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Originally Posted by fep
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04-24-2012 01:14 PM
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Originally Posted by rmsmarr
You're much welcome; I was merely *hoping* it clarified! Sometimes I do more harm than good.
The book was shipped 2nd day Fed Ex from wherever Music Dispatch is in the world. They post no phone number, no physical address, no country of origin, nothing. But I ordered from them once before and remember only that I got the book. So maybe the thing will come today. Maybe not. (They have a fantastic selection of books, but no discounts AT ALL. Sticker price, baby. But that's good marketing - common sense tells them that the people who buy from them couldn't find the book at Amazon, so the market will bear a few more bucks. Smart.
kj
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Originally Posted by fep
i really appreciate this study group!
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Originally Posted by FrankLearns
And, they were all beginners once.
I try not to be too self conscious. I have been stinking up this joint for a long time with lots of recordings and videos. Everyone has been real kind to me and it's really helped me improve.
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Ouch. I've never been very keen on practicing arpeggios. I've now done that for 4 days and I've had an acing hand for two, and then practiced again for a couple of days. I'm not getting very good at this. I look forward to putting this into actual music.
Sorry. I'll go back to the arpeggios. Minor form VII or something this time ...
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Originally Posted by gersdal
I think, if you practice stuff you already are good at, well it may be fun but you aren't really learning that much.
You my friend, you are making progress.
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To give others a chance to get the book delivered, we are spending some extra time on chapter 2 & 3 as others suggested.
So let's come up with and record variations of the arpeggio exercises.
Some of you have mentioned some variations on these arpeggios. Including that really difficult one that Jeff mentioned.
After getting the arpeggios under your fingers the way Joe describes, here's several other ways to practice them. I think this is a good graduated approach and should be the second step.
I think this is a good way to practice in that it 1) works on keeping track of the measures and 2) it randomizes which note you have to switch arpeggios on.
I did a video of my variations.
If you don't want to listen all the way through each exercise, exercise 2 starts at 1:20; exercise 3 starts at 2:07, exercise 4 starts at 3:10, exercise 5 starts at 4:03, exercise 6 starts at 4:45.
I realize I recorded some? of these exercises too long.
I need to practice all of these to get fluent. But there are two of them that I need extra practice on.
Last edited by fep; 04-28-2012 at 10:00 PM.
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Thanks all for hipping me to this cool book. Not to rub it in but mine came pretty quickly in the UK
Hey fep that last video is brilliant and I like the idea about the different time sigs to vary the connections. In your jpg, your A7 arpeggio goes too low imho to the third fret. This takes it out of position, I prefer to stop at the root, same as in the book. If you stop and turn round at the root note, the exercise actually doesn't start to loop yet when you get to the end so it might be worth exploring? I only mention it to help and not to criticize in any way. I've spent a long time practising this stuff and wondering how to avoid getting trapped in a loop.
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Originally Posted by Rickh
I just looked at the book and you are right about the A7 arpeggio and that makes it so it won't loop until 7 or 8 repetitions if my logic is correct.
That's funny about the A7, for some reason I thought I saw it with the extra note. I've spent time learning arpeggios before this book and then on my first pass halfway through the book, maybe because of that I don't study those fingerings enough.
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Here's a recording (videos soon) of just the major arpeggios out of fingering pattern #1. I didn't try to hang to a strict rhythm (getting the notes right is hard enough!) But at least it's an upload.
John Abercrombie said he hated hearing scales played "da-da-da-da-da-da" - and he played them rubato, with all sorts of weird accents. I didn't get as far out as that, but I'll share these in the spirit of JA. A bit different. Elliot wouldn't like it - sorry Joe.
Now the rest of you - come on! Upload - play. The minor arpeggios up next.
Arpeggios in F_ElliotGroup.mp3 - File Shared from Box - Free Online File Storage
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By the way, how are you guys doing toward getting the arpeggios to sound fluent and in time and all that?
I ask because I *thought* I had it down pretty well -- but NOOOO... this is what quitting for 18 years will do for you! When I quit playing, I could just about handle the arpeggios in about eight of the Leavitt fingerings. But I hadn't practiced enough, apparently, to ingrain it into long-term muscle memory. Some of the arpeggios I can seemingly do in my sleep, while just as many cause me foul-ups, and I have to stop and think.
