This week:

I basically just played two songs that I don't know from a hole-in-the-wall! One we'd worked on just once and the other I was given the chords downstairs ("oh, it's easy") and the band just launched into it and we just went for it. I'd never even heard it before. We played it about halfway through and then it was decided we needed to make a better distinction between the verses and chorus so we changed the strumming pattern for the verses and launched it again. And it worked! D was majorly impressed when I told him about it.

I'm enjoying the crap out of learning this way, it's just so cool to learn a part and then toss it all together, modify your part, and roll with it. And we tried my idea for the main riff in the Pink song, it's played 6 times at the beginning and there's no way all of us are going to get it spot-on at the same time. So I suggested we try it with each of us playing it once, solo, and then passing it to the next person. Three guitars trading off the riff across the stage would be cool. I think we can make it work too, the timing's off still, but we're not all up to speed on it yet and it's a hard one to get the rhythm right.

And here's the print I made as a gift for the school (made one for my mom too for Christmas). I printed an 8x10 and framed it and gave it to them along with the DVD's mom sent. Told them I just really appreciate being able to do this, that it means a lot to me. I made some 4x6 prints too for anyone in the group who wanted one. They thought the DVDs were cool.