Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Thoughts:
I've been meaning to get back to chord-study for some time - there needs to be progress. Really, I was a bit scared because I didn't know what to start with. And I've started and stopped this endeavor so many times that I didn't want to let myself down again. Obviously, there must have been something wrong with my methods.

I've been thinking that Anki (a space repetition software I use to study and review Japanese) is really quite efficient in balancing all the information that I have to review, so I wanted to make a music Anki deck. Incidentally, someone already created a chord progression deck that's I downloaded straight from Anki. The user has to identify common chord sequences that the computer plays. Very useful. Doing this highlights the fact that in order to venture in a prepared state into jazz, samba, etc, I really should be very familiar with simple chord progressions first. That's because everything builds upon itself and all of the added notes in jazz & samba make it very hairy and a bit overwhelming if one doesn't recognize the basics.

In addition to this deck, I also started creating cards for a deck in which the front side of the card lists the starting string, then the interval and then the ending string. In my mind, I have to imagine how I would position my fingers. For example:
6th string ascending maj. 3 to 5th string

Once I create ascending and descending cards for many of the intervals (skipping strings as well), I should be prepared to understand chords straight off the bat.

Warm-up/Technique:

Finger-stretching exercise @ 100 bpm

String Walking exercise
(Pumping Nylon pg. 37) with i,m quarter notes @ 110 bpm
String Walking exercise with m, l with quarter@ 75 bpm

Right-Hand Velocity (pg. 63) with sixteenth notes @ 90 bpm rest stroke
@80 bpm free stroke
l, m @ 70 bpm rest & free

Synchronization Exercise (Pumping Nylon pg. 65) with i,m sixteenth notes - @ 75 bpm.

Repertoire:

Estrellita

Played through. Sounded very good.

Pica Pica
Had to stop mid-play because I kept losing the rhythm. Practiced with metronome @ 55 bpm.

Samba Caribe
Part A 1st 4 bars chord progression (v-V-I-IV - Autumn Leave progression)
Mental imaging exercise (p. 48) - need to keep at this, but generally very good feel

Samba exercises from Nelson Faria's book
Studied chord progression in Part A.

Sightreading:
Delcamp Vol II. p. 8

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