Given the year round cycling and presence of world-class racers around here, it's difficult to spend a lot of time on the guitar. There's the time on the bike, of course. But the time off the bike is often spent vegging-out...staring at a computer monitor with a vacant expression - the result of glycogen exhaustion, I guess. You have to expend any energy remaining to keep up with the chores. Everything grows fast down here, and just like up North, the weeds outgrow everything else. But cooler weather is slowly arriving, and the days are shorter. Tonight will be the last evening assault on Paris Mountain. I'm gradually inspired to make more music.
When you don't play the 12-string every day, you find your fingertips losing the callous and becoming more tender. I tuned down a half-tone and this makes playing much easier. Now I want to come back to full tension and harden up the tips, enjoy the resonance and body of strings and correct tension. Now it's too difficult to play some passages that were easier at the lower tension. There are some bars in the middle of the Bach C natural Prelude that require some tricky barring and fast hand position changes; easy before, now getting muffed.
