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Nov. 24th, 2003 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillGood news! Such as it is. I called support for iRiver (the maker of that mp3 player/recorder I've been trying out) this morning, got a live human on the phone with admirable promptness and discovered that the reason the player software can't tell when the player is hooked up is probably a bad usb port on the player. It means driving all the way back into/through Knoxville, but I can swap the player for another one and that one will probalby work. Think I'll bring my computer along so I can try it right there in the store.
Also my back is definitely getting better. I'm still eating ibuprofen, but I'm down to 2 every eight hours, and going to my mando lesson today was no big deal back-wise.
The mando lesson was...interesting. I've been practicing every day, usually twice a day, but I'm still having real trouble getting up to speed. Roy (my teacher) thinks that pick control is the real issue for me--apparently it's important to pick with small motions, so the pick doesn't move very far from the string it's supposed to strike. The pick should kind of dance or bounce over the strings. Me, especially when I'm trying to play fast, I keep dragging it through the strings and waving it around. Sometimes I miss the string altogether--sometimes I can't get it across the string fast enough to get to the next place I need to go. I haven't actually thrown it away yet. But I'm sure it will come.
So Roy suggested I spend the week working on tremolo, try to get that fast and even and so I can change strings without missing a beat, and then work on matching the left hand to the right hand. I'll try it--I'm desperate.
Also my back is definitely getting better. I'm still eating ibuprofen, but I'm down to 2 every eight hours, and going to my mando lesson today was no big deal back-wise.
The mando lesson was...interesting. I've been practicing every day, usually twice a day, but I'm still having real trouble getting up to speed. Roy (my teacher) thinks that pick control is the real issue for me--apparently it's important to pick with small motions, so the pick doesn't move very far from the string it's supposed to strike. The pick should kind of dance or bounce over the strings. Me, especially when I'm trying to play fast, I keep dragging it through the strings and waving it around. Sometimes I miss the string altogether--sometimes I can't get it across the string fast enough to get to the next place I need to go. I haven't actually thrown it away yet. But I'm sure it will come.
So Roy suggested I spend the week working on tremolo, try to get that fast and even and so I can change strings without missing a beat, and then work on matching the left hand to the right hand. I'll try it--I'm desperate.
