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