshit!"
I'm always learning new material, particularly songs written by Dream Theater. John Petrucci, their guitarist, is one of the most technically proficient musicians on the planet, so his songs always have a few challenging/impossible sections. At one point, I went through a very brief phase when I thought that I was good enough at guitar that I could keep improving without having to learn anyone else's songs. I snapped out of that pretentious phase in a hurry when I remembered that Petrucci can play so many notes per second that the general theory of relativity takes over, enabling him to travel back in time so he can abort my unborn fetus. I knew that I would need to be able to play fast enough that I could preemptively counter-abort him, which is why I continue to learn Dream Theater songs to this very day. Survival of the fittest.
In addition to learning hypertechnical metal masterpieces with an average of 37 brazillion notes per second, I also try to keep my repertoire diverse. Today I finished transcribing "Peril", an orchestral piece from the soundtrack for Halo 2, and a while back I learned the Christopher Parkening arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring for classical guitar. I suspect I am the only human who has ever learned that piece who has also killed a seagull with a kayak paddle. In any case, the intersection on that Venn diagram has got to be pretty goddamn small.
Lastly, there is the ever-present need to play through those songs that I have finished writing or learning in order to keep them fresh. My long-term goal is to be able to accurately perform any song in my repertoire at any time, regardless of whether or not I have had time to rehearse for that particular performance. This is no small task when one considers that I currently have about 2 hours of music stored in my noggin, with more conspicuous junk being added to the heap every week. I break this process down into two modes: "problem-solving mode", in which I find and work on rough spots, and "concert mode", in which I play from start to finish without ever stopping for mistakes.
In order to keep the repertoire maintenance process exciting, I constantly look for little changes I can make to my playing environment so that I will be prepared to perform anywhere. I usually play up in my room, but sometimes I play in the living room so that my inquisitive Australian Shepherd can enjoy the fun. I prefer to play while sitting down, but I try to make sure that I can play everything standing up as well. Sometimes I play with the air conditioner on at full blast, sometimes I leave it off for hours and practice in jeans and a sweatshirt. I'll play uber loud with ear plugs to simulate a crowded arena, and I'll play with headphones to simulate a recording studio. Sometimes I'll play with headphones and ear plugs just to confuse the fuck out of my temporal lobe.
Today I took this idea to the next level by playing an imaginary concert while completely naked. Once my bare skin had acclimated to the freezing cold guitar body, I adjusted the strap so that the body hung much lower than I would normally prefer -- I wouldn't want the imaginary audience to be distracted by my dangling appendage poking out from underneath the bottom of the guitar.
While parading around buck naked may be a bit overkill, the point of these exercises is not to prepare myself for particular situations. The point is to be able adapt to any playing environment, no matter what kind of shenanigans I have to put up with to make it happen. I'm not going to be one those OCD shitbags that won't perform unless every little detail is perfect. I intend to be the kind of dude who just makes it happen. Sweating like an Egyptian porn star? No problem. Dressing room is a broom closet? No problem. Clothes got eaten by kangaroos? No problem. The show must go on.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Fickle Nature of Motivation
A battle-hardened warrior approached a bearded old man sitting at the entrance to a cave. "Are you the keeper of the potion of strength?" asked the warrior. "I am," replied the old man without looking up. "Is it true that the potion is guarded by monsters, crevasses, and rivers of flame?" asked the warrior. "It is," replied the old man. "And is it true that if I drink this potion, I will become stronger than ever I was before?" The old man looked up at the warrior and thought for a few moments. He then spoke slowly, carefully: "It is true that if you do reach the potion, you will be greatly rewarded for your efforts." The warrior charged into the cave without another word. Hours later he stumbled out, his armor singed and blood dripping from his shoulder. Panting, he looked towards the old man, who was staring at the ground as before. "I am not ready. Not yet. But I will return," said the warrior as he limped away.
