20 days of practicing and learning 1 song

[JackC1]

Hi,

** I welcome all comments/feedbacks. **

I'm excited to share my practice journal for this song (Pavane in A minor by anonymous) with you for the next 20 days. I hope it'll be a motivator for me and an interesting piece entertainment for you.

This song is the year-end exam piece for my online guitar class (https://www.classicalguitardelcamp.com/).

Here's the music:



(The flower signs indicate string damps of the previous string(s). The boxes indicate difficult areas.)

Here's the reference play by a fellow student:

[JackC1]

********* DAY 1 **********

Before learning, I like to know a little context because I don't know what "pavane" means, so I looked it up:

pa·vane
[pəˈvän]
NOUN

a stately dance in slow duple time, popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and performed in elaborate clothing.

--

This song was the assigned a few days ago while I was out-of-town. So I was only able to listen to it and air-guitar the song. Today marks the first time playing on a guitar. Let the learning begin; actually, I always feel like saying "commence bombardment" when starting on a new piece of music.

The listening and air-guitaring may have helped me play it better than expected as a first-time semi-sight-read attempt; or perhaps the song is just easy for me, as we've gone well beyong page 28 in our studies.

Not sure which. However, I think I'll try the listening/air-guitars again on the next songs to confirm.

I'm mostly concerned about getting the notes right at this point. Timing? Dynamics? Expression? Sorry, anonymous song author; not yet there.

The first practice, I like to play the piece thru; yes, it's I sound bad. Ok, sometimes I feel the overwhelming need to repeat a few areas. I want to get a feel for the hard parts. The good news is I didn't have to skip any parts of this song!

Hard areas:

1. Measure 1. On beat 4, I want to use finger 3 to also damp the A-string.

2. Measure 3. Beat 1: fingers 3 and 4; hard to lift just finger 4 to play finger 1 on beat 2. This is kind of like the reverse of Measure 2.

3. Measure 11. Transition from beat 1 to 2 in legato seems tricky. I've decided to put down finger 2 at the same time as finger 4 on beat 1; leaving me with just finger 1 placement on beat 2.

Today's practice journal entry:

[gerhardp]

Nice.
Reminds me of the 80s when I had a teacher for classical guitar, who gave me pieces of this kind..
I wonder if I ever played as smooth as you do.
Keep going!

[JackC1]

Put in another 4 mintes of practice. (Practice session was interrupted by wife asking me to help fix the juicer. (Turns out the GFCI outlet tripped; I wonder why?)

Anyway, put the first 4 measures on the metronome. There're a totaly of just 16 measures to the song. I'm now eager to practice more on it.

I'm excited to follow you on your journey, Jack.

I undertook a much simpler task, similar in approach. I'm learning how to play Take It Easy by The Eagles. I decided to practice playing the intro 100 times in a row to see what would happen. I got up to 30. I noticed an improvement and it got easier to play. I think I'm just now starting to understand what it means to "practice a lot." A lot is much more than we think.

Good luck, and keep posting your progress.

PS 70 more times to go. Good thing I love that song.

[JackC1]

Put in another 7 minutes of practice. Now measures 1-8 are on the metronome. (Wow, that's half the song; I've never progressed this fast as in being able to play half the song on the metronome in 1 day. Cool.)



Also, sorry about the previous practice video without sound; these are candid practice videos (very candid, as in 0 edits). I didn't notice that the mic volume was set to 0 when recording until now. (I do that sometimes; and it really sucks when I'm recording for real and get a good play.)

I think this concludes today's practice: 17 minutes in 3 sessions. Not too bad.

[Gitfiddlemann]

Hi Jack,
Nice work. Your diligence and study will pay off.

Once you get more familiar with the piece, you might want to consider going back to the definition you posted:

Originally Posted by JackC1

********* DAY 1 **********

Before learning, I like to know a little context because I don't know what "pavane" means, so I looked it up:

a stately dance in slow duple time, popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and performed in elaborate clothing.

And practicing it that way, i.e. with 2 beats per measure (half-note) instead of 4. It works much better that way, and will help you play and phrase the piece more musically at exam time. (Duple meter is normally how these Pavanes are written out. I thought it was unusual to see the piece written out in 4/4 time with a 1/4 note tempo.)
Also, it will enable you to slash the metronome tempo/clicks in half, making it less annoying or distracting for you I'm sure.

Just a suggestion. Keep up the great work and good luck with it!

[JackC1]

Originally Posted by AndreF

And practicing it that way, i.e. with 2 beats per measure (half-note) instead of 4. It works much better that way, and will help you play and phrase the piece more musically at exam time. (Duple meter is normally how these Pavanes are written out. I thought it was unusual to see the piece written out in 4/4 time with a 1/4 note tempo.)

