Continuing with about three hours practice a day, spread throughout the day, on both accordion and steel but with more time on the former. For the last few days I've been listening hard to Quebec music, from that "Dance ce Soir" CD/transcription set. On the "Reel St-Jean" set I've finally heard glimpses of the right rhythm and accenting, but it takes lots of repetitions to just hear the possibility of success in there. I think it's one of those things where I push until it clicks, then it's easier. Still, the right-hand fingerings for ornamentation, and then combining even the printed progressions in the left hand, it's different than other music I play on the box. I'll probably stay intensive on it for awhile then put it away to rest before bringing it out again.

On Dobro I've been finding that I do need that freedom to use and right-hand finger on any string... I got back that concept of a "resting stroke", which is a bad phrase but I don't know what else fits, where the thumb hits a string and the whole melody just rests on it. It doesn't sound the same if I use a finger for such notes. For awhile I was thinking that the right thumb said periods, and the fingers were question marks, and to really end some sentences you had to use the right punctuation. Anyway, I've been getting familiar with closed-position and open-position scales... first jig I played on the restrung Dobro was "Haste to the Wedding", and it worked.