Today is the first day of using my practice routine and I can say it has taken swift effect within comparison to my old routine, which was incredibly messy to follow and slightly outdated.
I will be these writing diaries every two days or so, over the span of a week so you get the gist of things. I am going to be updating my progress this way as it will be incredibly easier and more compact whilst scrolling through all my work it will look much neater too.
I started my hours practice by warming up because I’ve had a bad track history with early signs of carpal tunnel when I started to play bass. The signs have gone away ever since I took practising easy and warming up and cooling down which is a essential!
The Natural Minor Scale over one octave in five positions was the first task at hand, I managed all five positions but I took a couple minutes on each trying to figure out the shape and then picking up speed whilst playing through them. This is one of the easier scales as they all sound the same just in different positions on the fretboard so I’m bound to pick this one up easily.
Next up is The Dorian Mode, I’ve allocated 5 minutes for this one as it’s in one position, but in the exam it could be on any root note on the E string. This one I’m struggling with because I get my modes mixed up easily but it won’t take me long to figure out a way of differentiating them.
Then I played through the Dominant 9th Arpeggios and yet again I allocated myself 5 minutes, because I believe that they’re not an essential for guitar but more bass. I still have to learn them anyway, this is my favourite one as it sounds pretty cool and I picked this one up easily within its two positions!
Last but not least for the technical side of things would be the Major 9 Chords, these are relatively simple to pick up if you figure out a chord progression you like with the chord in question. In the future I’d like to compose a song with the chord as it would fit in nicely.
In my thirty minutes of free time I chose to play along to a CD laying around within my room and it just so happened to be The Dark Side of The Moon.
This is one of my favourite Pink Floyd albums and it will never be forgotten in my books. I went through my favourite tracks and played along with them by ear, this required me to figure out the voicings for each chord and the riffs to each song.
I played through ’Money’, ‘Time’, ‘Brain Damage’, ‘Eclipse’ and ‘Breathe’. I couldn’t quite figure out the rest of the track as it heavily relies on synth, keys and bass parts which are all amazing in their own way.
After this I then proceeded to cool down because I don’t want my hands to seize up whilst I’m doing something else, like typing out a blog entry or writing down important notes.
Tomorrow I will be going through Tuesdays activities and letting you all know how it went within Wednesdays post, because I will get a shed load of work from college and typing out a post and practising needs it’s own allocated time slot. See you all then!
Ellie Thornton Music 