Brett Siler

So afterwards I bought the ToneX pedal and wow… I am blown away! It sounded incredible immediately. I’m going to explore it more but yeah I think this is going to work for my new gigging and recording setup.

It’s been hot as fuck out. Enjoy nice summery music.

Haven’t kept a music journal for the past two weeks because my father passed away. Without getting too personal it was a very intense experience. He was always very supportive and kind. He was also very charasmatic and animated. He lived a wild life when he was younger. Much more wild than I ever did. I picked up a lot of good character traits from him. I could go on and on but I’m not trying to make this too personal. Mostly focused on music.

That said the only things keeping me together practicing or making music, working out, and close family or friends. All three have been a natural anti-depressant.

Anyway… the next 6 months I’ll be focusing on harmonic minor scale and its modes. Studying the scales, triads and chords. I’ll focus on a new key every two weeks to get through all 12 in 6 months. I’ll going in order of the circle of 5ths.

I’ll also be focusing on the diminished scale. It’s going to be a dark and weird next 6th months. Seems fitting..

I’ll be doing maintenance on pentatonic and diatonic scales triads and chords but mostly as a warm up. Try not to get two caught up in it and focus more on harmonic minor and diminished.

Oh yea also keeping on directional/economy picking.. I have a book I’m working out of for that as well.

I guess I should mention the last 3 almost 4 years I’ve been working this overnight job at a gas station. Covid kinda turned my world upside down. I went from hustling day in day out down live sound and recording to the world stopping. It was a nice break at first, then it just started to suck really bad and I had a few existential crises about what direction my life should take (not the first time I should say too). Anyway Daddy government stopped sending money so I needed a job and I just got something down the street from my house. Soon after they asked me to take the 3rd shift night position. There is a solid 2-3 hours each night where almost nobody comes it. I took the opportunity to practice guitar and study music theory. I’ve learned quite a bit and have completely changed my technique on guitar two times now. They’ve only threatened to fired me twice now over it, ha!

Burgers Gone Wild played and it was a solo garage act. They wore what looked like a mummy mask and sang through a telephone mic. It was a cool set. We went on and I considered taking it easy as there weren’t too many people there, but as we started play I couldn’t help myself; I just started jumping around and rocking hard anyway. Hey gotta play hard even whether theres 15 or 1500 people there.

After we finished the bassist of Pleasure Patrol made a snide comment about our set. “You guys… really… rocked it.” As he rolled his eyes. Whatever. I have people say shitty things to me every night at work, so it didn’t phase me, but just noted he’s an asshole. He did however have a pretty sweet Bon Jovi belly shirt with mesh sleeves on and I enjoyed their set regardless. Afterwards we loaded up and the band argued about getting food or not. We just drove back, loaded gear and I went home and made pancakes.