Introduction
Section A - My main instrument is guitar however I sometimes play bass in group performances. I have been playing guitar since I was around 7 however i didn't really start practising properly until a few years ago. The guitar will be the focus of my blog and three solos. i am around grade 6ish level however i have never taken grades so I have no idea. Some pieces i have learned recently are White Dove by Dorje and Paranoid android by Radiohead. I have played in two bands, one for 3 years. we practice every Monday at a practice studio and gig every month or two. So i have quite a lot of experience playing in a standard band setup (guitar, bass, drums and singer). My theory is limited because i only really know chord, some inversions and pentatonic and major scales. some weaknesses I have are that i cant read music which is a pretty big one. Also I have not got much experience playing solo and this gets me quite worried. My improvising is good around the pentatonic in most keys i can also improvise over blues and jazz.
Section B - I believe the key to getting better at an guitar is realising that there is a difference between playing and practising. At the moment my practice is pretty irregular I can go from practising for a few hour one day then only do half an hour of playing the next. although i do play every single day i don't really practice every day. A typical day's practice structure is i will start with some improv pentatonic runs and licks. then move on to playing the songs we are writing in the band then i will move on to whatever piece i am working on. this does not work very well because it is not consistent so the level of improvement can be very different from on week to the next. I should probably develop some kind of structure so that my practice is more efficient however iv been telling my self this for all of last year so i can guaranty anythings going to change. The difference between playing and practising is that playing is hen you play stuff you already know and can play well however practising is when you learn something new or challenging or you focus on something you cant do quite as well.
Effective Rehearsal Practice Routine
In a normal practice routine, to be most efficient i will normally open with some stretches and warm up spider exercises. This includes some on note per fret chromatic scales. This helps warm up the fingers and also improves the syncopation between the left and right hand. I also helps with dexterity although they are not actually useful scales they are just easy warm ups. Once warmed up i will normally move onto some basic chords and also major and minor scales. This helps to co ordinate all my fingers and is also part of the warm up. although it is more useful than the spider exercises because it can be used in an actual song so it can be implemented into your playing.
Next I will move in to start practising the song i am working on, currently it is satch boogie which is a song off the album surfing with the aliens. I am really trying to challenge myself with the because it is a pretty difficult one being grade 7. I can already do the intro section but it needs some cleaning up. there is some very fast hammer on and pull offs which i struggle to get clean every time. to improve on this i will isolate the section hat I'm finding difficult and slow it way down to a more reasonable level. This helps massively because you can think much more about the note you are going to play before you play it. When you are doing this you will slowly build up the muscle memory and be able to play it faster.
Then i will do some hybrid picking and sweep picking scales because this is something i need to improve on. there are a few sweep major and minor scales i have learned to practice and i will just run threw them very quickly for five or ten minuets. This just helps to keep the muscle memory because the scales are pentatonic based they can come in pretty useful in solos. improvised blues.
If I am practising for a with a band there is normally no time for a solo warm up of any spider exercises of anything like that. It is more likely to be just go straight in with a bit of a jam or song we are more comfortable with in order to sound check our levels and warm up. Also, for some reason it normally takes at least one song for the band to get into the vibe of it. To me everything always sounds quite disjointed for the first minuet or two of a practise, doesn't take long to get into it though.
After everyone is happy with how we sound we will run through the set list at least ones then discuss and practice any sections that didn't go right or if there is anything we want to change.
The Practice Log
Post 1 - Today I have started to actually apply the practice routine starting with some basic warm up exercises like spider exercises and scales. This helps to warm up your fingers and helps improve basic dexterity. I run through major and minor sweeps and also pentatonic runs, which i'm fairly comfortable with. I then moved on to spend around an hour practising this neo classical scale that i have been working on for a few days. the tapped parts at the end which extend the scale are a bit of a challenge because I don't do alot of tapping, however to practice this I isolated that small section and practised it over quite a few times in order to gain the muscle memory. Not going to lie it is still quite messy but with some more practice i could get it alot more clean.
Neo Classical scales - https://youtu.be/mXgCCuICaiQ
Finally I learned the start section of supersonic which is the song we're playing in class so that i ca do the start bit with Jame. Its fairly easy and didn't take much time to nail as its pretty much just individually picking three chords.
