I need to reestablish my musical practice, but I don’t want to over-plan this. Just a few things to practice at a time. I can start by refreshing my memory about the chord solos I had been working on some months ago. I had most of them memorized before so it shouldn’t take much effort to get them up to the development stage. I should also reacquaint myself with the walking bass line stuff I had been working on.

And let me not get too ahead of myself. Here’s a potential progression for my practice routine:

  1. Re-learn chord solos and work on developing them to performance-ready status.
  2. Re-learn the walking bass lines I had been working on. Begin to transpose lines into different keys.
  3. Reacquaint myself with Bruce Arnold’s key note recognition sound files.
  4. Re-start my study of Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony.
  5. Re-start my piano study of Bartok’s Mikrokosmos.

This seems like a lot, but the first two will go fast. Well, maybe not fast, but it shouldn’t take much time to have the tunes memorized again. Just a few months ago I was playing all the chord solos and some of the bass lines from memory. Once they are memorized I can work slowly and steadily on developing them (really just playing them over and over for some time).

Arnold’s key note exercises should also be fairly quick to get back in the groove. My memory is that I had gotten good at the major keys and was struggling along with the minor keys. I don’t know why the minor keys are more difficult than the major keys, but they are for me. For some reason I have a hard time hearing the 4th degree in a minor key.

One thing I need to guard against is letting my musical practice eclipse any writing I do (and vice versa). Writing is one of my core professional skills, and probably the one I avoid the most. This freewriting blog is really helping me to break that bad non-writing habit. At some point the writing needs to become more focused on my academic work, but for now I am comfortable with the way this blog is going. I find that as I go along my freewriting sessions are quicker and more productive. I’m beginning to find some focus behind this seemingly un-focused writing.

I nearly just wrote something about my “authorial voice.” Not only does that term sound snooty, but I can’t say I really know what it means. If it means that I am developing a sense of comfort with my voice as a writer…I still don’t know what that means. A quick Google search doesn’t really answer the question for me. I suppose it just refers to my particular style as a writer - a style that is unmistakably mine. This is another advantage of freewriting, I suppose: I am learning to relax and write in my own inimitable style. If that’s what an authorial voice is, then so be it.