2004-12-12 - 6:05 p.m.

busy day. it was one of those days where I kept finding my guitar heavy and putting it down thinking "ok, I played enough for today, I can just leave this here" then finding myself reaching compulsively for it again a half hour later.

anyway, on to the observation that sparked this entry. (ka-huh) tonight I spent some time learning the pentatonic scale and playing some sample licks from wholenote.com. I sat there, in a receptive mood for learning, and read through the text, understood the concept, then played the scale. The sample lick sounded super hard (and was, from the perspective of my current ability) but was surprisingly understandable. I cut the tempo in half and tried playing along, was a bit surprised at being able to do part of the lick, but hit the point of frustration before being able to play the whole thing.

after having immersed myself in this new information for a bit, I let my mind drift off to other things. Basically I stood there staring off into space and zoned out completely. I forget what I was even thinking of but my mind was definitely not on playing the guitar or the pentatonic scale.

After a while, I came out of my reverie, noticed what was on the computer screen and was like "oh, yeah" and had another go at playing the sample lick. I'm remembering that I spoke out loud to myself: "ok, now.. the g pentatonic scale is this.. *play* but I was doing something in the second mode, which is this.. *play*." Then I puzzled out the hard part of the lick and picked it out slowly, then realized what it was and why I wasn't able to play it yet, but that I soon would be, and that it wasn't a hard lick or anything, just unfamiliar to my fingers. Not one of the meta shapes I have mastered :)

Anyway, the second round of trying to play the thing was much shorter, and after only a minute or so I gratefully let myself put down the guitar while pondering how I had let my mind wander in the middle of my "lesson" then come back briefly to the material again to "seal" it. Now in retrospect I'm put in mind of the reading I did about simulated annealing and I think I was realizing some of the tricks I unconsciously use to help my brain anneal to the new shape it finds itself in after I've added some new information.

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Gee.. writing this out makes much more sense than just thinking it in my head. I wish I had a text file for every thought I've had toward creating a sentient computer program. Anyway, here's to new beginnings.

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