GRADE 2 CONSOLIDATION WEEK 1
Week Ending Friday 6 September 2024
Target: 7 hours of practice per week (average 1 hour/day). Actual: 10 hours 30 minutes
Practised every day, Daily Min: 90 mins. Daily max: 90 minutes.
The format of this log has changed to reflect the move into Grade 2 consolidation. The focus for the next few months is improvement rather than learning new things so there may not be quite as much detail as previously. I have an offline Learning Log where I will keep up that detail but will likely limit the length of posts here to the key points each week.
Summary Progress and Observations
I’ve set a 90-minute daily practice routine, mapped out in a spreadsheet, with supplementary sessions for Garageband, Ear Training, Singing, and Jam Track play-along (to cover reactive listening). I have recorded the beginning states for each of the practice items in the first week, so I have a basis to refer to and hopefully see improvement as the weeks of consolidation pass. My intention is to compare progress at the end of each month, any more frequent than this probably won’t show up any meaningful progress. The aim is to upload AVOYP at the end of consolidation as part of “graduation”.
I started with the basic categories and subjects suggested by Justin but have already changed some of the items that I can already do quite easily and use the time to work more on things I find harder.
Chords: made a chord pairs chart categorised by the different types. Aim by the end of consolidation is to have 90% above 60/min and 75% above 80/min. Working through assessing my current speeds outside of regular practice as there are 495 chord pair changes to get through. The idea is to whittle the list down to the ‘problem’ children and work on those in consolidation. Progress this week is: 66% above 60/min and 32% above 80/min, so a long way to go yet.
Scales: working on the major and minor pentatonic scales, with alternate picking. Playing each pattern up and down the neck between 1st and 12th frets (1st finger in 9th fret). Tried the tempo at 120 bpm (metronome: 60 bpm) to try and get through 5 minutes error free. Continued to make errors so slowed down to 100 bpm where I can get it right most of the time. Will stick here for a while until comfortable. Minor pentatonic is easier than the major scale so I may up the tempo here first.
Strumming: just working on repetition of the patterns (Old Faithfull, Accent 2&4, Muted Hits, and 12-Bar Blues) along with a metronome at 90 bpm. Focus is on dynamics and consistency and am mostly using muted strings apart from the blues patterns where I use chunka-chunka. The blues in G is a stretch and is challenging to keep up for 5 minutes.
Technique: after initial assessment I’ve dropped some items that I find easy and have reallocated the time to additional sessions for the 4 items that remain (Hammer Ons, String Muting, Alternate Picking, and Fingerstyle Patterns). Starting with the basic fingerstyle patterns from my old JG Intermediate course book (p.158) and taking it slowly. They’re not complicated patterns so just need to practice. Based on what Justin says in his video I may drop the string muting so as not to over-focus on it, and just try to be aware of muting during other practice items. Re-visited the pick angle exercises again and will try this with a simple exercise going up/down the chromatic scale with alternate picking. For the Hammer-Ons I’m just re-visiting the exercise from lesson (Crossroads also requires hammer-ons).
Repertoire: revised these practice slots to be in line with the “10-Step” process. Working on Lay Down Sally, Teenage Dirtbag, and Crossroads (Developer) this week. Mostly tried to get the strumming automated whilst trying to distract myself during practice, and it’s not there yet for any of the songs. Played along to the recordings as fun time as it seems this is going to be a battle for me.
Note Recognition: continued with the Note Trainer app. Average speeds this week for a 3-minute test were: Name the Note: Average of 92 notes this week (Last Week: 89) and Find the Note: Average of 40 sequences of 6 notes this week (Last Week: 39). Started doing both memory quizzes but man, are they hard! I suppose it’s doing some good and reinforcing what I’m learning in the other exercises, so I’ll keep going in the hope it gets better. This is the first week where Name the Note has been above 90 every day.
Beginning Blues Guitar: moved on to learning the song “Muddy A Blues” in a chord/melody style. Working on counting out the rhythm whilst playing. Have each of the 4-bar sections playable and working on stringing the whole thing together whilst counting it.
Garageband: having connectivity issues that are not sorted yet. Can hear the guitar in the interface but can’t get GB to pick up any signal in the software. GB recognises my interface, and I have the channels correctly set, so it’s a bit of a mystery for now.
Singing: I watched the lessons on singing and have included some additional practice to improve my singing – just trying to hit pitch of the C major scale for now.
Other: I’ve downloaded the Blues Jam Tracks volume 1 and will use these outside the formal practice routine to play along to. Had to convert the mp3 files to wav files so the Ditto+ looper can read them but this severely reduces the storage available in the looper as wav files are about 5x the size of mp3’s.