From the looks of it, I'm going to be at this stage right here for a while, especially if we're talking about learning all the arpeggios from all the fingerings! Whoa! If we can go forward after becoming fluent with this Pattern One, only... then I'll try.
How about y'all?
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Originally Posted by Kojo27
For the majors I'm doing the shapes I, II, III and IV and for the minors I'm doing II, III, IV and V. From experience I very seldome use the D form of the CAGED system, and hence the major V form and minor I form is put on hold.
I tend to play the minor arpeggios over the Autumn Leaves progression for variation. It feels a little more like making music...Last edited by gersdal; 04-30-2012 at 03:22 AM.
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I just practiced it again this morning. I am sort of ok at 110 bpm playing the arpeggios in all five positions starting from the root note (don't know what system i'm using - if any at all - as my fingerings are "homemade") - but I still make mistakes and occasionally screw up. Another few days of daily practice and I suppose I'm ok to move on.
In preparing for future video uploads within the realm of the study group I am trying to figure out how to record with my Mac. Currently my thinking is to load the backing track into Garageband, feed the guitar via a microphone and an audio interface to Garageband as well. Record the video simultaneously with Photo Booth and take that into Garageband as well. Then it needs to be manually synchronized because one can't start Photo Booth and Grageband recording simultaneously (right?) and export the entire thing to iMovie for final editing - so this is a bit of an elaborate and awkward procedure. Isn't there a simpler way to simultaneously record audio with a backing track and video? (sure ... use a built-in mic from a webcam but that tends to sounds bad). How do you guys do that?
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I'll try to post something on this in about a week or so*. I think I can make my way through Pattern I without too much trouble for both the major and minor versions, but as I've mentioned before, I'm also trying to incorporate the other patterns into my practice daily, and some of those are a bit of a bear. So maybe I'll just post a Pattern I recording, then see if it makes sense to do a video showing what I'm up to with the other patterns.
*(Very close to finishing up school, but I need to go out with a bang. Turning in a paper today comparing performances of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez by John Williams, with the version on Miles Davis / Gil Evans on Sketches of Spain. I have a Wayne Shorter transcription to hand in and perform Thursday, and my last final is Saturday night.)
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Originally Posted by Kojo27
I'm so glad you recorded this, I was starting to feel like the oddball around here.
Like I've said before, I really feel you'll get much more out of this study group if you post recordings.
Originally Posted by Kojo27
and... Like I've said before, I really feel you'll get much more out of this study group if you post recordings.
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Originally Posted by gersdal
How about a recording? (Sorry, I know I'm a bit of a broken record.
Originally Posted by FatJeff
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Originally Posted by Kojo27
I'd better just be honest -- actually, I did try to hang to a strict rhythm, but kept screwing up, and as frustration built and time ran out, I thought of Abercrombie.
Now I can hang with the metronome about 33% of the time. It's amazing how much harder it is to play the 7 arpeggios in a fingering like this, than it is to play just one given arpeggio.
"Play a Gm7 arpeggio."
"Okay, bam."
"Now play all 7 arpeggios in pattern one fingering."
"Okay. Do what!??"
kj
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Originally Posted by Kojo27
Also - learning the arps this way is tough for me because I am so "root-as-the-low-note" dependent. While I know I'm playing the ii7 arp pattern, I'm not sure (yet) what chord I'm actually playing. I have to think about it.
But hey - that's why I'm in the group. Always learning.
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Hi Fep,
here is a recording of my pathetic attempts at these arpeggios. It is only an audio.
I figured out how to to the video (thanks again!) but i made too many mistakes :-( So this audio is pieced together From five separate takes, one for each position. Admittedly some of these positions took a few trials before it was kind of ok - there still mistakes, inconsistencies, timing issues etc but I figured I should get over myself and finally start posting. If I'm perfectly honest, I haven't managed so far to get through all five positions consecutively without screwing up somewhere.
