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Day 2
From laertes22 on 5/9/2014 7:52:23 AM
Not sure if we are supposed to post about our practices every day or not? What do you guys think?
I did split practices again-got up at 5AM before work to practice for 30-45 minutes, then came home from work and practice for about an hour.
Warm up was standard fare: C major scale, basic clawhammer stroke(double thumb/drop thumb) practice, chord practice in Double C.
Two things I'm dealing with now: 1) Before my hiatus, I definitely used my middle finger as my lead and couldn't play well with my index finger. Now that I've come back, all of a sudden my index finger is really good and my middle finger is wonky. I have no idea how that happened. In theory, I want to be equally proficient with both, so I am making a concerted effort to to practice with both equally.
2) I have always been a "finger nail" guy. I was never a fan of "frailing picks" or fingerpicks. I always just grew my nails out and tried to take good care of them. Well, right before I started back, my nails on my right hand got broken. I can not get a good sound out of them, and my string accuracy is also suffering slightly. I have been using some Fred Kelly Freedom picks, and they actually work really well. Feel natural and also give a good sound. I'm still trying to grow my nails back, but I am debating continuing to use the picks. Thoughts?
I had been previously working on Angelina Baker/Angeline the Baker. However, I decided to work on Soldier's Joy instead, because I am also working on SJ on fiddle. the arrangement I'm using is from Dan Levenson's Clawhammer from Scratch book and is very drop thumb heavy. There are some difficult and awkward bits giving me trouble. I decided to start with just the Part A. I broke it into several phrases and tried to memorize each phrases and play them cleanly and accurately. I still make some mistakes, but I can get through part A more or less from memory. I practiced both the individual phrases and the whole song with the metronome at around 80BPM.
As kind of my cool down/fun time finale, I put on the Old Time Jam Machine app to Angelina Baker in D (with fiddle and guitar only), tuned my G string up to A, capoed 2 frets, and let loose the dogs of war. This was my first time actually trying to play along with the Old Time Jam App. I was a bit nervous, but it went really well. I was able to keep up, stay in rhythm, and play fairly accurately. After a few repeats, I kind of got in the groove, even tried to throw in a couple of improvised licks here and there. Overall fun experience! since I don't have people that I can play or practice with regularly, this helped me out a lot.
This weekend, I have to hit the road and drive up to Charlotte to see my Beloved, so I probably will not get a practice tonight (although I did get my 5am one in this morning).
5 Comments |
 | Zischkale says:
5/9/2014 9:27:54 AM
I figure there's no expectations here--I'll probably post once a week once I get my momentum going. And again, for me weekends are free-time, I can play whatever I want however long I want.
You've got dedication to be up that early AND play when you get home. Don't burn out! 30-45 minutes sounds good to me!
You playing chords up the neck in Double C? A lot of people feel it's not friendly to chords (or maybe they are just preferring not to use chords at all), but I think the 1-4-5 sounds awesome on it, even if the G "chord" only has two notes in it. I bet there are tons of partial chords that make use of the open strings that sound great in that tuning. When you do the scales, is it in a sort of index-thumb-index-thumb sort of way, with a scale note followed by a 5th string thumb all the way up?
1) I had a similar transformation to yours--when I started I couldn't imagine using the index, but at some point it just switched. I think the volume is magnified with the index, with a mellower tone on the middle, it wouldn't hurt to be able to do both in order to modify tone. Same as it's nice to be able to play over the head or neck of the jo.
2) Heard good things about the Freedom pick, have been thinking about getting one in case my nail gets too short or splits--there's a great thread in the playing advice forum right now about the variety of picks. I'm assuming you can get more volume out of the pick? I've been wanting to try the ping-pong ball method, mainly since one of my favorite players John Balch does this.
Soldier's Joy is a very notey piece, I haven't seen an arrangement that wasn't full of drop thumb. As old and classic as it is, I bet one exists, though. Again, congrats for using the metronome.
Also smart to have a cool down--this is supposed to be enjoyable after all. And nice analogy on the dogs of war! Time to pop a string or two, and really blast that 5th drone. Gotta go full-bore sometimes. Yeah, Old-Time Jam Machine is pretty invaluable, has been a huge help to me.
Shoot, with 5am practice on Friday you shouldn't worry about practice 'til next week. I was taking pretty long drives every weekend to see my wife last year when she lived in Austin...I did manage to sneak the banjo with me eventually... O_o
Keep up the good work.
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| Zischkale says:
5/9/2014 9:31:21 AM
Day 2 was a success for me--I was home rather late so had to really tip-toe on the fiddle for my 30 minutes, which generally makes everything sound worse. Plus I've got a bum E string fine-tuner so I have to wrestle with the coarse tuner for about 5 minutes every time I play. Other than that pretty good. Got Spotted Pony down pretty well--thinking my goal should be to do a rough tab, and compare it to existing tabs to improve it. Played a bit of a solo piece, Sir Isaac's Maggot, from Tom Faux's awesome Uncommonly Clawhammer series here on BHO, and worked on my rock cover. Good hour. Will update how the week went next Friday.
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 | laertes22 says:
5/9/2014 9:55:08 AM
I definitely think other tunings (most notably open G) are more chord friendly. Dan only teaches like 3 chords for Double C/Double D, and pretty much all the songs in his book utilize just these 3 chords. I know a lot of the chords from open G because of having done bluegrass lessons for a year, but I never took time to learn them for Double C, and I don't pay a lot of attention to the chords listed in the tab for Double C/Double D tunes. So, I told myself I was going to make more of a concerted effort to learn chords and use them more.
Have you ever considered using a violin mute for late night fiddle practice? I know a lot of people hate them, and some folks argue that it is detrimental to new musicians because they don't get their ears trains to what a fiddle is supposed to sound like, but I think they are ok. I try to schedule my fiddle during hours when it won't bother neighbors, or use the mute when I practice late at night. I actually squeezed in a 30 or 40 minute fiddle session this morning, as well as banjo. I keep a spare banjo stashed at my fiancee's house, but I only own one fiddle and it is at my house. So, I figured I'd get a fiddle practice before I leave today and when I get back Monday, and I will only miss fiddle practice Saturday.
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| Zischkale says:
5/9/2014 12:32:41 PM
You can definitely do barre chords up the neck with Double C/D, and play some great partial chords--Mike Iverson has a pretty nice banjo chord chart for a bunch of tunings.
Yeah, that's the thing--I did have a mute on! It was just feeling way too loud, so I had to dial it back a bit. I've got a real simple rubber mute that fits over the bridge and doesn't seem to hurt the tone of the instrument. Good call on the banjo cache--maybe it's also time to work up a repertoire to impress the fiancee--not always easy to for banjo!
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 | skiptomylou says:
5/9/2014 1:04:31 PM
sounds like your practices are going brilliant Genford. As Aaron says, there's no expectation on how often we have to post - daily, every few days, weekly - just whatever you feel is most helpful to you. i am going to try to post daily during the week, but i like to try and have internet-free weekends when i can. so i probably won't post weekends - so - will check in with you all on Monday!
Keep on keepin' on!!
Jill
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