Erroll Garner (1923 - 1977)

"Duke Ellington?..Oh yeah...watch this!"

To God be the glory for the great things He has done...

This post is the essence of what this blog is all about.  Listening to a great musician and learning.  It's what Garner did his whole life.  He never learned to read music.  I don't advocate that but I do advocate just playing over just reading.  (soapbox out)  Okay.  So while listening to Garner's superb take on "The Way You Look Tonight" (remember, that's the song I'm working on this week), I notice he is comping straight 8ths almost THE WHOLE SONG.  Even during his solo.  It's not as easy as it sounds.  It requires your left hand to focus on the harmony and rhythm and your right to focus on harmony, rhythm AND melody.  Sometimes the rhythm is similar in both hands, but most times different!  That's alot for a budding musician to tackle.  I have a question: How do you eat an elephant?  Haven't heard this one yet???  Well, if you don't know, it's just like every thing else...one bite at a time!  So my first bite is to play the first chord of the song, Eb7, straight in my right hand and play the different modes of Eb in my right (and whatever else comes to mind).  Just to get my mind and hands wrapped around the idea of doing different things simultaneously.

How did I come to practice this technique?  Did I read it in a book and say, "Hmm, that would be cool."?  No, I heard it and wanted to play it.  Get's no better than that.  Now I can say I studied under Erroll Garner even if he was on the 4th floor and I was on the 3rd ...hahaha...

Don't forget to check out Garner's version, it's awesome, of course!
The Way You Look Tonight - Erroll Garner

Week 1 - 11.27.11

To God be the glory for the great things He has done...

If you've checked out my profile, you read that I am a young father of three young children with a young wife and a young marriage.  All that to say, time is a precious commodity so every week, not every day, I update my practice schedule. Let's get started!

There are four sections to my practice schedule:

Technique
Ear Training
Improvisation
Repertoire

The process is as follows.

1) Select a song you want to learn AND stick with it.  You are more likely to stick with it and learn the song if you like it and want to add it to your bag.  As you learn the song, you are working on training your ear to hear harmonies and melodies.  This is called "transcribing" even if you don't write it down.  You can write it if you want to practice written compositions.  But that would be another blog!!  Our focus is on the ears!!!  It usually takes me 6 days to learn a song of medium difficulty.  (Remember I have a young family)  It may take you more or less but one thing is for sure, the more you do it, the faster you become.

2) Technique - Right now I am using Schaum's Fingerpower Level 4.  Gonna start with the first exercise.  It's designed to work your fingers, especially those unruly ring fingers (wait, is that why that's the finger you put the wedding ring on?)  I will work on that at the beginning of a practice session to warm up the fingers.

3) Improvisation - Once I learn the head and the harmony, then I can work on improvisation.  I start by transcribing the solos from the song I'm learning.  Remember, this is a aural experience.  So many of us have a whole bunch of theory but can only play 'a little bit'.  We are going to leave the books (eyes) out and focus on the ears.  For now let's focus on what sounds good.  We will get into different improv techniques as we progress.

4) Repertoire - Once you've learned the song you selected, you add it to your repertoire, DONE!

That's it!  See, didn't I tell you it was simple.

The specifics for ME:
Technique - Schaums Fingerpower Level 4, #1
Ear Training - 'The Way You Look Tonight' - Frank Sinatra
Improvisation - The song is in Eb
Repertoire - same song by next Saturday

In the beginning...

To God be the glory for the great things He has done


Improvisationer?  Well, with the multitude of blogs on the web now, I had to stretch it a little.  But isn't that what great improvisation is, stretching it just a bit?  If we think about what improvised solos are, they are just spontaneous stretching of an established pattern.  We take some changes and add our interpretations.  Stretch It!  Has anybody figured out what the word for the day is (heh heh in my Pee Wee Herman voice)?  Stretch!  Hopefully, this blog will make you stretch just beyond your comfort zone and try something new or different.  Hopefully you will think about your playing and the playing of others and .... yes ... stretch it just a bit.  Enough with the stretching thing...for now.  Why did I decide on blogging?

Every musician should keep a practice journal, which inherently means you are practicing.  You are practicing, right?  You do have a schedule, right?  Well if you don't, it's never to late to start!  This is my practice journal.  My goal is to share strategies, techniques, tools, tips, and all that other stuff that gets passed on from musician to musician.  I am NOT a professional (yet!)  I am NOT a professor (yet!)  I do NOT have all of the answers or knowledge (ever!).  In fact, if you stick around you will see what I don't have but you will also see what I do have and feel free to share what you have.  We all bring something to the dinner table, even if it's just a fork!  So eat up and don't forget to share your "recipes" and most of all ... Stretch It!!