----
I despise trivial banter. I don't care about the weather, or who won the game last night, or how drunk you got at the frat party on Friday. It's easy enough to sustain meaningful conversations with the people I know well, but with those I've just met, it usually requires a bit more effort on my part to avoid falling asleep. I typically skip the easy questions, like "Where are you from?" or "What's your major?". If it takes less than five seconds for someone to come up with a satisfactory answer, it will probably take me less than five seconds to not give a shit. Instead, after the obligatory "Hi, I'm Ryan," I immediately transition to something along the lines of "So what do you want to change about the world?" or "Tell me two interesting things you've learned in the last year."
One of my favorite questions is "How would you break your life into chunks without using location, education, employment, or relationships as frames of reference?". Not surprisingly, my attempts to summarize my own life often involve music. The first chunk was when I had no interest in making music whatsoever; the second chunk was when I thought it was totally normal for people to sit on their couches for hours on end, furiously trying to improve their technical abilities; now is the third chunk, in which I have come to realize how unusual it is for one to be perpetually dissatisfied with one's own abilities, and to voluntarily insulate oneself from others to make time to improve them.
My thousand-hour quest has opened my eyes to another music-related summarization scheme: There was a time when I believed that I would never want to be a professional musician. As much as I loved making music and using it to tap into different states of mind, I was afraid that any attempt to create a career out of it would immediately turn guitar playing into just another chore. I was afraid that if I ever made music for others instead of just myself, the magic would evaporate. Now, of course, I can't imagine myself doing anything else with my life, at least not for any extended period of time. Even when I was a character performer at Walt Disney World, easily the most exciting and fun job I've ever had, there came a point when I started to feel that all-too-familiar itch to take on new challenges.
The amount of progress and joy I have experienced thus far as a result of the quest are, in my mind, solid indicators that focusing on my music was the right decision. However, there are some situations that do make practicing feel like a chore. I used to keep track of my playing time in 15-minute intervals. I hoped that this would help push me to play a little bit longer after I had already reached a natural stopping point, but I've found that it usually does the opposite. I'll get to the 45-minute mark and think "Well, here's a good place to take a break!" rather than working for the full hour. I've countered this instinct by only tracking 30-minute chunks, but that presents its own problems. If I need to leave the house in twenty minutes, the old version of me would happily sit down for a few minutes and just play a couple songs for fun. Now I hear a nagging voice in the back of my mind that says, "Playing now won't contribute anything to your goal, so why bother?"
But every now and then, I get transported to that incredible place where my fingers fly up and down the fretboard, I pour myself into every note, and I just know that I'm going to change people's lives someday. I forget what time I started playing, and I have no idea when I'm going to stop. As with any project of mine, it's easy to slip into the completionist mindset, but the truth is that it has always been the process that I love, not the end result.
----
After several months, the warrior returned to the cave. The old man looked up, with only the faintest hint of recognition in his beady eyes. "I will not fail this time," uttered the warrior. The old man nodded, and the warrior ventured into the cave once more. He returned a short while later with an empty vial in his hand. In an instant, he threw the glass against a rock, unsheathed his sword, and held it inches away from the old man's neck. "I will not be taken for a fool, old man. That was no potion! It was just water!" The old man sat motionless and calmly replied, "Are you stronger now than you were on your first attempt?" Still infuriated, the warrior shouted, "I have trained every single day since then! Of course I am stronger!" Still motionless, the old man said, "Then the potion worked."
----
Week 7 total: 25.5 hours
Grand total: 161.5 hours
Required pace: 135 hours (+26.5)
----
I despise trivial banter. I don't care about the weather, or who won the game last night, or how drunk you got at the frat party on Friday. It's easy enough to sustain meaningful conversations with the people I know well, but with those I've just met, it usually requires a bit more effort on my part to avoid falling asleep. I typically skip the easy questions, like "Where are you from?" or "What's your major?". If it takes less than five seconds for someone to come up with a satisfactory answer, it will probably take me less than five seconds to not give a shit. Instead, after the obligatory "Hi, I'm Ryan," I immediately transition to something along the lines of "So what do you want to change about the world?" or "Tell me two interesting things you've learned in the last year."
One of my favorite questions is "How would you break your life into chunks without using location, education, employment, or relationships as frames of reference?". Not surprisingly, my attempts to summarize my own life often involve music. The first chunk was when I had no interest in making music whatsoever; the second chunk was when I thought it was totally normal for people to sit on their couches for hours on end, furiously trying to improve their technical abilities; now is the third chunk, in which I have come to realize how unusual it is for one to be perpetually dissatisfied with one's own abilities, and to voluntarily insulate oneself from others to make time to improve them.
