adjustment

Post 71 of 90.

Last night I adjusted the height of my guitar and worked on getting more of an angle with the neck. My playing immediately jumped up a level in ease and speed. The "fairy fingers" section of Blockhead was suddenly playable, much better than before.

I guess physical relationship to the guitar must have drifted imperceptibly over time from the last time I met with CG and RF. And it always seems to drift toward some arrangement that will allow me to wear the guitar lower (although I've begun to wonder if my strap is perhaps perpetually slipping a little bit). I still want to rock and roll, I guess.

I do have to be careful. If I'm not getting this position exactly right, the edge of the soundboard pinches a vein and cuts off the blood circulation to my arm.

Tonight, I was struggling a bit to find the same feeling of ease I had last night. My body kept wanting to slip back into established habits, but it was still much better.

Early in the evening, I changed strings and cut some new picks from my collection of triangular Fender picks. I scored the plastic with a knife, then used shears to cut the excess plastic, followed by sanding with varying grades of sandpaper to get the surfaces good and smooth. I breathed in a tiny amount of dust while sanding, and it had a peculiar smell and taste. The tips are very sharp, and I found only the tiniest amount of the pick was necessary to get a good note. On the downside, I'm also noticing a scrape! sound when I pick the high G string.

The wear pattern on my old picks shows that I often pick with up to a quarter inch depth on the pick. Way too much, but this habit is going to take a while to address.