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Finished up recording for March challenge yesterday. Did the lesson straight up, then several minutes of “free” improvisation.
I’m curious. What are your workflows when you are doing the challenges or lessons?
I usually run through each video once with the printed tab in front of me.
I hit pause as I go through to practice the segment Brian just taught until I can play it fluidly. Usually I go back to beginning and play through to that segment several times before moving on. Sometimes it takes days to get through a video.
I transfer the backing track to a looper pedal, so I can control with my foot and play from the tab over course of several days or even weeks until I have it memorized. I’ll start at a slower speed, then gradually speed it up.
If I have a question on timing, I’ll go to the Soundslice, but I generally don’t worry so much about hitting the timing exactly as long as I think it sounds good.
Then usually a week or sometimes more before the challenge is due, I’ll start adding improvisation. The first time I did this, I would work out a lick and write it down, then move on to the next. But I found this very tedious and would then have to memorize it.
Lately I’ve just done free improvisation, generally following the minor pentatonic. Sometimes I’ll try to listen to the chord changes and work that in. There are general directions or positions I am shooting for. Sometimes I play same licks or try to repeat segments from the main lesson, but I have no way of playing the same thing again. The next time I play it will be completely different. I never know what it will be when I sit down to record.
The end results sound decent, but sometimes I feel like there should be some more structure to it rather than just wandering. The only way I can think to really add structure is to go back to writing it down and planning it out. Seems tedious, but then I guess that’s the way songs must be written.
Thoughts? Do others have similar workflows? What works for you?
-Doug
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