Break

As it's been about a week since I've posted in my "daily" practice blog, i think it's time to mention that I'm taking a little break from guitar studies right now. I'm currently working and studing XHTML & CSS to redevelop my website. It is going very slow. I expect this break to continue until the 2nd week of May, and then re-focus my energies on the guitar and the upcoming busy wedding season.

dadnbc

Chromatic scales all day & all night, plus some singing as well.
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Besides that, it's Gamelan all day and all night!

uyikk

I'm prepping for some upcoming recordings. I'm going to have some new tunes up on the Solo Guitar site soon and I'm working them out right now so they are ready for recording time. The two tunes I'm working on right now are: Freddie the Freeloader & Can't We Be Friends.
As I'm working on these tunes I'm using them as exercises for my ear stuff as well as my new found appreication for chromatic scales. I'm using the loopstation for both of these. I dno't have any examples online of me using the loopstation. it will be fun.
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nvwdyz

oh yeah, I forgot about chromatic scales. How quickly that fades from my brain.....
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We'll, I didn't realize it at the time, but the miles tune I was working on just had him playing on the head. There was one good lick in it, plus the chromatic scale observation. I'm going to try to use them both more in my playing. The miles lick was a nice arpeggio of a major chord startin on the on the 2 moving up chromaticly to the third and then descending down the triad an octave, until it ended on the third.... very simple lick.
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I've been putting my ET exercises to task at playing melodies by ear. Either I'm playing a tune that I know and just playing the melody, the best I konw it, or I'm playing along with CDs (or really the iPod). It's a good exercise and I think it's where I need to put the majority of my focus on. By listening to others I'll get my sense of approriatnesss, plus licks.
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Something unexpectd, but highly logical happened in my playing today. After playing all of those chromatic scales, when I went to just play over tunes I started coming up with chromatic lines. It's like a combonation of "duh" and "oh wow!"
Good things come to those who practice.
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uylfbpm

I started working on Miles Davis' "Fran Dance" head/solo. I heard it last night and liked the sound of it. A closer look this morning shows some good stock blues licks. The whole thing sounds a little cheesy in the morning; a bit like Chris Botti. But the experience has led me to the importance and value of chormatic scales. I've got to work on those.
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I've always been worse at descending licks vs. ascending licks. As I worked on my chromatic scales today (one octave) I was trying to alleviate that problem. I worked on the scales slow and steady, asceding and descending, and just tried to be accurate. I'm sure after a couple of days doing this I'll get the hang of it.
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With my new focus on ET and listening my way through tunes I feel like I'm getting an immersion experience for understanding this material. I find the experience very invigoriting itellectually, because my mind is trying to make sense of all these sounds. I'ts a neat experince.
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I also spent some time just playing chords into the loop station and then playing the chord tones on top of them by ear. I'ts neat because it's rewiring the way I think and hear chords.
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zqckqghz

I took some time and looked at my Parker tune again. I've made it to the b-section. Once I've made it through the head, I'll start at the beginning again with the recording. It's a cool piece and I'm enjoying reading, but I should be just working on my ears. Last week my ear studies were neglected, so I've got to get back to my ET studies.
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I spent the ear portion of tonights work on playing with CDs. Before that I was working on random chords and random ii-v's. The thing is that I'm getting better at hearing, but I noticing a real lack of things to play or phrases to hear over the chords. Therefore I thought listening and playing along with tunes would help.
I'm spending a lot of time just listening to melodic lines and mimicing them or echoing them. I like some of the more densely harmonic tunes becuase it pushes me out of my "in-key" licks and forces me just to think about melodic shapes or distances.
I spent some time working with some Abbey Lincoln tunes and then set the iTunes to shuffle. During this process I stumbled upon an old recording of mine from December. It was interesting to listen to because I'm using all the same techniques that I'm working on now, but I'm not that good at them. I wasn't honestly having a difficult day with my playing and progress, but listening to this really inspired me to continue. Noticing progress is so helpful. As things get more and more challenging it's nice to know that I'm getting better and the world is not getting harder.
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With my new found inspiration and confidence I continued the evening playing through shuffle learning and exploring dozens of tunes. My ears are getting better and I"m connecting to my instrument the way I used to when I was a teenager. I was much more of an emotional/ intutive player back then. Now I have a bunch of intellect and theory in my back pocket and I'm working to get back to that orginal place.
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xcggeu

It's been quite busy here in Brendanville this week. I've either got to do my practice first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. Today I did both, but nothing too intense. Right now I'm reviewing for Valerie's student recital music (which is happening tomorrow), plus I'm looking at the Omni Book again. I'm using at as a nice reading exercise. They really are beautiful tunes. They soound good slow too!
As this week comes to a close I've noticed that I haven't been working on my ear exercises as much. I've got to get back to them next week.
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With the Omni book, I"ve been looking at "Confirmation." It's a nice blues and I've got the loop station play the changes for me. I'm spending time learning the melody and also just soloing by ear.

iwpqsx

As I introduce balance in my playing, I'm beginning to discover that I'm pushing myself out of balance into this new realm and away from primary ear studies.
But new things are exciting.
I spent some time today playing around with parker's head on Confirmation from the omni book. I was working on the tune with a metronome, then the loop station (backing chords), and then downloaded the song and worked from there. The recorded version of the tune had a couple more approach or pick-up notes and illustrated what the trill or slur lines meant. I don't have a lot of background in reading those things.
While I was doing this I would also take a break with free-improv and then improvising over the parker changes by ear and just see what happens. My default fingerings, melodies and improvs are getting better and more clear. Some of the old stupid mistakes are clearing themselves up and other stupid mistakes are still there. I'm having a good time improvising and I'm curious to see what a Parker head will do to my ear & playing.
On top of that I'm working on preparing some tunes for Valerie's recital this weekend. I've got to break out the classical guitar for that. I'm not looking forward to it. I like playing one guitar for long periods of time and I don't want to put the Klein away. I should just get a nylon Kleinish guitar. I would never need another instrument.
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ziupgdva

I continued my ear exercise with random modes again. I'm having fun while playing them. It's like trying to keep my balance on a platform that is moving.
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bike

in the spirit of balance, TM has asked me to incorporate some drills mentioned in my previous journal entry. Today I worked through a Steve Rochinshki book that I've had for a while and didn't know what to do with. My recenty emphasis on the ear is perfect for the intro section of his book. There are much of simple bopish lines/licks that are to be learning in different rhythmic phrasings and every key. The emphasis is on hearing their motivic sound and not in analyzing them.
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A quick transcription of Coltrane's head on My Favorite Things.... always good to have.

 

ziiwoaz

Tim's got me working on some other stuff now to give me some balance in my practice. I've got some reading, arpeggios and singing exercises to compliment my primary focus on ear development.
Tim also suggested that I use random mode drills allong with my random chord exercises. I'm finding this very satisfiing. They are like random ii-v's but with chaning tonality.
The exercise was good and strangely reminded me of some gamelan music we've been practicng recently. Moving modes is also an excelent compositional and improvisational techinque. I should use it more often.

srwryaii

I was thinking that Hypnosis might be able to help me out with this singing and playing perdicment I'm in. I know I know the notes, intervals and melodies that I need to play, but I don't know how to effectively transmit the informtaion to my fingers. It's like imagining a beautiful picture to draw, but not having thd motor skills connected to do it.
Over the past couple weeks of obsessing on this idea has allowed my imgainiation or my mind to work in overdrive when it comes to melodies. I'm singing, playing and singing while playing; all in hopes that everything comes together. I'm making small progress everyday and for some reason I'm looking for a big turnaround day. I'm beginning to think that it may not happen that way. It's seems like it's more likely that I'll be hitting 70%, then 80% then 90% of the notes that I want to hit. Or at least that's the way I feel today.
I've been working on the singing and playing exercise with Stella & a random ii-v progression in the loop station. I'm both singing the melodies and singing while playing them.
My big breakthrough for the day was to sing stronger that I was playing. I was really concentrating on the notes I was singing, the direction and the space between them and then letting my fingers figure it out on their own. This has definately been the most powerful I've been with this idea. One of the problems I was having before was that I was getting stuck in my thought process. I was sing a note or imagine a note and then try to play it on my instrument. So in some sense I was giving mixed signals to who was in charge: fingers vs. voice, or imgination vs. intellect. When I pushed through that and just sang the notes out my fingers would just hit the melody. I was thinking about the what the note might sound like, I just played what I was singing.
The previous exercise of singing without the guitar has also been helpful in this process. I don't think I would be able to have the breakthrough I had today without just trying to hit the pitches with my voice.
This brings me to my progressive development hypothosis. As I make progress on my singing and ear and gutiar connection I presume I will make several small and important breakthroughs and push deeper into this area of playing and creation.
I guess that makes a lot of sense; not terribly profound, but a helpful reality to imagine.
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Part II in my practice day consisted of reviewing the 3 solos I"ve been working on. This week I haven't moved forward on the pat metheny tune under strict instruction from TM to get the rhythm down first. The rhythmic interplay between pat and charlie is amazing, and to mimic that, or play it perfectly is difficult. The more I do the more I get into the feel of it and the more I appreciate the genius of the two of them.
Lately, I"ve really had the most rewarding exerperiences during my transcription portion of my practice routine. There is something really nice about tuning into a master of the the guitar or the msuic in general.
As I was reviewing my Metheny tune I noticed that I had orginally transcribed the tune wrong and found a note that I wasn't including in my solo.
When I switched to go back to my Paul Desmond tune, I had spent so much time away from it that I had forgotten some of it. I had to redue some of the faster or more tricker parts.
Because of the all the connection development that I've made, I"m playing the tune a lot differently. I'm thinking about the whole thing a lot less. Some lines are just gestures and my fingers just sort of make it happen. Others times my fingers will find another way of playing the line that's more like Paul's saxaphone line. All the work I've been doing is translating. It's kinda wierd.
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Forget everything I wrote before. Something big is happening today. In one sense it feels like I'm learning how to sing through my guitar. It's like my brain is rewiring my voice to come out of my amplifer. When I listen to my self singing to see if I'm on the right note or not I'm not totally listening to my voice and the way it sounds but am linking my instrument's sound in the whole mix; as if my instrument were my voice.
Now that's what I'm talking about!
I can tell something big is happening because it's painfull and exhausting. I'm sending so many singals to my brain that it's getting tired and confused.
When I working on this last exercise (improvising over random chords in a groove in the loopstation) I was trying to listen to my voice rather than think about the right notes. I was trying to hear where I wanted to go before I got there. In that process I could hear how far away that note or series of notes was away from where I was at that momement. During this exercise I would get some right and get some wrong. For a while I would get some right and get excited and crash and burn and forget how I was doing it. For me, it's really tapping into an area of non-thought or non-thinking while improvising. The second I realize I'm not thinking about what I'm playing, I begin to think about what I'm playing.....
Anyways, during this exepirence of getting the notes I was singing right and wrong I was getting all sort of stress related signals from my mind. It was like I was doing sit-ups for a half-hour and my brain was saying: what are you doing?! My stomach was hurting and I was straining myself but my whole sense of being was in considerable pain.
This seemed like a good thing to me. In my opinion I have the resources to make this happen, but I dont' have the neurological wiring to make it happen. As I was playing today it felt like my brain was trying to make the connections. It was almost like it was trying things out and everyonce and a while one would work and then one wouldn't work. It's like flippingn fuzes in your house-hold fuze box to see which one controls what.
And then as I continued with this exercise I really started getting confused as to which was making the sound my voice or my guitar. That would be such a cool thing if I could get that happening. If I could imagine something musical and rather than sing it, it just pops out on my guitar as if it were my voice. damn, that would be great.
So anyway, needless to say, I'm exhauseted and it feels like my brain is pulsing. Good work so far.
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As I continue with this exercise and develop the connection between my imagination, voice & guitar I'm finding the most clear and prescise melodies that I execute on the guitar are the ones that I have a very clear idea of when I sing them. That sounds obvious, but it's still important. For some reason, I wasn't doing that before. I didn't have a clear idea of what I was doing.
I need to remember to tap into that, because when I do my brain doesn't know the difference between my voice & my guitar.
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And allong those same lines, I think differently when I'm siging and when i'm playing. When I'm siging I tend to think about how my note relates to the chord beneath it, but when I'm playing I'm think about the notes relationship to a scale.
That's seems like the problem right there.
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It's really been an exciting day for a guitar. A very signigant breakthrough and yet still so much more to accomplish.
One of the neat things about moving up a notch is that I don't always know how to get back to where I was. It's so new it takes me a while to remember how to do it.
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wifvyckf

I've been trying to do as I've been told this week: sing what you play and review the 3 solos and play the perfectly.
My voice is simultaneously getting stronger and remaining the same. Sometimes I'm making big progress, other times I'm making the same old mistakes.
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I cleaned up the Metheny piece really well. The main theme has a tricky rhythm to it.
Not many new observations today. I'm just trying to keep my head down and pedal up that hill.
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zsqhh

Today's big focus was on singing. I spent time singing allong with the Jamie Abersold recordings. My voice is getting stronger but it has some work to do. I also spent some time singing along with the "suffle" function on the iPod. I was trying to sing guide tone lines through the tunes that I knew. It's better, but I still need some work. I'm beginning to identify the intervalic relationship of the lines I'm singing. This is a good thing, but again, more work is needed.
Take Heed!
Practice Practice Practice.
Pound Pound Pound, Crack!

