Saturday 9 Aug; I'm Feelin' Good

It's been a productive week; the house buying adventure appears to have taken a positive turn, with the seller agreeing with everything in our last counter offer. So, it looks like we've bought a house! There are a number of things that have to happen before we can move in, but we hope to close by the end of the month.

The essentials of my practice sessions: bass of choice,
Carvin amp, Boss tuner; chord sheets w/ lots of notes

Musically, I'm on the schedule to play with our church band for the next four weekends, which should help keeping me on a steady practice routine. I've spent the last few days working on this weekends song list and feel pretty confident with it. 

Now, back on track with my practice schedule I've noticed there are sections of the fingerboard I usually overlook. These tend to be the open positions and the "D" & "G" strings. So I've been working on using these areas in the songs I am practicing. Sometimes they work great-- as in the case of "Your Grace is Enough" (the key of F) in which I am playing the verse in the open positions as much as possible. We'll see how that works with the band on Sunday.

Keeping it fun, I've been working on the James Brown classic, "I Got You (I Feel Good). The old tunes from Motown, Stax, and Muscle Shoals (to name a few) have always been my favorites. Maybe it's because I was born in Detroit right around the time so many great tunes were recorded... there was something more than simply one-part hydrogen and two-parts oxygen in the water back then-- you can hear it in the music. Anyway, It's my way of keeping practice fun.