Post 2 - Just practised for two hours with my band “Children of the Forest” at ivy arch studios. We spent the session writing a new song and practising our cover of “They speak with strange accents” by This Town Needs Guns (which is my favourite song at the moment). After getting home i practice playing the intro riff to they "speak with strange accents" because it is quite hard. The song in the genre of math rock so there were quite a few unusual time signatures. For example there is a section in 5/8 and one really strange bit which is in a 15 or something like that. We also played an easy song by the strokes.
After coming home I practised for another half an hour for college the next morning. We are playing a cover of oasis which is pretty easy and does not take vary much practice because its oasis so its not going to be anything too impressive. Although it is worth running through a few times to make sure I can play it right through. I ran over the changeovers and and chord patterns to make sure it felt smooth and I could remember it of tomorrow.
Later that day started to actually apply the practice routine starting with some basic warm up exercises like spider exercises and scales. This helps to warm up your fingers and helps improve basic dexterity. I run through major and minor sweeps and also pentatonic runs, which i'm fairly comfortable with.I then moved on to spend around an hour practising this neo classical scale that i have been working on for a few days. the tapped parts at the end which extend the scale are a bit of a challenge because I don't do a lot of tapping, however to practice this I isolated that small section and practised it over quite a few times in order to gain the muscle memory. Not going to lie it is still quite messy but with some more practice i could get it a lot more clean.
Post 3 - I start my practice with some spider exercises for the first 5 minutes to warm up Then move on to practising my sweep picking in order to improve speed. Next i start learning the song “puddle” by Chon and spend around an hour learning the intro and and verse. This is a difficult song to play because of the fast and intricate picking part at the start. Also the unusual jazz style chords that it leads into. Finally I continue practising a composition on acoustic guitar that I have been writing for guitar for around a month. This Is because I will be performing it in my 15 minuet recital.
Post 4 - In our music lesson today we carried on practising our cover of supersonic to improve I need to improve my dexterity on the bass in order to play a more complex rhythm and get a higher mark. Also I have to think of a slightly better bass melody for the chorus because the one i am playing at the moment is very simple. In my own practices i started to learn many of honour by Biffy Cliro. I is a finger picking style and is fairly easy however the picking pattern is fairly unusual and was the most difficult part to get the hang of. Then I started practising some improvised guitar solos to backing tracks. i stayed inside the pentatonic scale however added some Dorian notes to make my solo more interesting and make it a slightly different style. this helps me to improve my improvisation and it makes me more aware of the different techniques available to me when I'm improvising. I still need to continue with with in order to make my playing more fluent and natural.
Post 6 - Like all of my practices I open with some warm ups and scales to get me going. Then move on to doing some practice and playing of stuff I can already play comfortably.
Review of Solo One
For my solo I played "white dove" by Dorje as a solo. I found this one quite hard in places because there are some difficult sections in it but over all its the main sections of the song are quite easy for me and that in why I choose it. The most difficult part is a fast hammer on run in one of the verses and it comes up twice in the song on the first time round I choked and messed it up, but on the second time round i got it perfectly. To improve on this i should have isolated that section of the song and done more rehearsal on it. This would have been good because doing it on repeat would have got the muscle memory and could have been more consistent.
The other hard part about this song is the section with the different time signature, This is no too bad for me as my band experiments with unusual time signatures quite often however the rhythm is a bit hard to figure out which I think is what trips me up sometimes. To improve on this i should listen to the song more so I know the feel of it better. Over all I think I was pretty consistent which was what I was expecting because of the amount of practice i put in.
The video is up on the blog in my video page.
Review of first blog post
In the first post I talked about how I wanted to make my practising more regular and I needed some sort of structure which has definitely started to happen because I now start every practice with a warm up and I also have a much more consistent time to practice. I have also started to regularly practice for longer mounts of time in one run. A normal practice will now last between 1 to 2 hours now which is much better than the previous half hour. I still haven't tried to take any guitar grades yet however i did manage to play some grade 7 pieces which i'm pretty happy with.
