farmduck 2011-03-01 - 6:11am
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I just signed up for lessons

At least I think I did. God I hope I haven't signed up for "lesions"

 

The jazzguitar.be site has just started "Premium" lessons at $US19.97 for 12 weeks. I get so stale in my playing that I seem to be "one step forward, two steps back" all the time. I just thought this might motivate me a bit more.

 

I think one reason for feeling the lack of progress is that I listen to, and aspire to play, harder stuff all the time. When I was 16 there was a guy in my scholl who could play the flashest riffs you've ever heard. I ran into him again when I was 21 and he hadn't progressed at all - he could still nail 2 or 3 blues riffs, and that was all.

 

I think we are nearly always our own harshest critics. We think we constantly fluff a piece and forget that, 5 years ago, we wouldn't have even tried to play that piece. When I was 17 I spent ages trying to learn the Clapton solo on Strange Brew - even slowed down the record player and all. These days I could knock that over with both eyes closed and learn the whole thing in less than 10 minutes.

 

I'll give you progress reports on the lessons. The first one is Four on Six, by Wes Montgomery.

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the_wylde_one 2011-03-01 - 11:06pm

Four on Six... nice.

 

I love Wes.  When I took lessons years ago, I learned his version of Summertime.  While my teacher and I regularly jammed the song with just the head melody and chord progression, at one point I took to learning the solos in the recording I had in an attempt to expand my musical vocabulary. 

 

While I seldom replicated the complete solos when my teacher and I jammed on the song, usually there was at least part of Wes's solo incorporated into my improv work and eventually I started to see the licks that really caught my ear coming out in other stuff I was playing...particularly my own material.  This was especially the case in the stuff I usually improvised on, but even when I worked out a solo that was played the same all the time the jazz stuff came through at some point. 

 

Oddly enough, when I constructed solos there was usually alternate solos where I swapped out certain parts.  This was partially that I couldn't decide which part I liked better and partially that I was trying to keep things interesting for myself.

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jobabrinks 2011-03-04 - 7:37pm

I rarely push myself these days.

 

When I play, I play to get songs down.  In other words, I mostly play instead of practicing.

 

I used to practice an hour of sight reading, an hour of scales, etc, etc.

 

But I'm no longer in a position where I play with others and need to improve that stuff.

 

It's pretty hard to motivate yourself to get on top of that stuff if you're not playing with others or aiming to.

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farmduck 2011-03-05 - 7:01am

Joba, you could try the Standard Practical Group.  http://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/jazzguitar-lessons/13908-standard-practical-group-joy-spring-2.html#post128507

 

They have a poll to pick a song then each person does their own harmonic and structural analysis, then posts their version. They're doing Joy Spring now, and the last one was Bright Size Life.

 

I can't work on exercises at all - it bores the crap out of me. But I like working on tunes, where you still end up learning and progressing. I'm also trying to transcribe "Eddie's Twister" by Eddie Lang, from 1927. A guy is starting up an Eddie Lang site and was trying to get as many transcriptions as possible. It's an easy song but the discipline of having to write it out is great practice.

This guy nails it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNOviduA4Ss&feature=related

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