jtnt://life/unedited

Years from now when I’m interviewed (because I’m a celebrated musician) who my influences are, I’ll have to remind myself to include Howie Day in the list.

I’ve been wearing out about 8 tracks from a live show I legally downloaded a couple days ago. The guy’s got skills.

He does layering/looping much like Keller Williams*. And his voice definitely has a Dave Matthews feel to it. In fact, at one point Howie’s between-song banter sounds so much like Dave-Speak it made my head turn.

His songs are definitely mellow, but at 1:30 in the morning that’s just fine by me.

* If you are currently listening to music or have your speakers on at all, click this link at your own peril.

I still haven’t figured out why I have such a hard time getting my fingers to the D chord on my guitar. It’s been a problem for me since I started playing guitar 7 months ago. It’s mostly getting that third finger on the second string that I mess up on.

It’s painfully easy, I know. So let me clarify mysel. I can easily hit D in a two-step fingering process - and I’ve gotten pretty good at doing this fairly quickly - where my first two fingers go and then my third is placed. What seems to be the problem is getting that third finger placed without its predecessors’ guidance. Some people would say the other problem I have with that third finger on my left hand is that there’s no ring on it yet.

I’ve been trying to do really quick chord progressions to and from D to force my fingers to hit it as fast as possible. I’m hoping that this will take the thinking out of it and let my fingers do the walking, so to speak.