I finished my last post and still had some energy for writing. Let me also brainstorm on some other aspects of musical practice:

  • Ear Training: I need to go back to Arnold’s Key Note Recognition CD in order to re-gain that skill; I need to sing lines from notation, preferably from Arnold’s Lines, or from his Single String Studies for Guitar; find the notes I wrote on ear training a few years ago. I know I printed out some of Arnold’s materials and marked it up a bit, I think I also added comments to a pdf file somewhere.
  • Reading: Re-acquaint myself with the Carcassi materials; work on Sor materials; work on Leavitt’s position studies; read through The Real Book for both guitar and piano; read The Rite of Spring score along with recording, transcribing sections; read some Wagner and Mahler scores;
  • Piano: Work on a couple of simple classical pieces like I have done in the past; as I wrote in my last post, begin to learn basic standards & blues progressions; transcribe music at the keyboard; practice chord progressions in open and close voicings
  • Guitar: As stated in my last post, focus on re-gaining my fingerstyle repertoire; lock down some grooves; practice scales and arpeggios; use a metronome; work on single note lines with both flatpick and fingerstyle; work on transitions between flatpick and fingerstyle; play along with records, Hubert Sumlin, Muddy Waters, Chicago blues guitar, Memphis/Alabama soul guitar, Joseph Spence, Wes Montgomery…; focus on playing music, not exercises; play tunes in different keys; play blues and walking bass lines in all keys; start to learn rhythm changes bass lines; setup one of my electric guitars for slide playing, learn all keys in open-G and Open-E tunings; alternately, work on slide playing with my lap steel; work on playing with a capo; work on blues scales (minor pentatonic-plus-blue-note, or same scale played a minor third below the key: essentially, minor/sharp-9 and major blues);
  • Percussion: Set up some hand percussion instruments and play along with tunes; claves, guiro, cabasa, shekere, cowbells, egg shaker, tambourine,…; get some sticks and a practice pad, work on rudiments;
  • Theory: Continue working with Schoenberg’s A Theory of Harmony, writing exercises in various keys and working out a more relaxed harmonic rhythm for each composition (harmonic rhythm is the key to my preferred style of composition); develop some exercises into fuller compositions; consider writing a suite of compositions for small jazz group and electric slide guitar; sing the various lines of each harmonic exercise, movable-Do solfege; get serious about my ear training, sight singing everything I write from Schoenberg’s exercises;
  • Listening: All of Sun Ra’s and Fela’s music that I own (with guitar in hand); Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Guitar Slim, T-Bone Walker, Freddie King, Joseph Spence, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Bill Broonzy, hill country blues, delta blues, West African percussion, more Afrobeat, more reggae and calypso, Count Basie, Chicago blues guitar (again, as above), Ali Farka Toure, Charlie Christian, George Benson, Kenny Burrell,…; Zappa; Mingus (a big one); Ellington (can’t understand Mingus without a good grasp of Ellington);