today is another one of those days where motivation is hard to come by. although i got up at my usual hour, got my coffee and oatmeal, and sat down to practice, i'm finding myself just going through the motions. no progress is being made i'm just not regressing, i suppose, though i probably am doing that. it's frustrating and doesn't feel good and it happens more often than i'd like.
i know when i'm having period of motivation and am having a lot of fun, those times where i practice in the morning and then can't wait to get home from work because i want to play some more. i always think, "remember this one thing for when you have no motivation". i've had that thought many times. i can remember having the thought but never it's contents. welp, a lot of good that does me.
one thing that always helps me feel like i'm doing something is working with a metronome. there is nothing better than tossing off the training wheels, setting the click for 2 and 4, and workin' it. sometimes i'll do it with material i know decently well if i don't feel like working on something new just to help keep the standards up. those bad habits creep up and the metronome helps keep them at bay.
sometimes when i just can't bring myself to sit down and play i'll at least mess around with my gear so that it's working when i
actually do want to play. this week i had to address a buzzing in my
Schecter banshee short-scale bass. i don't know if it was a design flaw or if it was a QC issue, but the saddles on the baddass-style bridge didn't have any groove for the strings to sit in. in fact, if you look at the close-up photo on the Schecter product page it doesn't have the grooves either. so maybe that's just the way it's designed. anyway, so what would happen is the string would break over the bridge side of the saddle and then basically sat on the flat top of the saddle. the result was a sitar-like buzz that would happen especially on the D and G string.
this was a job well within my abilities so i went to harbor freight, everyone's favorite single-use tool store, and got a $5 set of files. the first saddle was a little unnerving because i didn't know how difficult it would be or if the files were even going to be able to get the job done. after a few uncertain and slow minutes i figured out what i was doing and the job went fairly quickly. luckily the strings had scored the brass enough that i had a clear line front to back i just needed to get the file started straight and the rest just sort of did itself. the files did dull pretty quickly but they lasted long enough for 4 saddles.
when i got them all filed it was back into the bridge for intonation and tuning. all said and done it was about 45 minutes from start to finish and the bass plays mint now. i remember a time when i 1: probably wouldn't have noticed there was a problem, and 2: wouldn't have known what to do or that i even could do something about it. in retrospect, i remember some of my old instruments had all sorts of issues. in particular the intonation was off on every single one. i distinctly remember being frustrated when it was perfectly in tune and then hitting a big ol' G chord and it just sounding all wobbly. i'm sure they all would have been just fine with a setup, but 25 years ago who even knew what that was? welp, i digress... this bass functions as it should now.
