5th March 2009

Harrogate, England

We had our first NST guitar session with Marek tonight, and here's a brief info on what we did.

A little jam first, just play for fun.

We don't share much repertoire yet. We look at the first 4 bars of The Eye of the Needle lead line with metronome at 60.

Pause, and check out how much pressure from the left hand is really sufficient to press the strings.

Original speed (4 notes per beat) is too much, so we take it slowly - quarter notes, then eighth notes. Gradually we readjust the material to suit 'where we are' and 'what is possible'.

So we just stay with the first 13-notes figure while playing 2 notes per beat. The challenge is to do it while counting from 1 to 13 with the metronome. After persistent work it's finally discharged, honorably. Very revealing work.

We also address some timing problems that come up while playing 16th notes. Come back to foundations - alternate picking on one string in various speeds extended to the cross-picking on 3 strings. I hesitate to say 2ND & 4TH PRIMARIES, as we didn't really address the operation of the right hand (i.e. release)

Very good work and I'm happy we finally did it.

We worked for about an hour and a half, and all this while standing!