Plan For 25 minuet Performance
For my 25 minuet performances I will be playing 6 songs. The first song I am going to play for the performance is "morning star" by Phillip Sayce. It is a blues rock song which will probably be the hardest one because there are some pretty hairy licks and solo sections. Phillip Sayce is a bit of a Hendrix/Stevie ray Vaughan wannabe so that is the style of the song using blues and Hendrix substituted chords. The second song I am going to play is "paranoid android" by Radiohead it is supposed to be a grade 7 however I don't think its as difficult as that because I can play it already. The song is an Indy, math style and has an interesting mix of open and bar chords combined together. Next I will play Anna Molly by Incubus. The next song I am going to play is one that I wrote for acoustic guitar. It is a finger picking style song called first snow which I have been writing for a few months.
I want the performance to look and feel like there is quite a lot of technical ability and also there should be some amount of energy because all the songs have an up beat feel and vibe to them. I normally just stand still when I play but I am going to try moving around a little so that the performance is a bit more interesting.
Plan (Update)
I have more recently decided to change out 2 of the 6 songs. I am changing up the set because I am lacking consistency when I practice because all 4 songs are fairly complex. I think I should try and play something a bit easier than paranoid android. I can play it fairly well however the consistency is not there and this is important due to it being a live performance If I had a little more time I could probably nail it but instead I am going to play "message in a bottle" by the police. Its not an easy song by any means however it Is less complex and it will give me a bit of a brake in the set. I am also swapping out morning star with a number called under cover of darkness because I already can play it all the way through. Also I have a backing track for it.
Final Set list
- Message in a Bottle
- Anna Molly
- Under Cover of Darkness
- First Snow
- Snap out of it
- 15 step
Equipment needed
Equipment needed
- Guitar
- Amplifier
- Lead
- Pick
- Strap
- PA
- Backing tracks
- Set list
Rehearsing
Seeing as its a solo performance to a backing track, I don't need to arrange times to meet other people. This is good because I can just practice at any opportunity I get the chance to. I will try to run through this every day with my normal practice
Dress Rehearsal
The dress rehearsal is going to be the morning before the gig This is good because it means we can set up in the morning and then leave everything in place for the evening. It will allow us to iron out any problems that we may encounter.
Final Performance Tracks
Evaluation
In my opinion the performance went really well and I am fairly happy with how I played with only a few noticeable errors. I also managed to stay calm and composed in my performance this was also said in the observation. The most difficult part of the performance was the last song because it when on for ages an my hand was really starting to ache by the end of the song. This is something I could improve on by having more practice and building up the strength in my hand. I am much more used to and comfortable playing in a band or not being the lead performer so I suffered from nerves before coming on. This caused me to mess up the first section because I was not focusing clearly on what I was doing. Something that went well is the general consistency across the board, other then the opening and the few small errors I played well because of the amount of practice I had done
Observation
Musical
skill and technical skill
Your
play with a clear sense of rhythm and understand the structure of the songs and
when you need to come forward in the texture or sit back, displaying a clear
understanding of ensemble playing despite using backing tracks on this
occasion. Some of the solos could perhaps do with some improvisation to make
them ‘your own’.
You
displayed a variety of techniques in all ranges of the guitar including rhythm
guitar and solo skills and there were only a few noticeable errors. Some of the
riffs were incredibly intricate and required great stamina over the length of
the songs and the programme as a whole and in the latter stages you did falter
slightly. You demonstrated that you had resolved the glitches that occurred in
the dress rehearsal as these did not seem to be present apart from a loss of
confidence in one section of the Radiohead song. There were only a couple of
timing issues (a common issue with backing tracks as opposed to live
accompaniment) and you recovered these easily.
Stage
presence and audience communication
Whilst
a ‘quiet’ performer (you exude calm and restraint) you engaged regularly in eye
contact and other forms of appropriate communication and you encouraged and
responded to the audience sing-a-long that the backing tracks and smiled
throughout. This led to a more confident manner from the start of the song to
the end. The start of the first song was a little shaky but you recovered well and
the rest of the programme flowed with confidence. You show a sense of humour
with your audience at times and this is a lovely quality, especially in the 5/4
song with the lengthy intro! Perhaps you could look at other ways that you
could move or engage with the performance even when not playing though this is
easier when playing in a band and you are more used to not being lead
performer.
Performances and rehearsal are all linked on the video page!