Thanks for the suggestions Andre; I'll give them a try.

Yes, I was a bit confused as to why my pavane is writting in 4/4 time. I actually like playing duple time more then 4/4, easier on the measure dynamics with just 1 down beat per measure. I can play it duple with a slightly more accent on beat 3 than 4/4 (i.e. kind of a merge between 2/4 and 4/4).

[JackC1]

*************** DAY 2 ***************





Moving on to measures 9-12. Still just working on playing the right notes.

Once I'm able to put the entire song on the metronome (hoping to do that by today), I plan to learn this song from the back. I don't think I'll memorize this song.

[JackC1]

Put in another 14 minutes of practice today. I'm on a roll!

This last session just pushed my practice to 31 mintes today. Thank you thread! I've not practiced this much in a day in a long time. I can feel my finger tips hardening up again. Hope I don't injure myself.



Playing Measures 9-16. This is a short song. I think I might be able to make a play-thru recording the day after tomorrow at this rate.

Once I'm able to play the correct notes; I'll add measure dynamics (will try a duple time as suggested earlier).

[TBman]

I'm not an expert, (I have my own struggles) but something like that I would have learned the melody first. It's a lot easier to have in your mind where you have to go on the fretboard and the melody line is the best thing to use to do that. You should learn the melody line and know it without having to look at the fretboard.

Once you can do that the bass of this piece will more or less just fall in place. The only "oddball" is the F note (1st fret, 6th string) played with the A note in measures 11 and 15. Follow the fingering instructions and even the oddball F will come easily.

Shut the metronome off until you can play it without looking at the fretboard and the resultant pauses to find the notes. There's no benefit to the metronome at this point. It's just another excuse for your wife to put a pillow over your face,

[JackC1]

Originally Posted by TBman

I'm not an expert, (I have my own struggles) but something like that I would have learned the melody first. It's a lot easier to have in your mind where you have to go on the fretboard and the melody line is the best thing to use to do that. You should learn the melody line and know it without having to look at the fretboard.

Once you can do that the bass of this piece will more or less just fall in place. The only "oddball" is the F note (1st fret, 6th string) played with the A note in measures 11 and 15. Follow the fingering instructions and even the oddball F will come easily.

Shut the metronome off until you can play it without looking at the fretboard and the resultant pauses to find the notes. There's no benefit to the metronome at this point. It's just another excuse for your wife to put a pillow over your face,

Thanks for the tips.

I'll give the different way of learning the song a try on the next song. I'm always open to trying something. When learning piano songs, I sometimes separate the hands, i.e. learning the right hand, then left and then put them together. I've never done something like this for the guitar; so it'll be interesting.

Regarding the metronome.

I agree that I'm off the metronome most of the time here. However, I have experience in this area.

When I learn a song without putting the metronome on early, I find that I need to relearn new hand/finger orientations (what works out of time doesn't always work in time); and this causes the entire learning process to be slower. (Kind of like if I don't incorporate string damps in the beginning; then adding those damps later is almost like relearning the piece.)

So, I put the metronome on ASAP (as soon as I have most notes underway). The metronome lets me easily know where I am at on each measure (i.e. which ones are difficult), and I repeat those measures to bring them up to tempo while avoiding playing measures that's already at or above tempo (thanks to the metronome).

I do think that I'm too lazy (or maybe just too optimistic) and keep the metronome at a higher tempo than I should (and when I eventually slow down the tempo, I've waste too much time already). It's reflected in pretty much all of my practice (and here too); and it is something I should change.

Regarding the videos:

These videos are candid practice videos and cover every minute of practice I put into this song.

Because they cover EVERY MINUTE (and very candid, as in no review, no edit), they are tedious to watch (and I admit that I don't watch 99% of them); I post them all only for completeness sake. As I get more comfortable with this song, I'll make play-thru recordings to highlight my progress.

I really appreciate VERY MUCH your comments and feedback. I try to maintain an open mind; but sometimes my age makes me less flexible. Please feel free to tell me to change; I'll never take anything you say as an offense; on the contrary, I truly appreciate very much that everyone's taking the time to help me.

Thanks!

[JackC1]

**************** DAY 3 *********************

My left hand is sore (probably from the excessive practice time I've been putting in; I know, it's not a lot for most people, but I'm coming from 30-minutes of play PER week here); so, today will be a day of rest from guitar.

I'm so far ahead on this song anyway. I think I'll go conquer the world while watching some anime. This video game stuff is very addictive (almost as bad as chess, which can really suck in the entire day).

[mr. beaumont]

Nice piece, and cool idea of documenting progress.

I think I'll learn it too!

[TBman]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

.....

I think I'll learn it too!

Me too, I'm a sucker for that G# tone