Practicing
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
We guitarists have a tendency to look at the fingerboard way too much. I think there are a few factors involved. First of all, the guitar by its very nature is a very visual instrument…we rely a lot on patterns and shapes to learn the fingerboard.
Second, unlike most other instruments, a lot of guitarists [...]
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
Ok, so you’ve learned all the fingerings for every inversion of the basic arpeggios in C, right? Or at the very least you should be somewhat familiar with them. If not, this next step may prove pretty frustrating.
What we’ll do now is apply these fingerings to a tune. It can be any tune…choose one you [...]
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
In a previous post I mentioned having to really know you’re arpeggios. The first thing I did which really helped me out was to figure out the fingerings for all the inversions. Once you have the shapes under your fingers, everything else becomes a lot easier.
So I took the four basic chord types: maj7, m7, [...]
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
I just wanted to share my approach to learning to play over changes. What has worked for me is to stick to playing the basic chord-tones: 1-3-5-7. I take whatever tune I’m working on, and improvise at a very slow tempo, only with chord tones.
The objective is to really get inside the changes, to really [...]
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
It’s been awhile. Because of a big move, some traveling, and intermittent internet access, I haven’t had much time to update this blog. But I’ve had quite a few ideas floating around, so things should get up to speed rather quickly.
As most of you know, one of the keys to having good technique is [...]
Friday, February 29th, 2008
A while back I talked about how one should always relate their practicing directly to music, and not spend so much time practicing abstract things like triad pairs. Well, guess what I was practicing today? Yeah, triad pairs…over a really dull G7alt - C backing track, too.
So did I change my mind? Not entirely. What [...]
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
I’ve been leafing though a book called "Gehörbildung" by Ulrich Kaise. It’s a pretty interesting take on ear-training, though a little hard to read for me since it’s in German.
The second half of the book deals with 2 simultaneous voices, and he mentions some figures from "Dritten Theil des sich selbst informierenden Clavier-Spieler" by Michael [...]
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
Focus is something very important in music. In everything, really. Whatever it is you want to succeed at, you have to be focused on what you want to achieve and on the current task at hand. But when you think about it, those two things go together. A lack of focus leads to a lack [...]
Friday, December 28th, 2007
In an effort to add contrapuntal textures to my playing, I’ve been messing around with species counterpoint and trying to apply it to jazz tunes.
Here is my first attempt, a cantus firmus for the blues in Bb:
So first, I started playing it and improvising a line on top of it in first species. This proved [...]
Thursday, December 20th, 2007
I recently came upon a sort of epiphany. In a way, I’ve always known this, but somehow I get distracted very easily. Now that I’ve made it a rule for myself, it’s made my music-making and practicing much more productive.
Here is the rule: Everything I play and practice should be music.
I can hear all of [...]