My thousand-hour quest has opened my eyes to another music-related summarization scheme: There was a time when I believed that I would never want to be a professional musician. As much as I loved making music and using it to tap into different states of mind, I was afraid that any attempt to create a career out of it would immediately turn guitar playing into just another chore. I was afraid that if I ever made music for others instead of just myself, the magic would evaporate. Now, of course, I can't imagine myself doing anything else with my life, at least not for any extended period of time. Even when I was a character performer at Walt Disney World, easily the most exciting and fun job I've ever had, there came a point when I started to feel that all-too-familiar itch to take on new challenges.
The amount of progress and joy I have experienced thus far as a result of the quest are, in my mind, solid indicators that focusing on my music was the right decision. However, there are some situations that do make practicing feel like a chore. I used to keep track of my playing time in 15-minute intervals. I hoped that this would help push me to play a little bit longer after I had already reached a natural stopping point, but I've found that it usually does the opposite. I'll get to the 45-minute mark and think "Well, here's a good place to take a break!" rather than working for the full hour. I've countered this instinct by only tracking 30-minute chunks, but that presents its own problems. If I need to leave the house in twenty minutes, the old version of me would happily sit down for a few minutes and just play a couple songs for fun. Now I hear a nagging voice in the back of my mind that says, "Playing now won't contribute anything to your goal, so why bother?"
But every now and then, I get transported to that incredible place where my fingers fly up and down the fretboard, I pour myself into every note, and I just know that I'm going to change people's lives someday. I forget what time I started playing, and I have no idea when I'm going to stop. As with any project of mine, it's easy to slip into the completionist mindset, but the truth is that it has always been the process that I love, not the end result.
----
After several months, the warrior returned to the cave. The old man looked up, with only the faintest hint of recognition in his beady eyes. "I will not fail this time," uttered the warrior. The old man nodded, and the warrior ventured into the cave once more. He returned a short while later with an empty vial in his hand. In an instant, he threw the glass against a rock, unsheathed his sword, and held it inches away from the old man's neck. "I will not be taken for a fool, old man. That was no potion! It was just water!" The old man sat motionless and calmly replied, "Are you stronger now than you were on your first attempt?" Still infuriated, the warrior shouted, "I have trained every single day since then! Of course I am stronger!" Still motionless, the old man said, "Then the potion worked."
----
Week 7 total: 25.5 hours
Grand total: 161.5 hours
Required pace: 135 hours (+26.5)
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Climbing Around the Mountain
Two men are standing at the base of a mountain, their glistening eyes fixed on the far-off peak. Excited for the challenge ahead, they exchange grins and begin working their way up the slope. After making steady progress, they eventually hit a steep section. They both try to climb straight upwards, but one of the adventurers quickly realizes that he simply isn't a strong enough climber to make it past the ice wall. He makes his way back down to solid ground, looks up at the peak once more, then abruptly turns left. "Where are you going?" asks the other man, still meticulously searching for footholds on the ice wall. "I will find a way around," replies the first. The man on the wall laughs in contempt.
----
When I was in high school, I had a weekly assignment planner to help me stay organized. On any given day, there would be the usual barrage of largely pointless assignments, but I also kept track of goals for my own projects. Among these, there would always be at least one guitar goal each week. At the time I didn't view myself as a serious musician, but I desperately wanted to learn to play Glasgow Kiss, an epic progressive metal song by my hero, John Petrucci.
Memorizing new sections of the piece came quite naturally for me, but there were a number of sections that were so astoundingly technical that I would have to play them at half tempo just to get the notes right. This didn't phase me; I would simply set up a training loop in Guitar Pro (my most favoritest piece of software in the history of forever), drill a particular section over and over and over again until I felt totally comfortable, increase the speed just a little bit, and then repeat the process. As a total math nerd, I expressed my target tempo as a percentage of the actual tempo. As such, my weekly guitar goals frequently took the form of "Tapping section at 60%" or "Second verse at 75%".
