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Great! Well read!
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Here's something to think about. Suppose you had to play this really, really fast. Would you start at the 7th fret (or position) and play the G on the A string, 10th fret? If you did, you'd have some potentially awkward pick movement.
If, instead, you played the G on the D string with your index finger and then the D on the G string with your third finger or pinkie, you could then drop to the 4th position for the B.
Thinking ahead, you could avoid a string skip on the C to A, if you could play both C and A on the G string.
So, here's the idea. Consider playing the B with your index finger and the C - one fret higher - with your pinkie. That position shift can be done very quickly. It seems strange at first, but it's a good way to avoid potentially awkward picking.
This sort of move may be more relevant to the alternate picker than the sweep picker.
I bring it up because getting stuff up to high speed is based on solving this kind of problem. When you're soloing you can just avoid this sort of thing, but when you're reading a line, and it's hard to play, this is the kind of thing you think about.
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10-23-2024 11:22 PM
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feels good to be back on track.
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Please let me know if this feedback is unwelcome. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
feels good to be back on track.
You're playing some of the downbeat notes too soon.
It swings better your way but it's not exactly what's on the page.
If this doesn't make sense, try slowing it down, tapping your foot and making sure your toe is hitting the floor with the downbeat notes.
Or, I'm wrong.
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No you're right, I just played it again tapping my foot and I wasn't following the sheet. Next one will be better.
I appreciate the feedback, I don't want to put a years effort into this and come out still illiterate, but in a different way.
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I went through the book at around age 15 with my teacher.
I found out that I wasn't reading the lines fully accurately around age 50 when I started playing horn band arrangements in an octet. Sometimes, the guitar would have a line to play with the horns. The horns would melt together into one big note (chord, really) and I could hear the guitar around the edges -- I was starting too early or releasing too late. I also had to learn to read articulation symbols -- which Colin/Bower doesn't get into.
I think that a mostly unspoken advantage to being really precise in your practice is that it makes it easier to have faith in the paper and not wait to hear what everybody else is doing -- which makes you late. Or so it has seemed to me.
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This was like pulling teeth today. I was not feeling it at all.
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Might help if you rephrase the rhythms so they are easier to count, for example:
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Mick is right about that I think, and it’s a good idea to get used to reading things that are not well written.
Typically, in 4/4, beat 3 will be shown explicitly. It may be a note tied to the note before. But it won’t often simply be in the middle of a quarter note or something like that. That is widely considered bad practice.
That’s because it’s in the middle of the bar. It isn’t usually done on beats two and four.
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you got most of it. Rushed beat 3 a couple times. That’s one that might be easier to play faster. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
This was like pulling teeth today. I was not feeling it at all.
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I tried faster but I kept mixing my notes up. I easily spent a half hour on this last night. I think the stress is getting to me.
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Sorry to hear about the stress. Seems to me that your reading is coming along nicely.
In music, and probably a lot of other endeavors, if you can handle the blows to your self-esteem, even if self-inflicted, you improve faster.
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Thanks for the kind words.
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Nailed it.
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Thanks, things felt smoother on this one. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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recheck bars 4 and 8. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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This one’s killing me, they’re too similar and I keep repeating one or the other. The rhythm in bar 1 vs 2.
I lost my whole practice time to 8 bars I’m absolutely not going to play on Fridays gig.
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en Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I'm not sure how to help with that. The only thing that comes to mind is to fixate on tapping your foot -- and the arrows.
As one drummer said to me once, "it's all downs and ups". Since there aren't any triplets in these exercises (yet) your toe is either all the way down or all the way up for every note.
Since you're playing the right notes, you can practice this away from the guitar.
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Yeah, that was mostly just a vent. I tried to push through when I should have taken a break and came back to it later.
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I don't know if this would be at all helpful, but it occurred to me you could set a metronome app to click eighth notes. Set downbeats to be one sound and upbeats (the "ands") to be a different sound. Then start it dead slow so that it isn't all a blur. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
A lot of players think a half bar at a time, which is one reason why it's so important to have the 3rd beat shown explicitly, even when it's a tied note that isn't played.
You can set the metronome to play quietly enough that, when you've nailed the note, it completely drowns out the metronome.
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That's a good idea. I was trying to tap my right foot for the beat and the left on the ands. It was just more confusing.
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Right. And after you're a good reader, some leader will hand you an Ipad with a bluetooth page turn pedal -- and you'll be glad you don't need both feet for counting! Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I sometimes tap eighth notes to figure out a difficult passage. But, if I had to do it with alternating feet, I'd probably take up golf and give up music.
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