Sunday, 28 March 2004

Two questions answered 1. When playing guitar and your hands start to "ice" up, how do you keep them warm enough to play fluidly? Playing guitar in cold weather is bad for you, period. It's bad for the joints and bad for the tendons. Especially when it is cold it is important to loosen up and warm up before you perform, otherwise you could really damage something by forcing your cold and tight hand to do something it should not. Run chromatic scales for at least 10-15 minutes, not fast, but slow and evenly...bring a hot cup of tea or coffee with you that you can wrap your hands around every chance you get, which if you are playing solo is between every song. Sit on your hands in between songs if you have to, anything to keep them from getting too cold. And the last resort before giving up is to play slowly. Nobody is going to be impressed if you pull a tendon on a fast run...there is always another day to wow them with a fast lick. 2. Sometimes when I play my right foot falls asleep being crossed over. How do you keep this from happening? I have two reasons for playing barefoot. I like being barefoot and I also discovered that my right foot won't fall asleep as quickly if I don't wear shoes. Heavy boots are especially bad, because their weight makes your right foot fall asleep pretty fast. During our last song I will usually try to get blood flow into my right leg, or sometimes I'll stay seated for a little while before getting up. I was a little hasty one time on a Santana gig in 1996 and almost fell down from a tall stage... 11:44:15 AM    comment [];

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