Over time, I noticed a somewhat discouraging trend: there were a number of goals at around 80% that never got completed. I would play through sections at my highest possible speed literally hundreds of times, but whenever I cranked up the tempo just a little bit, it would completely fall apart. I didn't understand how it was possible to practice those passages so many times without making any noticeable progress. Eventually, after learning the entire song but still unable to improve on the tough spots, I lost interest. It had gotten to the point where it took a ridiculous amount of practicing just to maintain the tempos I had already reached; improvement and enjoyment were completely out of the question.
This exact situation repeated itself for all of the Petrucci songs I tried to learn: Damage Control, The Test That Stumped them All, Overture 1928, Beyond this Life, Constant Motion. I would learn everything, start whittling away at the tough spots, get completely stuck at a particular tempo, then lose interest and move on. A small part of me remained hopeful that I would eventually be good enough to tackle these beastly songs. A much larger part of me dismissed the idea, insisting that Petrucci was somehow a fundamentally different type of human and that I would never reach his level. A third part of me worried that even if I did improve as a musician, there were inherent physical limitations on how fast it is possible to play guitar without a pick.
In the weeks that followed my musical epiphany, there was one particular moment that threw all of those old doubts right out the window into a moving van full of sexually repressed wolverines. While practicing in my college dorm room, trying not to inhale the stench molecules that constantly poured out my roommate's feet, my fingers just decided to move faster than I ever thought possible. I literally stared at my guitar afterwards and thought "Wait, did that actually happen?" I played the same thing again; this was no fluke.
I quickly opened up Guitar Pro and calculated how many notes per second I had just cranked out: 16. Compare this to 10 notes per second, which had been my absolute maximum for months before this breakthrough. That change is the equivalent of Haile Gebrselassie posting a marathon time of 1:17:29. This kind of shit just does not happen in the real world.
It is important to note exactly what I was doing when the breakthrough happened. I was not drilling a metal riff over and over again. I was not even running through finger exercises. I was just playing around with a riff I had come up with the day before, and the sudden onslaught of notes was just the perfect continuation to what I had already written. I quickly tried to apply that newfound speed to a tricky section of Overture 1928, a Dream Theater song I had only recently forgotten about. Where before I had struggled endlessly, I was now magically imbued with the ability to hit each note at full speed.
----
To this day, I still find myself trying to learn songs that are way beyond my ability level. If you had asked me in high school why I did this, I would have naively replied "I know I can learn this song if I just practice these riffs enough times." Now, if you were to ask me the same question, I would say "I realize that there are challenges here that I will not be able to overcome today, but I will push myself to do so anyway. When I have learned all that I can here, I will walk away. Then I will climb around the mountain."
----
When I was in high school, I had a weekly assignment planner to help me stay organized. On any given day, there would be the usual barrage of largely pointless assignments, but I also kept track of goals for my own projects. Among these, there would always be at least one guitar goal each week. At the time I didn't view myself as a serious musician, but I desperately wanted to learn to play Glasgow Kiss, an epic progressive metal song by my hero, John Petrucci.
Memorizing new sections of the piece came quite naturally for me, but there were a number of sections that were so astoundingly technical that I would have to play them at half tempo just to get the notes right. This didn't phase me; I would simply set up a training loop in Guitar Pro (my most favoritest piece of software in the history of forever), drill a particular section over and over and over again until I felt totally comfortable, increase the speed just a little bit, and then repeat the process. As a total math nerd, I expressed my target tempo as a percentage of the actual tempo. As such, my weekly guitar goals frequently took the form of "Tapping section at 60%" or "Second verse at 75%".
Over time, I noticed a somewhat discouraging trend: there were a number of goals at around 80% that never got completed. I would play through sections at my highest possible speed literally hundreds of times, but whenever I cranked up the tempo just a little bit, it would completely fall apart. I didn't understand how it was possible to practice those passages so many times without making any noticeable progress. Eventually, after learning the entire song but still unable to improve on the tough spots, I lost interest. It had gotten to the point where it took a ridiculous amount of practicing just to maintain the tempos I had already reached; improvement and enjoyment were completely out of the question.
