Yellowstone Summer 2011 Tour

Sunday, July 3: Crystal Lake to Sioux Falls, SD.

Monday, July 4: Sioux Falls to Rapid City, SD. Badlands state park.

Tuesday, July 5: Mount Rushmore, Custer State park.

Wednesday, July 6: Rapid City to Cody, WY

Thursday, July 7: Cody to Yellowstone, back to Cody

Friday, July 8: Cody to Yellowstone, then to West Yellowstone, Montana.

Saturday, July 9: West Yellowstone to Yellowstone, then to Cody.

Sunday, July 10: Cody to Bismarck, ND

Monday, July 11: Bismarck to St. Cloud, Minnesota

Tuesday, July 12: St. Cloud to Crystal Lake.

added ninths to my blues

I"m comfortable with ninth chords now in my I IV V. I put them in the IV and V position, and use a seventh in the I position. It's a good combination this way; the ninths are right in the same area as the seventh. It has a little Stevie

Ray sound to it.

still haven't made a video... too busy with summer stuff.

today i played the blues

maybe for the first time. I had all the elements there. The intro, the major minor riffs, the turnarounds, the end, the 12 bars, 7th chords, etc. It sounded like the blues! took me 2 years to get here. Still got lots of refinement to go through, and many more elements to learn. But the basics are here. This is what I wanted. Some kind of acoustic style blues, with chords, using a pick, not fingerstyle. Solo instrumental blues. gotta make a vid soon.

mixing major and minor pentatonics

so, I feel I have made a step forward in mixing major and minor pents. It occurred last night -- you how these things are, they just occur out of nowhere. I picked up the guitar, thought about it, and there it was. I was going between major and minor riffs much more smoothly than in the past. I am better at visualizing the overlapping patterns and making the shifts from one to the other. It just sounded better than in previous attempts. Now I've got something to work on this summer! It feels good -- mixing major and minor sounds better than doing sequential riffs in major and minor or vice versa. What I'm doing sounds more like The Blues. I'll have to do a video soon to provide an example.

May 28 blues improv

OK, here's your daily dose of vitamin blue:

may 28 improv in E

best taken with a stiff drink. I prefer scotch.

may 27 improv vid

OK, another tech test. I made a backing track on the big laptop with garage band, then sent it to i tunes. just a basic 12 bar blues in A. then i put that on a jump drive and put it in the little laptop. i plugged that into the amp, along with the fender, and played a 2 track thing. I did this because I didnt't buy a looper pedal today. so i figured out how to make my own loops and run them on the little apple ibook. now i don't need no pedal!

blues improv

the miked amp is too distorted. mike placement and volume is critical. still working on it.

may 26 blues vid

OK, here it is, a major pentatonic improv in G

may 26 blues vid

i feel like doing more major pent blues......