Fri

I had some wedding music that I had to prepare & warm up on for this weekend. I spent all day on the nylon and most of it finger-style to get those muscles activated. I’m going to try to play a little quieter tomorrow. I think I try to play to loud (from a r.h. perspective) and it all comes out noisy. I think if I turn up a little more and play a little softer I’ll have more control and a better output.
Other than that, same old same old….
Melodic Minor shapes. I’m trying to really solidify E-7b5 to A alt & A-7b5 to D alt
That gives me a fifth and sixth string root for each chord easily. I’m still trying to get some nice shapes and licks down so I can cruise through those parts. I can play through them right now, but I can’t think very fast when I’m doing that.

ET Ascending: 65%
I started out well and then started making stupid mistakes. I should have warmed-up before hand.

Frost

Melodic Minor again today. Speed exercises and some different fingerings for some Mel. Minor licks I’m working on. I’m making real progress with this stuff this week. I’m really limiting my improvising exercises to specific areas where I know the fingerings and using that as my melodic material. It’s hard and I don’t sound good doing it, but I do recognize that I’m on the right track.

ET Ascending: 75%
I keep mistaking minor 6ths as major or consonant intervals and mixing up major 3rds as dissonant intervals. Sometimes I still get confused with 2nds as well. A couple of times I had a better feeling about the chord than my intellect, and I’m wondering if I ever will stop hearing “Here Comes The Bride,” “Star Wars,” and “N-B-C” as interval indicators.

Schweep

Melodic Minor again today. I worked on speed exercises. It’s probably not a good idea to type after doing speed exercises. It probably confuses my fingers. Tim’s licks are helping me to play faster. It inspires me to dig up my old shredder arpeggios.

ET Ascending: 65%
I had some dissonant intervals tonight. It was hard to get my bearings. When I’m off, I tend to hear a minor 6th as a major interval. I think it’s because it’s really an inverted 3rd or because of all my Credence Clearwater country riffs that I’m used to. I’ve got to get better at that.

Sometimes it Rains

I had a very helpful lesson with Tim Miller today. We are working on licks and smoothing out some of my jazz phrases. I’m working too hard to get my notes out. I’ve got to get some bigger shapes under my fingers.
ET Ascending: 65% (I sat down cold, after not playing for a while).

Mo

Just did some maintaining today. Reviewed the wolfgang solo & practice speed exercises and fingerings for melodic minor harmony & Stella. My fingers are moving faster and more effortlessly on the guitar.
I have a lot more work to go and should keep up on my transcription studies.
ET Test (ascending): 70%

slow & steady

I had some correspondence busywork today so I extracted Keith Jarrett’s Solo from Stella and put it on loop on my CD player. I spent a couple of hours just listening to the solo over and over again. Occasionally I would sing along. When I had dinner I brought out a transcription of the solo and read through the solo as the music played. In order for me to be more comfortable with this solo I need to know it inside and out. After dinner I worked on the first two choruses. There are some fast parts for me, so I’m going to have to slow it down a bit. After that I went back to my Wolfgang solo. The part I left off on last night was cool, but difficult. It was fast and bebopy. I forgot the phrasing and had to relearn the end part. On my second day at it I have a better feel for it, but didn’t have time to move forward on it.

ET test (ascending): 95%
I specifically did it after my practice and transcribing. I got the first 16 correct and then mistook a minor 6th for a tritone.

aha

I did another couple of measures of the wolfgang solo. This part was a little faster and more chromatic. He still playing diatonic to the key, but he’s handing out on dissonances to generate tension.

I had a neat experience: I was practicing one lick and trying to get it under my fingers and then the next thing I knew I had transposed it to another set of strings. I was impressed that my fingers knew melodically where to go and how to shift the pattern to get the same result. I continued with the idea and played around on different string and in different positions and was quiet pleased with the results: my fingers are getting smarter.

My memory from yesterday’s work was still there. It only took a little bit of work to put it back together.

Another interesting thing happened right after I had done my transcribing work. I quickly opened up my ear training exercises and went at the melodic ascending. I scored my highest yet. I also didn’t have to think about the answers. They were all there. I remember yesterday having trouble remember and distinguishing between some of the smaller intervals. Today they were obvious. It was a nice experience.
ET (ascending): 80%

Wolf

My three transcriptions that I’m working on this week involve Wolfgang Muthspiel, Keith Jarrett & Phillip Johnston. This morning I’m working on Wolfgang Muthspiel. I took 20 seconds and worked on learning it by ear. I might right it out or at least write out some notes, but I’m going to try to memorize. It’s a really fast piece and I think I’d be writing a lot of repeated notes as 16th notes because of all the tremolo picking he is doing. 20 seconds of a piece is a nice little 20 minute workout for me. It will be interesting to see what I remember of this later tonight.
Here are some licks from Phillip Johnston & Keith Jarrett that I’m working on (pdf).
Ear Traing (Ascending): 75%

The Blah

The truth is that not much has changed in a while. I’m working on the same stuff everyday. I’m not making progress in leaps and bounds, it’s more like step by step. That’s understandable and expected, but it doesn’t make for an exciting practice blog. Because I haven’t logged in a while I’m going to start documenting some of the more boring aspects of my practice, just to keep this thing active. I’m going to put up the results of my daily ear training exercises and scan in some of the transcriptions I’m working on (even though I don’t want to). My conflict is that I do my transcriptions for me only, but I think sharing them may be helpful my students. Even though my transcriptions may not make sense to anyone other than me, I think it would be helpful to demonstrate a utilitarian approach to transcribing.

To start with, here are the results of today’s ET test. Right now I’m doing the Chromatic Melodic Ascending test: 20 questions = 70%

Here’s a quick recording of Improv or Stella (just one chorus).
And a quick vamp while we’re at it.