Learning a piece
Thu, 09/06/2018 - 19:11
G'day David. Although I have been "playing" for about 4 years I'm completely new to tongue blocking and I'm finding it not quite as difficult as I thought it might be. My question involves "learning" a piece such as Walk with Me. When do you consider the piece has been learned? Is it when the piece can be played competently from the sheet music or when it has been committed to memory? I have always followed the latter but since Walk with Me is the first study I would be a bit surprised if a student picking up a harp for the first time would manage that a week into learning music/harp. What are your expectations?
Cheers, Keith
Hello Keith. I'm glad tongue blocking is coming along for you.
Each chorus of a study song represents about two week's worth of work. For "Walk With Me" that means three months of study. As an end-goal, playing with the sheet music is fine. If there's a piece you like a lot, then once you're done studying it (you can play it well with the jam track, with sheet music), even though you'll be moving on to other material, play the song every day (once) without the sheet music until you can confidently play that song. This will help you when it comes to playing at a jam (you have a song ready to play), as well as in building improvising vocabulary (your vocabulary comes from the songs you've studied).