2023-02-07
Despite having some days off of work at the end of December during the holidays, my practice was not as frequent as I expected. Once January started, I was able to go back to my regular practice, weekend 1 hour sessions mostly dedicated to Level 9 exercises with some songs at the end, and four weekday evening 15 minute short practice sessions dedicated to the songs I’m working on.
I’ve been able to find a spot Friday evenings for JUSTIN ear training exercises. I’m growing more confident of what I’m hearing and I expect that in a few sessions I could be as sure of the answers to S2 exercises as I was with the answers to S1 exercises when I verified them. I think Justin has a revamped version of ear training but it won’t hurt doing the old exercises and later the new ones.
In January I started reserving the last weekend of the month for repertoire maintenance, extra work on the songs I’m working on, and exploration. I liked having this songs only weekend.
Yellow Submarine is going well. There is rough spot between Verse 2 and chorus that needs to be improved. Once I have that smoothed I can attempt to play and sing verses 1 and 2, and chorus following the backing track and later add progressively the other sections. Now that I’m getting closer where I want to be, I am practicing the chord sequence of the two first verses and chorus one time for warmup; three times that chord sequence while following the backing track; five times the end of verse 2 and the start of the chorus playing and singing; and one time playing and singing both verses and the chorus without the backing track.
The first twelve bars of Asturias are improving. At least once in a practice session it sounds good but I cannot play it well consistently. I’m still stumbling with some bars. I will practice sets of 3 bars in addition to the whole 12 bars to work on that. I’m feeling almost ready for posting it in the AVYOP section.
With Habanera I’m less doubtful about the notes and being able to put some more attention to the expression and timing. I’m practicing the combined hammer-ons and pull-offs first; next what I call the second phrases that include the hammer-ons and pull-offs; and last the whole fragment with metronome.
Although confirmation is still due next week, I’m already practicing the song I’m planning to play and sing for the JG Open Mic XIV. Luckily I started early as it is proving more challenging that I forecasted. This time I went with purchasing sheet music for the song. With the purchased sheet music I also got the possibility of playing a practice track with an app. I may use the practice track as my backing track; not decided on that yet. For now practicing the rhythm pattern at 60% speed and the singing at 100%.
Edit: I corrected that I bought sheet music for the song I’m practicing for the open mic and not a tab as I had written. The sheet music indicates only the chords for the guitar part and does not provide any other information about fretting and rhythm than a tab would do. The sheet music works for me in this case.