Today I’ll be going through the contents that Wednesday has installed for me and a brief recap of what I did yesterday.
On Tuesday I started off by warming up again then I began going through my technical exercises, the one octave Major Scale in harmonised 8ths is incredibly easy so that took me a couple minutes to nail and go over just for fun for five mins.
Next up was The Mixolydian Mode as I said before I get my modes mixed up easily but it won’t take me long to figure out a way of differentiating them. But I enjoyed playing this one too, and it won’t take long to learn them and name the differences between Mixolydian and Dorian.
Diminished 7th Arpeggios over one octaves are interesting, there a handful of Arpeggios and trying to name them all when playing them well be hard. As I’ll remember how to play them but give it the wrong name, as I’m silly like that, playing it was easy though the remembering part will be fairly difficult with all of the Arpeggios.
Minor 9 Chords were fun just like their Major counter part, they’re relatively easy to figure out based upon their notes and playing is simple. They can be used in chord progression too which is a plus side to learning them within an exam condition.
For my free time I had an allocated 35 minutes so I went through some chord charts for the songs I play within my bands and then I improvised over the top of them which is always fun, today I chose ‘Purple Rain’ here it is at a glance.
Then I proceeded to cool down by playing through a few scales like the Minor, Major and Blues scale as I had a lot of notes to type into drafts so I can post them later.
But today’s work load is a whole different story, my routine started off with Warm Up which is the new usual, I will either play through a song or go through random scales which come to mind at the time.
Next up I went through the The Major scale one octave within five positions which is fairly tricky but after my ten minutes were up I got the hang of it, at the moment it is looking like chords and scales will be my strongest point within the exam but we will have to wait and see about my results as I tend to cease up when put on the spot.
Anyway, I then proceeded to go through The Dorian Mode which is always a blast, I think I am getting the hang of naming and differentiating the two which is an improvement. I will have to learn all of my roots and notes on the E and A strings as that’s something I struggle with and it makes me look pretty dull when I rehearse with other musicians.
Then I played through the Minor 9th Arpeggios and yet again I allocated myself 5 minutes, because they’re short and simple but there are so many we have to go through so it isn’t my highest priority. I still have to go through them anyway, I picked this one up easily within its two positions but when it comes to remembering them it will be hard!
Last but not least for the technical part would be the Dominant 9 Chords, these are relatively simple to pick up if you figure out a chord progression to go alongside them, I will need these chords somewhere down the line even if they’re an absolute pain to play in there two positions but I can play them well anyway it is now a game of remembering them.
This just so happens to be my favourite Kvelertak album and it is self titled, if you’re wondering what the hell this is, they are a a Norwegian heavy metal band from Stavanger, they formed in 2007 and I was introduced to them a couple years back.
I went through my favourite tracks of this album and then I played along with them by ear, this required me to figure out the voicings for each chord and the riffs to each song which are pretty heavy which is a guilty pleasure of mine…
The tracks I went through were the following; “Blodtørst”, “Sjøhyenar (Havets Herrer)”, “Nekroskop”, and “Mjød”. All of these tracks are relatively short and very fast paced so I went through each of them plenty of times so I could improve my accuracy each time through.
After this I then proceeded to cool down as I thought I did a good job and I don’t want my hands play up whilst I carry on doing something else. Tomorrow I will be going through Thursdays activities and letting you all know how it went, I shall see you all then!
Ellie Thornton Music 