Exigencies Of Time And Space
Published: Fri, 01/05/24
Remembering the lyrics is invariably the hardest part of the whole expedition, so I figure with three or four weeks of regular attention, I should be able to work through enough false starts and mistakes in rehearsal that by the time I get onstage, I'm more or less bulletproof. Especially if I play by the rules, and treat at least part of my practicing as a kind of flight simulator where there is no stopping or starting over once the tune has begun.
But, you know how it goes. When the gig is a month away, that practice time winds up going to writing a new song, or finishing up some other work, or taking someone to pick up baking supplies at the grocery store – basically, anything but the task at hand. So the urgency doesn't really get ratcheted up until about a week before the gig, at which point there's no longer the lead time for the kind of burn-in that new songs really require, at least in my case.
Now, this is hard to admit, as a guy who is more than happy to dish out the advice about how to practice. I mean, that is some serious failure to take my own advice – not just about working in small, regular increments, but also about making sure to practice at the most reliable time of day for yourself. In my case, that's first thing in the work day, and so, given that I've been scheduling my practice time for the last part of the work day for the past several months, how surprised can I be that things are playing out this way?
The fact is, that first hour of the work day is such a good time for me to get things done that I could really use three or four of them a day, not just one. But, exigencies of time and space and all that; I have to compromise and spread things out across the day, and for most of this past fall I've been using that golden hour to study orchestration instead. Which is a luxury pursuit; I have no imminent use for acquiring this skill, and I don't really expect to get particularly good at it anyway.
That's actually the appeal, of course. When it comes to orchestration, there's plenty to learn, my state of "beginner's mind" could potentially last indefinitely, and my lack of use for or expectation around excelling at composition means for one hour a day I can engage with music like a civilian, viz., just for the fun of it.
It's probably not super-smart to fess up to my lack of preparedness for this weekend's gig, especially since I accepted an offer to stream the show live to anyone who wants to watch it online this Saturday night. I'm not totally unprepared; I have a repertoire of songs I've been playing to one degree or another for the past several years and will draw from for the show. I just won't be able to pull out much in the way of surprises for anyone who's come to see me anytime in the last few months, on account of not taking the time to get any new songs secured in my cranium since early December.
But, you know, now that I've articulated the situation in such detail, maybe it'll spur me to take my own advice about practicing for next month. Either way, I'll post links later this afternoon for anyone who wants to catch the live stream tomorrow night.
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In other news, the start of 2024 means another whole slew of popular songs have passed the 75-year copyright threshold and entered the public domain. Lots of great songs first saw the light of day in 1928, including one of the all-time foundational eight-bar blues, Leroy Carr's "How Long Blues."
I'll be teaching my arrangement of "How Long Blues" this month in the Fingerstyle Five membership, along with introductory exercises to help you overcome some of the basic coordination issues common to playing fingerstyle blues, and more advanced chord voicings, bass runs and syncopations to help intermediate players turn the bare bones of the bass and melody into a fully realized, musical version of the tune. You can learn more about the membership and sign up at www.fretboardconfidential.com.
Syncopation is one of the keys to making an ordinary blues melody sound more authentic and convincing, so in today's Youtube lesson I explain how to use eighth-note triplets to transform the melody of "How Long Blues," why it works, and how to practice this essential rhythmic move. You can find it at the link below:
Adding Syncopation To An Eight Bar Blues
More soon,
David