Pace of Study
For someone with limited time, how many lessons do you recommend per month? How much time per day?
Don’t try to learn a study song all at once. Take it one lick, line, and/or chorus at a time. I print out the study song and cut out a line or chorus and hang it on the back of my sun visor in my vehicle. While I’m waiting for my truck to warm up or setting at a long traffic light I can work on that small piece of the song. Right now, I am just about finished with the level 3 study song, I keep a printout of the song in my vehicle. Whenever I arrive somewhere (home, store, etc.) I play the song once maybe twice and then go about my business.
Things that don’t require much brain power like practicing tremolos or slaps I will do while I’m driving, but not to a difficult song. I will do this to scales or to a simple song like Ole Susana. Shakes I will not do while driving but are an easy thing to practice while sitting at a traffic light.
Solo harmonica studies I do the same thing. I print out the exercise and carry just one exercise with me during the day. When ever I find I have a few minutes to practice I pull the exercise out and work on it. Once I feel good about the way I’m playing the exercise, I start carrying the next exercise with me.
Don’t practice the same thing too much. When working on learning to play a lick I will play it over and over again each time making some improvement, but as soon as I realize I am starting to play it worse than I was or I start to get frustrated, I stop and don’t try it again until I have had one sleep cycle. I’m continually amazed at how helpful one sleep cycle is in learning something new.
On days where I do have more time, I try to brake up the practice into a couple of sessions rather than one long session. For example, I normally will practice solo harmonica studies in the morning and the study song at night.
The important thing is to always have your harmonica on you and some small piece of music to work on.
Brian in Tennessee
Hello Spielzeit17.
This is totally up to you... simply spend as much time as you want to allocate to the lessons.
I do recommenbd you focus the majority of your time on the study songs (Tongue Blocking and Bending studies)... these are your core studies. Start with Blues Harmonica Fundamentals and then go to Tongue Blocking Study 1.