Today's practice - week of June 2

Charlie Christian's "Solo Flight"... C C was the one of the first jazz guitarists and his stuff still souns good. The solo is easy, melodic and has some unusual lines cuz CC liked to cover a lot of distance in his lines.

 

I'm practicing the Root 5th octave pattern. It seems like many songs I play make that move or rather, it's a sound I enjoy doing on some songs. Also using the ring finger on the 5th, and then pinky on the octave has always been tricky for me, even more so on the lower strings.

So the routine would look like this...

G------------------------------3-----------3--
D----------------3----------3---3-------1---1
A --- 3--------3---3-----1--------1----------
E --3--3-----1------1-------------------------
B 1------1-------------------------------------

I'll then move up one fret on the B string and do the same thing. My challenge is to not get buzzing from my ring finger when I hit that 5th, and to do it quickly and cleanly.

 

I dedicate at least a half an hour a day of my practice time to theory study. I do this by working on a key a week. For instance, this week (ending today for me) has been 6 flats -- Gb Major and Eb minor. Over the course of the week I work on things such as scales (1 & 2 octave), note names within the scales and where they are located on the fingerboard, arpeggios (fully extended), fingerings, modes, chord progressions in the key, fills, soloing, etc.

1. I find that working on a key a week doesn't rush me and greatly reinforces my memory process.

2. It keeps me fluent in theory and chord construction principles.

3. Works wonders for knowing the notes on the fingerboard.

4. Keeps the fingers working well.

 

I've been working on scales, arpeggios and sort of just getting familiar with my new to me 5 string fretless. Like, just learning the neck , the different width and radius of the fretboard and of the back of the neck. The different voice that it has. My intonation on it hasn't been as good as I'd have liked though, so thats been A h u g e focus and just getting a feel for what is where.
Because of some of this, I started really having to dig into the setup on this bass and learning it when the realization hit me that I didn't just learn intonation and what stuff sounded like on my 4 string fretless but I got to be very good at knowing where I was on the bass with how the neck felt.

So getting out of some of these habits and trying to build better ones has been a huge part of my focus when I practice these days.

 

Today's practice includes a hour with the metronome and sight reading from Ron Velosky's book and Jim Stinnets' book. After that it's learning at least one more song from Mama Mia.

 

Most recently started working on transcribing "The Real Me" by the Who for a rock band project. Entwistle definitely played around on that one. Plenty of movement, for sure, but that makes it all the more fun to learn/play.