Hi all
As you know I am currently studing here at the school with Jeff. I've had great lessons here with Jeff, always pushing me, but today's absolutely fried my brain. Completely.
It lasted only a few minutes and I have at least a few months work to do - all from a single page, with 4 bars of written music!
It's a Charlie Banacos lesson, but Jeff has added a twist and is making me take these particular lines through all 12 keys and 10 different chord scales (major, minor, dominant 7, m7b5, dim7, aug7, aug maj7, min maj7, lydian7, lydian7 #4).
I'll see you all in a couple of months, I guess....I'll be in the woodshed! Awesome.
Pete can handle the exercise that I gave him. Frankly, it isn't that hard at all, but it requires a bit of attention to practice lots of specific bits of musical perfection. The trick in learning is to practice. Everything whatsoever that you wish to get out of the music that you practice will come to you if you practice everyday. There is no need whatsover, without exception, to memorize anything. Ever! Never! With no exception! Academica doesn't require it and when teachers tell you to memorize your homework, they forgot that memorization is automatically built into whatever it is that you are practicing at that time! The goal is to learn, not memorize. Big difference!
Another thing is to not try and seek out if you have learned anything from your practicing with too much attention on the result. This is not only a bad idea, but it is a frustratingly bad idea because you won't see the improvement in your playing, not until you are organically ready to improve. Then all your work will manifest itself into a steadily improving player. Secondly, some guys practice something today and "get it", but then tomorrow, they play the same music and make mistakes and can't figure out why they didn't repeat the excellence that they exhibited yesterday. The answer is, you weren't supposed to get it today if you didn't get it today. Playing improvement comes when it comes, not when you want it to!
Music never gives up its secrets according to your plan. It gives up the magic that it contains when it is good and ready to show up in your day. Example: one guy found a nugget at Sutter's Mill in 1849, and thousands went broke trying to accomplishg the same thing. Nuggets are really, really hard to find. But, blast the earth out of the ground, grind it up and you can find the gold that is hidden there over a long time of mining in the dirt.
Rock and blues education always produces "one guy" who claims musical success via studying those methods in an academic setting. But, most cannot, and will never make the same claim. Metronomes have helped a guy or two out with their time (I even question THIS number). But, most of you will never find the improvement because time doesn't come from a clicking box. What am I saying? That if you wish to learn, then you have to fry your brain a little bit like Pete Weil is doing. He is from Scotland and this is his third trip back to Florida for some musical academic infusion (when you "want it" as badly as Pete does, then you go after it. Pete is my kind of guy because he wants it and he is working for it.)
Pete's lesson is a simple Charlie Banacos lesson that I innovated. The thing that fried Pete's brain was because he had to think about learning in a new way. The lessons itself is only four bars long. This means that he will learn the same things in a lot of different ways, which is THE BEST way to learn your lessons. There is nothing like learning a specific principle in lots of ways. This supports the learning in narrow, specific methodology. One of the criticisms that I used to get was that I was considered narrow minded. Lucky for my students that I am! They all, 100% have improved by dealing with narrow, specific, non-broad oriented bits of musical perfection. It is really really hard to improve via an "everything works" mentality. If everything actually works, then why do so many players have trouble playing well. Practice "The Good Stuff" and you will, 100% without exception, improve in music. But pay for lessons in slap, rock, blues, and tap, and you will stay exactly where you are because music is not the core of your lessons; finger approach to playing is.
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