| | | Hey Friend,
....aaaaarrrrrrrggggggghHHHHHHHHHH!
Despite your well-wishes and good vibrations coming my way, I failed the exam. Again.
In fact, I did worse on it this time than I did on the first. Clearly, the Universe doesn't want me to pass this test. And I actually thought I was doing pretty well on it. Like I was totally rocking it!
If that's not a major disconnect, I don't know what is.
And yet, maybe that's the message. Maybe I've been looking at this all wrong.
Are the Gods of Rock & Roll intervening in my life? Have they predestined that I should embark on a new quest?
I'm so confused!
Well, maybe not...
What if the message I'm supposed to be hearing is to stop doing that? Stop trying to fit into something I'm not perfectly suited for.
Ready For A Change
I've had a good run. IT was a good career for a while, and it certainly turned my life around when I didn't have any real direction.
But something happened along the way. As IT became a more popular career field, it also got more "commercialized." It wasn't just us geeks and social outliers. More and more I saw "normal" people coming into IT. These were the kids in high school that had lots of friends, maybe were athletes, always seemed to have no social awkwardness. They definitely weren't the ones I'd see in the computer lab, that's for sure...
In short, the IT field has become more homogenized, and with that, the more socially adept tend to rise in the ranks to management, which means they end up being decision makers. They play better politics with the suits and become part of the Borg Collective.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not being a sour puss. My point is that they're better suited to the way IT has evolved. I'm not. I've felt a disconnect for quite some time, but have been too stubborn to break out of the rut. When you invest so much time, energy and money to something, it's hard to give it up.
I've become more disillusioned with Microsoft technologies and the policies they adopt over time. My specialization has become a generality and I've felt for a long time that most of the roles I've held in the last 5-6 years have been more about fixing broken stuff rather than doing anything new and cool. So I can either pursue something within IT that is more on the outskirts with better opportunities, or I can focus on new horizons to explore.
I've read that folks in my generation tend to change careers every 15 years or so, so I guess my time is up. And I'm okay with that. Enough whacks upside the head with a 2x4 and I eventually get the hint.
I never said I was all that bright.
Time to turn the page...
LESSON
Let's go back to the lesson materials I sent out earlier this week.
I gave you some interesting chords you could modify by simply changing fingering on one string. I thought it'd be cool to explore these as arpeggios. Here are the lesson files.
If you recall, an arpeggio is a fingered chord that you play each note individually rather than strummed.
I've added four more bars to the exercise and examples of how to do some simple arpeggios to make the progression sound more musical and interesting.
It's all pretty self-explanatory, so give it a try. Once you have the hang of it, try it out with some other chords you know.
If this exercise is too slow for your liking, you can speed it up using the same progression, just practicing it using a metronome with a faster tempo. Or, you could try out Song Surgeon's tempo feature and increase the speed of the MP3 I provided you. Either way you decide to practice - metronome or Song Surgeon - you should be able to hear how this technique is used in many popular Rock, Country and Blues songs you know and love.
Hope y'all have a great weekend. Rock ON!
Peace~
Dave |
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