Featured Post

BFRC

I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Improvise

The only way to learn improvisation is to do it.  So I set a timer for 15 minutes, choose a set of chord changes, and just do it. You can play many choruses in 15 minutes. The trick is getting to where you can sing it to yourself in your head what you are about to play, just before you play it. If you then go on to play something different than you thought of, you know you are not hearing it correctly in your head.

***

 I realize I've been holding myself back unnecessarily in many ways, making things harder for myself. It would take me a long time to learn a relatively simple classical piece, when I could be learning it faster, simply by choosing an 8-bar section and practicing only that for 15 minutes at a time. I thought I could only reach an octave and it turns out I can reach a 9th, etc...

No comments: