Though I've decided to use this blog as an avenue for documenting (actually motivating me to practice more) my guitar practice over the next 362 days, I never really went into it with a plan. As a result, I often spend a lot of time noodling around before I actually get down to business. Once I actually get down to business, however, I've wasted between 20 minutes and an hour. Once I get down to business, I gain great benefit from structure. What I do, however, is beat myself up for having wasted time.
I have always believed it didn't matter how I practice guitar, but that I simply practiced. How I've come to understand this is a fallacy. Having come to understand that, however, I have still not created a regimen for practicing. Part of the difficulty in creating a plan is that there is so much to learn. Another element of my avoidance is that when I learn a skill I learn it fairly quickly. As a result, I feel like I've wasted some time on that skill and that the skill, perhaps, is meaningless. What I fail to understand is that there are skills that I'll develop down the road that just might rely on my ability to apply these previously learned (or avoided) skills that I find meaningless. My goal for the end of the week is to develop a plan that allows me to practice some of the more necessary elements of guitar/music on a daily basis, while incorporating important but less repetitive skills on a fairly consistent, but not always daily basis.
In the meantime, I spent a lot of time last night listening to Satin Doll - more of a focus on Joe Pass's version. While I can gain a lot from other artist's covers of Satin Doll, I need to focus on one. Moreover, the beauty of Joe Pass's cover is that he plays all of the parts. While I'm in no, way, shape, or form capable of covering Satin Doll as Joe Pass did, I want badly to understand how he plays these pieces the way he does. Because I'm still new to transcribing and developing my ear, I'm focusing more the melodic elements of Satin Doll than the harmonic elements. As I learn more about chord melody, I hope to be able to gain more from listening to any of Joe Pass's works, particularly Satin Doll.
In addition to listening to and transcribing Joe Pass's cover of Satin Doll, I worked on developing a more meaty melody to Satin Doll. I've had little problem learning to read and play the melody, but it sounds too plain. I've been working on playing the melody in octaves. Octaves are still a new element to me, so I don't play them as flawlessly as I'd like. Nonetheless, the melodic elements that I've added octaves too sound a lot better than playing single note melodic lines.
I also spent last night developing some skills, reading, and watching videos. I worked through Day 3 of Guitar Aerobics -- a nice little blues lick in the key of A. Learning to play these exercises at different tempos has helped immensely. Learning to play these exercises (where the rhythm varies) in different tempos has really forced my to better understand the rhythmic elements of music. I wrapped up the evening playing all the modes of the major scale and their related harmonic minor scales in the keys of G, D, and A. As well as playing at different tempos, I really spent a lot of time analyzing the related notes between the major and harmonic minor scales in the various positions on the neck.
Tonight...Day 4
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