This exact situation repeated itself for all of the Petrucci songs I tried to learn: Damage Control, The Test That Stumped them All, Overture 1928, Beyond this Life, Constant Motion. I would learn everything, start whittling away at the tough spots, get completely stuck at a particular tempo, then lose interest and move on. A small part of me remained hopeful that I would eventually be good enough to tackle these beastly songs. A much larger part of me dismissed the idea, insisting that Petrucci was somehow a fundamentally different type of human and that I would never reach his level. A third part of me worried that even if I did improve as a musician, there were inherent physical limitations on how fast it is possible to play guitar without a pick.
In the weeks that followed my musical epiphany, there was one particular moment that threw all of those old doubts right out the window into a moving van full of sexually repressed wolverines. While practicing in my college dorm room, trying not to inhale the stench molecules that constantly poured out my roommate's feet, my fingers just decided to move faster than I ever thought possible. I literally stared at my guitar afterwards and thought "Wait, did that actually happen?" I played the same thing again; this was no fluke.
I quickly opened up Guitar Pro and calculated how many notes per second I had just cranked out: 16. Compare this to 10 notes per second, which had been my absolute maximum for months before this breakthrough. That change is the equivalent of Haile Gebrselassie posting a marathon time of 1:17:29. This kind of shit just does not happen in the real world.
It is important to note exactly what I was doing when the breakthrough happened. I was not drilling a metal riff over and over again. I was not even running through finger exercises. I was just playing around with a riff I had come up with the day before, and the sudden onslaught of notes was just the perfect continuation to what I had already written. I quickly tried to apply that newfound speed to a tricky section of Overture 1928, a Dream Theater song I had only recently forgotten about. Where before I had struggled endlessly, I was now magically imbued with the ability to hit each note at full speed.
----
To this day, I still find myself trying to learn songs that are way beyond my ability level. If you had asked me in high school why I did this, I would have naively replied "I know I can learn this song if I just practice these riffs enough times." Now, if you were to ask me the same question, I would say "I realize that there are challenges here that I will not be able to overcome today, but I will push myself to do so anyway. When I have learned all that I can here, I will walk away. Then I will climb around the mountain."
Monday, August 8, 2011
Prologue
If you were to open up my iPad right now, the first thing you would see is not a library jam-packed with thousands of songs. It would not be a facebook page, nor a chess game, nor any one of the various Wikipedia apps I've tried in the months that I've had this ubiquitous rectangle. No, instead you would see a spreadsheet filled with rows and rows of numbers. Across the top, you would see the days of the week, and in the bottom right, far removed from the pack, "143.5".
----
A few months ago, I was sitting at a desk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, typing up solutions for a calculus textbook. At the time, I was working at the illustriously-titled Worldwide Center of Mathematics. I always thought it was a bit of a misnomer considering that we were just five dudes sitting around in an office in Cambridge, though one of the guys working there was fresh-off-the-boat Irish. I was staring at one particular exercise that had been vexing me for days, when in a moment of pure frustration, I walked over to my whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and started writing without thinking. "There is no clearer indication that I am not cut out for grad school than my complete lack of ability and lack of interest in this problem. I was put on this planet to make music." I stepped back and took a few moments to stare at what I had just written. It felt very right, very natural, and very important. For once, everything seemed crystal clear to me.
The weeks that followed this epiphany were highly productive, at least from a musical standpoint. Every single day, I practiced guitar for at least an hour, though typically I was cranking out three hours per day and more on the weekends. I would sometimes wake up early to practice before work if I knew I wouldn't have time afterwards. On top of this, I spent countless hours meticulously transcribing and cataloging every song I had written that had not yet been buried in the sands of time.
All of this effort was at first put forth without a particular goal in mind, just the idea that as long as I continued to pour myself into my music, something good would come of it. Some might call this blind devotion "faith". I call it "being a stubborn motherfucker." However, through an implausibly random connection, I came into contact with a sound engineer who was willing to record my stuff for a mere $25 per song. I pounced on the opportunity, and we spent a few weekends laying down tracks and mixing in a tiny room in Allston. When all was said and done, I had given Tyler $450 and one cheeseburger for his services, and for the very first time in my life, I felt absolutely great about the money I was spending.