I don't know about you guys, but I have a much easier time when i don't have to play straight eight notes because it leaves me with the little time I still need to organize my thinking of which one comes next. I guess at the end of the day it all got to be fully automatic but it hasn't happened yet.
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So, I'm making progress on the major arps using Pattern 1, but I'm nowhere near grabbing them clean and "at speed." I'm thinking getting all patterns dialed-in will take me a lifetime.
Also - while I continue working with these arps, I realize I don't always know what chord I'm actually playing...it was just another shape. This scared me - I'm afraid I won't be able to grab one of these arps in context and only in the sequence I've been practicing them.
So I started saying the chord names aloud as a played each arp. This seems to be helping.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
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Originally Posted by onetruevibe
What I've been doing to try to subvert thee tendencies is to pick a fret position on the neck (e.g. 5), and use that as my "base" as I work all the possible shapes from that area. So, assuming I'm doing the diatonic major exercise, I might first use my middle finger on the 5th fret as "home," and work Amaj7-Bm7-C#m7-Dmaj7-Em7-F#m7-Gm7b5-Amaj7 from there. Then, staying within the vicinity of the 5th fret, I move the "root" of the exercise to the 7th fret (B), and go off that fret with my pinky. So now I work Bmaj7-C#m7-D#m7-Emaj7-F#m7-G#m7-A#m7b5-Bmaj7 from that position. Next I move the "root" of the exercise to the A string, the 5th fret (D, middle finger), then to the A string 7th fret (E, pinky), then finally to the D string 5th fret (G, middle finger). In that way, I've covered what I think are all 5 positions in one area of the fretboard. There is a little bit of shifting required to accommodate all the notes but I stay within the general vicinity of the 5th fret. This is like the idea Jimmy Bruno talks about on his site of using the "front" and "back" of the hands to base runs off of.
The specific thing I'm doing to get me away from thinking about starting on the root during this exercise, is to start as far down as I can within the chord-of-the-moment on the low E string, and as high as I can on the high E string. So, let's say for the sake of example I'm doing the one with the "root" of the exercise on the 7th fret of the A string (E, using my pinky). This is position 1 as Elliot would call it, right? So instead of starting my exercise on E, I would start it on the 4th fret of the low E string (G#, the 3rd of Emaj7, using my index finger). This not only frees me from having to put my hand into another position to accommodate Position 1 in the key of E, but it also frees my mind and ears from having to hear a maj7 arp from the root. Instead, I ascend from the 3rd. And, I'm training myself to recognize diatonic intervals in various places on the fretboard. My brain sees the E on the 7th fret of the A string, and I then say to myself "Ah! I can reach the 3rd of E, a minor 6th below it, on the next string down."
I anticipate that this methodology of recognizing intervals is going to eventually allow me to accommodate other "flavors" of chords (e.g. dom7#11, min-maj7, etc), and will become a natural stepping stone into chord-scale playing, which is something I want to get into at some point in the not-too-distant future. If I can recognize all the intervals of the chord tones, then filling in between them (and thereby realizing a full scale) should not be too difficult.
I don't have any idea if this makes sense to anyone else.
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Hey fep, I'm back in town and I got my book, so I'm going to be catching up to you guys soon. Are you planning on one chapter per week? What is the pace? Maybe you said somewhere else. If so, sorry to ask again.
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Slow going on the arp practice for me too, although I've already started looking ahead at some of the situational playing, to mix it up a bit. Right now I'm also in two new bands, learning a lot of music, so my time for other study is pretty tight. Nonetheless, I've been going through the arp practice as much as possible. I'll definitely post some tracks at some point.
things I've learned:
I'm stronger in the natural major than the natural minor.
Although I'm getting better at it, like Jeff mentioned, my habit is also to practice arps starting on the root and going to the root (whether that be one, two, or three octaves). I'm trying to break that bias.
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Originally Posted by FatJeff
Originally Posted by FatJeff
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Originally Posted by gersdal
MPV Imaj7 arp - starting on the third string
MPIV iim7 arp - missing the b7 on the 6th string.
That being said, these worksheets are very helpful! I made a few of my own with the same idea of diatonic arps in position. Here are my notes.
Used Ibanez AF 207 7-string archtop
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