Yesterday, I had a "push it" day on technique. I bumped the metronome up to 125 bpm (16th notes) and tried to run through my drills. Until my right arm started tensing up, i was solid on tempo for a couple of minutes. Once I saw that I could not do it tension free, I took the metronome back down several clicks and repeated. It is really inspiring to see your work pay dividends with better technique (in this case)

I always tell my students to practice slowly and only when you can play cleanly and with good tone should you start to increase the tempo. If you're not doing this, try it over your next few practices and see what your results are.

Someone mentioned that I should put more information on my blog entries specific to chords/scales/progressions and whatnot. If you would like for me to tab out the chords I'm working over, the scales or anything else, let me know and I'll start doing that.

here's a teaser - mode two of the harmonic minor scale (aka B Locrian w/a natural 6th degree)

E-------------------------------------------------8-10-12-
B---------------------------------------9-10-12-----------
G------------------------------7-9-10---------------------
D----------------------7-9-10-----------------------------
A-------------7-8-11--------------------------------------
E---7-8-10------------------------------------------------

You can use this over a Bm7b5 (ii chord in Aminor), or a trick I like to use is to use this scale up a minor 3rd from an altered dominant chord. For example, Ab7b5#9, using this mode and mode one of the harmonic minor scale a half-step up from the root of the altered chord will give you all those tasty chord tones like the b9/#9 and b5/#5. Fun stuff, yeah?