Season's greetings one and all, hope you all had a fantastic couple of weeks break from the real world, lying on the sofa eating and drinking anything and everything that came within range - certainly that's my action plan for the festive season.
So, now we've made it through a whole year of Trump without World War 3 breaking out it's time to start thinking ahead for 2018 and a whole new set of New Year's resolutions. Regular readers of this blog may recall this time last year I laid out a practice plan to cover the whole of 2017 - and staying true to my word, I stuck to it.
The plan covered four key areas - pentatonic scales, diatonic scales, chords and arpeggios - and whilst I'm not sure my technique and fretboard knowledge has been revolutionised, it's been fun making new connections and mapping out new patterns. I've even followed through on my "find something you think you could ever play and learn it" idea - I certainly never thought I'd be able to play anything by the otherworldly talent of Allan Holdsworth, but there we go.
So for 2018? Let's try this:
So, now we've made it through a whole year of Trump without World War 3 breaking out it's time to start thinking ahead for 2018 and a whole new set of New Year's resolutions. Regular readers of this blog may recall this time last year I laid out a practice plan to cover the whole of 2017 - and staying true to my word, I stuck to it.
The plan covered four key areas - pentatonic scales, diatonic scales, chords and arpeggios - and whilst I'm not sure my technique and fretboard knowledge has been revolutionised, it's been fun making new connections and mapping out new patterns. I've even followed through on my "find something you think you could ever play and learn it" idea - I certainly never thought I'd be able to play anything by the otherworldly talent of Allan Holdsworth, but there we go.
So for 2018? Let's try this:
January – Major scale and modes. 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced in 3s and 4s. Pieces - Freddie King "Hideaway", Bach
February – Arpeggios (triads). 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced etc. Piece – Bach continued, Satriani, “Summer Song”
March – Chords (triads and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece – TBC
April – Minor Pentatonic & Modes. Piece TBC
May – Half step /Whole step diminished scale. Piece TBC
June – Arpeggios – 11ths. Piece TBC
July – Chords (11ths and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC
August – Pentatonics (Kumoi R b2 4 5 b6). Piece TBC
September – Whole Tone scale. Piece TBC
October – Arpeggios – 13ths. Piece TBC
November - Chords (13ths and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC
December – Pentatonics (Hirajoshi R 2 b3 5 6). Piece TBC.
So as you can see, this plan contains a nice mix of the regular core skills - triads, major scale, minor pentatonic - with a good chunk of yummy new things to try out. As a firm believer in the maxim that "if you want to teach, you have to do", this plan should help keep me fresh and find a whole host of new and interesting treats to give to/ inflict upon (delete as appropriate) my students!
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