Improvising Lesson 10/ Game Plan for Benefiting from this Site
I really enjoyed lesson 10 on improvising. Great finishing touch on this set of lessons. If you're like me, with a day job and a busy life, then maybe you've jumped around a bit in these lessons. David summarizes all of the lessons really nicely, so you can get a sense of what you've missed, and whets your appetite a bit to try them. He also puts the information in context, so you get an idea of where it's best to put your energies for your level. Very inspiring, because you feel you're on track for where you're headed with, what I think, is the ultimate promised land for blues harmonica.
Now that I feel more comfortable trying fills (if you've seen my other posts), I'll go through the whole improvising set more carefully.
BTW, there's a lot to absorb on this site, anyone have a game plan they're comfortable with, rather than just darting around to different things?
Thanks, Sp120! Sounded like you were describing me. To some extent, that may be our nature and we have to learn to ride it like a wave, but some kind of balance is good. I do get bouts of organization and then it falls apart. In the end, it all has to balance in your mind simultaneously to use it......but, along the way......some external organization is good. I'm lucky enough to be taking lessons with David too, so I'm organizing my notebook on songs I've worked on with him in lessons this evening. But I don't think that sounds crazy at all. I think you gotta do what works. Practice is the island in the middle of life that happens, so good to have an anchor to keep you ashore while you're there.
I tend to over indulge , do too many things and never finish any! Thats just the truth, I'm trying to fix it but I also tend to be very productive doing 10 things at once but music not being something that comes easy to me has proven to be more difficult to deal with the same way.
So for me the site although great I find distracting, like walking into a feast when I'm starving, I want to try everything and I start one then move to the next some things are very easy then others are hard and I move to the next.
Oh Yea! I then forget what I've already watched and gone through and start over. Here's what I've done to stop this behavior I've made myself a binder and a speadsheet with all the lessons in a logical order with columns that let me check off my progess as I go also I included the key for the lessons on the sheet in case I was wanting to do something with a particular key. I have all the downloadable stuff on my computer so I can practice without facing the gauntlet of choices, I know I sound crazy but it is my biggest problem. So far it's helping me get back on track.
Here's an example of what I've done, started off strong TB 1&2 Bending 1&2 and any uploads, then life hit hard and I haven't uplaoded anything in a year, but I've done the first Chromatic lesson and song, tb 2.5 and song, solo 1, sonnyboy2 byebyebird, I should and need to get around to recording these but just can't sit still long enough, somethings got to change!!
Hope that helped!