duncmp

In the process to develop Awesome Ears and play what I hear, I'm finding so many fault or weaknesses in my own musianship.
I had some misc. things to do today and I popped in the "Maiden Voyage" play-allong CD and started singing lines over changes. My assingment this week is to listen to the chords more when I improvise and to use the chord voicings as target notes. As I tried the singing approach I noticed that I dont' sing very well and that I don't have a lot of control. I sing really weird intervals and sometimes jump outside the key in not a good way. It's remarkable similar to the way I play the guitar by ear sometimes. This brings me to the conclusion that I have to work on hearing the intervals correctly over the changes. I have a hard time singing anything but the highest note in the voicing or the root of the chord. I think if I work on this skill, it will help my playing out. It seems like it would.
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So I followed up this exercise by playing guitar over the same tunes and singing allong while I'm playing. I'm showing progress in this category. First off, I can sing longer. Previously singing would exhaust me and I would just stop singing. Now I can do it with a little more stamina. Second off, I noticed that my timing was better and that I'm picking up some influences from my Pat Metheny transcription. A lot of playing style is getting embraced in my playing. Third off, I noticed my ear getting a little better. I would sing a note right before I would play it and I had a better hitting percentage of getting it right. Most of the times it was good. Occasionaly I would screw up again.
I dont' think there is anything different or special that I'm doing to make this progress. I'm jsut doing it and it gets better, plain and simple. Tim has been very helpful in this process by given me great suggestions and pushing me into uncomforatable regions. My goal this week is to sing as much as I can with my improvs and just hope something sticks. I know all this stuff to well, for it not to come together eventually.
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When I first heard about the idea of singing allong to chord changes without an instrument I was very agaist it. I didn 't like it because I couldn't do it. It's a very difficult thing for me to do. I'm getting a little better at it. It's a combonation of singing and listening. Difficult stuff, but I'm making progress.
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As I continue to practice on the core subject of hearing what I'm playing, I notice a particular hang-up when it comes to my thought process. My brain is allways trying to wrap it's understanding around the notes and tell me what to do. Problem is, it's mostly wrong. To counter that I've been trying to play faster so I'm not thinking and to incorporate more slides in my playing, so that I'm gliding from note to note.
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It's seems that progress for me come in acknowledgment of incompetance. I'm working on improvising by ear through an Abbey Lincoln album (which may not be the best idea because of some of her weird chromatic melodic choices, but then again, it would be nice to sound like that) and I'm getting better. I'm listening to the tune and I'm listening to the melody in my head and I'm getting my hitting average up. I'm beginning to have enough experience doing this that I have a little bit of instinct to rely on. But when I just sit down and sing over a tune, it's a mess. I'm lucky if I can sing the root of the chord. I open my mouth and I try to find a good note, and then next thing I'm doing is singing a chormatic scale and I can't seem to find anything. I think this is becasue I'm comforatable with all of the intervals. Possibly I'm uncomfortable singing chord tones & tensions of voicings (there's an exercise right there), but I really can't sing ontop of tune. I can sing along and match pitches (and I suppose that's another good exercise), but I dont' have the strength to do it on my own.
These are all good and helpful observations for me. I just think it's funny that the better I get at this, the more I realize weakness all over the place.
On the blatantly positive side, I'm enjoying my tone (eventhough I've got week-old strings on). I'm picking up a lot of Metheny's feel. I accuarcy is getting better and I'm feeling a little more comforatable imporvising without a lead sheet.
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I spent a couple of minutes running through the Teoria exercises, I think they are an important part in this whole process. I'm using the limitation to a major 3rd. It's nice because this is usually what a melody moves in. I did well overall, but every once in a while I just get confused by everything. My correct answers were a mix of gut reaction and singing intervals. My ear is now relating the intervals to the fretboard. I'm happy with the work I've done today. I'm not seeing dramatic progress, but I don't think that's the point. I'm trying to keep my head-down on this and keep pushing steady. I wouldn't be surprised if I've got months of work ahead of me.

uswlwg

I started today by working on the ET drills of 2nd & 3rds. I really amazed at how wishy washy I am on these intervals. If I require myself not to think and just "feel" the intervals I seem to average three out of four. That makes me think I don't know these pictches like I thought I did.
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I came back to the Teoria drills but this time used my guitar to identify the pitches. I was far more accurate than just by ear. I think this is an example on how I get confused in the thought processes of identifing the notes. I use tricks or crutches to identify the notes intelleculaly, but when I just have to play them, I just play them.
Ocassionaly I would make a surprisngly stupid mistake. I'd like clean those up. Mistakes are bad.
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Apparently I'm not moving forward on the Pat Metheny tune tonight. I've got 2 of the 3 chorus taken care of, I'll save the last one for this up coming week. I spent some time reviewing the other two solos I've been looking at to make sure the are still there in my memory. They are. I had to play through the TM piece twice before I fully remembered what happened. Every piece is better at the beginning. As the solo continues I get just a little bit worse, becuase I've proporitionately spent less time there.
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Finally, I worked on improvising over some Abbey Lincoln's tunes. I have an album of her's that I'm quite fond of and used the tunes as a templeate for the single string exercise. I'm showing progress, but it's still difficult.