It’s almost september and I know I “should” be doing a long updated report on the state of my practice and musical life in general … but I won’t! Generally, september brings me to re-consider the whole (“big picture”) of my life. But now …
It’s been three weeks since I updated this blog … I’m very busy and very happy doing what I do!
As always, I spend most of my precious hours doing this :
I’m getting better and better at this “self discipline” thing where I put a definite amount of work on each individual task when I’m home. (Say : practice, website and composition)
But that is all “old stuff”, let’s look at what changed since Montreal Jazz Festival ended.
.
Updated Practice Routine
I’ve re-assessed my guitar abilities (weaknesses/strengths) after (more…)
Still in a very good musical phase theses days : I’m practicing, playing sessions, composing, rehearsing and putting hours into this new project (Waï Trio). Here are the news…
.
On the practicing level :
In general, I’m trying to make my playing/practicing evolve around (more…)
I’m in such a great musical phase right now!
It may not look or feel like it from an outside point of view (since I’m not blogging religiously about every detail of my practice…) but I’m doing great.
To make a long story short : (more…)
It’s been a long while (more than a week) since I posted anything here. I must apologize to my regular readers and subscribers. On the bright side: It is NOT some kind of discouragement or lack of interest in practicing. I’m spending more time than ever with my instrument these days, here’s why…
I had to give myself a break: some kind of “reset” where I would not feel obliged to (more…)
Still practicing a lot of the choir tunes today … Here’s what I practiced “for me”, on the jazzier side of things :
.
At night : Badminton + teaching.
A big day of hard work today :
Picture this : waking up at 7 AM and digging right into it, take 3-4 meal breaks… and going to bed at 11 PM with only about an hour of winding down in the evening. Quite the day!
.
Pop tunes for choir
I can play most of them now with the recordings. I looked at the charts for keys and specific arrangement… it’s all good. If I give myself another 2-3 hours, I’ll be ready “enough”. Things always change at the dress rehearsal anyways… (example : I spent time on a tune the nail it, then the choir director says : “ok, no guitar on that tune”… you know…)
.
Practicing “for me”
(which is the bulk of my practicing)
The only thing I wished I had practiced today was the “triad pairs” concept… time was lacking though.
.
Session : reading original pieces
As part of this new project that should be 8 months long (May to December), we will be writing and rehearsing many original tunes. Today was the first of the “Lundis Inédits” (or “Unreleased Mondays”, which is a lousy translation…)
The new project itself is divided between the band (nammed Waï; which is a guitar trio) and this weekly monday session with rotating personnel.
The basic idea of the “Lundis Inédits” is different musicians each week (4 or 5) each bringing a few of their tunes to play. It’s great for us because we take the time to work on and make suggestions on each other’s tunes…
Today’s first weekly monday was a success : we played 4-5 of my tunes, 4 of the bassist’s tune and 3 of the saxophonist’s.
Personnel :
Dalhi Gonthier – Sax
Joel Ker – Bass
Pierre Haché – Drums
Yours Truly – Guitar
I’ll probably be recording and uploading clips of the “Lundis Inédits” in the future. Stay tuned for the Wai website and other infos!
Wow. Accomplished many, many small things today…
Here’s the practice side of it :
Warming up to C major scale :
Triad coupling :
Exploring new sounds :
I recently got a Gary Campbell book called “Expansions”. In it, he describes way to use different/new scales than the few common ones. So I worked on two different pentatonics that are unfamiliar to me. Also a few patterns in the major scale… and also some awkward stuff with augmented, diminished scales, triads, etc.
I like that. I’ll surely find some new patterns to warmup to everyday. I was starting to get tired of the old “play the scale in ascending thirds…” kind of warmups.
All I had the time to practice today is triad pairs : all keys, in triplets, ascending 3-note triads, metronome @ 50. It felt good…
Outside of that, I played badminton, taught a lesson and attended a live comedy show (André Sauvé; the ticket was a birthday gift).
.
I also filmed myself practicing VERY up tempos on Ab Blues and watched the resulting videos. I made a blog post to explain what I’m doing (using metronome as “quarter time”) and I posted the video on YouTube here.
.
I’m still playing through a Polytone Mini-Brute amp : I’m trying it out to see if I like it enough to buy… Still not sure. It’s bassy… I used it for practice, trio session and a duo gig and I’m still not convinced. It’s almost like my gold old Roland JC-50, in a smaller box… and with gain control.
We’ll see…
Another friend of mine offered to sell me his AER Compact 60 … more trial/error in the next few weeks!
.
Back to practice…
So, the triad pair F G would go something like this :
I’ll try to work on “all descending” soon… and then “up and down” and “down and up” versions of the same idea. I’m not worrying too much about applications right now… it will come soon enough. (and I know there are plenty of ways to use triads musically)
And then, of course, I will do the 4-note arpeggios of the same triads. F and G major for example :
.
next, I practiced a little on Up Jumped Spring to realize I had no more “practice juice” in me. In proceeded to build the Ed Bickert page for JazzGuitarLessons.net (at last!) I took me until bedtime to finish it!