As my internship at the Center of Math came to a close, my enthusiasm for working there dwindled. That's something no one ever tells you as a kid: having an epiphany and discovering one's purpose is great, but it makes all non-epiphany-related activities seem totally trivial by comparison. Regardless, I finished up my term as the Associate Director of Math Content (not my idea. I wanted to be called "Reverend of Punctuation"), then headed back home to Connecticut with 14 sexular recordings and the determination to make the most of my summer.
----
June 26, 2011, marks the beginning of Week 1 in my practice log. As with my initial spurt of musical productivity, I created the spreadsheet without any particular goal in mind. However, a few days ago, as I was looking at the weekly totals column, one clear objective popped into my head: 1000 hours in 52 weeks. I made it my mission that by midnight on June 23, 2012, I will have logged at least 1000 hours in that spreadsheet.
As I start working away at Week 7, my current total is 143.5 hours, way ahead of the 120 that I would need to be on pace for 1000 by the end of Week 52. I've still got a few glorious weeks of summer to squeeze in as much playing as is humanly possible. However, I don't imagine that it will be easy to find time to practice 20 hours per week when I'm a full-time student with a part-time job writing calculus textbooks. Will I be able to keep up the pace once I head back to Boston? Time will tell.
----
A few months ago, I was sitting at a desk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, typing up solutions for a calculus textbook. At the time, I was working at the illustriously-titled Worldwide Center of Mathematics. I always thought it was a bit of a misnomer considering that we were just five dudes sitting around in an office in Cambridge, though one of the guys working there was fresh-off-the-boat Irish. I was staring at one particular exercise that had been vexing me for days, when in a moment of pure frustration, I walked over to my whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and started writing without thinking. "There is no clearer indication that I am not cut out for grad school than my complete lack of ability and lack of interest in this problem. I was put on this planet to make music." I stepped back and took a few moments to stare at what I had just written. It felt very right, very natural, and very important. For once, everything seemed crystal clear to me.
The weeks that followed this epiphany were highly productive, at least from a musical standpoint. Every single day, I practiced guitar for at least an hour, though typically I was cranking out three hours per day and more on the weekends. I would sometimes wake up early to practice before work if I knew I wouldn't have time afterwards. On top of this, I spent countless hours meticulously transcribing and cataloging every song I had written that had not yet been buried in the sands of time.
All of this effort was at first put forth without a particular goal in mind, just the idea that as long as I continued to pour myself into my music, something good would come of it. Some might call this blind devotion "faith". I call it "being a stubborn motherfucker." However, through an implausibly random connection, I came into contact with a sound engineer who was willing to record my stuff for a mere $25 per song. I pounced on the opportunity, and we spent a few weekends laying down tracks and mixing in a tiny room in Allston. When all was said and done, I had given Tyler $450 and one cheeseburger for his services, and for the very first time in my life, I felt absolutely great about the money I was spending.
As my internship at the Center of Math came to a close, my enthusiasm for working there dwindled. That's something no one ever tells you as a kid: having an epiphany and discovering one's purpose is great, but it makes all non-epiphany-related activities seem totally trivial by comparison. Regardless, I finished up my term as the Associate Director of Math Content (not my idea. I wanted to be called "Reverend of Punctuation"), then headed back home to Connecticut with 14 sexular recordings and the determination to make the most of my summer.
----
June 26, 2011, marks the beginning of Week 1 in my practice log. As with my initial spurt of musical productivity, I created the spreadsheet without any particular goal in mind. However, a few days ago, as I was looking at the weekly totals column, one clear objective popped into my head: 1000 hours in 52 weeks. I made it my mission that by midnight on June 23, 2012, I will have logged at least 1000 hours in that spreadsheet.
As I start working away at Week 7, my current total is 143.5 hours, way ahead of the 120 that I would need to be on pace for 1000 by the end of Week 52. I've still got a few glorious weeks of summer to squeeze in as much playing as is humanly possible. However, I don't imagine that it will be easy to find time to practice 20 hours per week when I'm a full-time student with a part-time job writing calculus textbooks. Will I be able to keep up the pace once I head back to Boston? Time will tell.
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