i saw my parents for the first time in more than a year. i took the opportunity to break out the guitar and play.

when i first started playing i picked "jesu joy of man's desiring" by bach because i knew my parents loved bach. i thought it would be an easy song to learn... i way underestimated bach. it took me 9 months to play it at speed, and another year of polishing before i could play end-to-end cleanly with decent tone. i probably have 300+ hours of practice time on this song.

there were a couple of minor mistakes... a missed hammer-on, a thudded note, a missed bass note, and i caught the wrong string once (although it fit the key and sounded fine). all-in-all, a solid b+ performance.

i played a couple other songs that i'm working on... mom really loved buckethead's "sledride".

since i was on a roll, i decided to give "tango en skai" a shot. i've been practicing that one for 16 months for at least an hour a day, nearly every day... well over 500 hours of practice time spent on this one... with more than 480 hours dedicated to just 8 seconds of the song... that's 60 hours of practice per second.

i was able to play part A fairly cleanly... my first arpeggio run was a bit muffled and the dynamics were off on the second run, but not bad. i made it 3/4 of the way thru part B before my fingers got tangled and i had to reset.

i had picked this song because i like the song, it had a lot of new techniques i needed to learn, and it is visually impressive to watch being played. i've practiced it so much, i've forgotten how impressive those 8 seconds truly are. mom gasped and a "wow" slipped out while i was playing... that actually threw me for a loop. my wife's response kept me humble, "meh, i hear him do that every day..." [under breath] "for hours " [rolls eyes]

this was one of those rare moments where i look back at how far i've come. the view is much different from where i started nearly 3 years ago.

my primary purpose in recording was get a clean take of a few songs for my parents to hear. now that i've given at least one clean performance, i hope it will relieve some of the pressure of recording... i really need to post some recordings here to the group.