Focus and Goals

I watched a video this morning about learning to play guitar later in life. While I'm certainly not learning guitar from the ground up and I'm maybe a bit young for the audience he was trying to reach. But I'm in this phase where I'm looking for a bit of advice to bump things up a bit. One of his suggestions was to review what you're doing every 90 days. Well today's post is a bit of a review, but it hasn't been quite 90 days. 

Coming out of February I was very interested in the idea of polish. I'd been to some open mics, played with a few friends and the most common feedback I was getting was that my material was good, but it needed polish. Add to this the fact that I was coming off four weeks of writing and demoing new music that was good - but rough - and it's easy to see how polish was top of mind for me. 

In the time since, I have struggled a bit with my definition of polish. At first it was polish a couple songs or a tight 5 minutes. That expanded to a solid 20 minute set and I really did spend a few weeks nailing down a solid 20 minute set. It's served me well, I've been in a couple of social situations where the guitar came out and I had some great material ready to go. 

But more than just that focus has been conentrating on the polish of it. That's meant picking out the parts that I stumble on or lyrics I often forget and doing the work of repeating them, turning them over to try and find something better or playing them in different ways to try and get the best out of it. I got my hands on a little amp that I can use for performance and have put time aside every week to try and nail down my tone and sound on the amp. I've started trying to replicate as much of the live experience as I can in practice like standing, using a mic and tuning regularly so that I'm as ready as I can be when the time comes. And finally, I'm getting into the details of ensuring that my equipment works, is in good repair and just overall professional. 

Circling back to the start of this article - why am I doing this review about 45 days into this new focus instead of 90? Well, things have been changing fairly fluidly over the past few weeks. Those chances to play for others have brought me some insights about doing covers and really providing entertainment for people. 

And I've booked my first gig! Yep! I'm playing at Grant Hall as part of the entertainment for the Moose Jaw Sidewalk Days on July 3. 

I'm taking a huge bite with this first step, but I'm glad it's coming when it's coming and in the form it's in. I had initially set a goal to play my first gig sometime in March or April. Looking at where I'm at now, I could have certainly pulled of something in the 20-25 minute range but I'm only just starting to really latch on to what my sound is and who I am as a performer. I'm glad that my first gig is going to be about a year from launching this project. It's given this whole thing time to ferment and mature into something really special. And I'm going to be using the next couple of months to really hone that into something special. 

That means lots of open mics and open jams while I figure out the crowd. Many more nights of making awful sounds in the studio. And some real excitement ahead!