20 days of practicing and learning 1 song

[JackC1]

Originally Posted by TBman

You're moving along and making good progress! Keep at it!

Thanks @TBMan!

And also thanks to everybody who's helped me along the process; and thanks to the AGF readers too (because you've helped motivate me just by allowing me to post this thread).

[JackC1]

************************** DAY 18 **************************

Today seems to be a good day; so far so good any way. Managed to pull a practice session in the morning; that's always a good thing!



I decided to decrease the metronome to 1 tick per measure to also work on my timing as I try to get the measure dynamics down (I'm emphasizing only the first down beat and treating this piece in 2/2 time).

It took me a bit to get the timing (my metronome can only go down to 30BPM; so effectively I'm playing the piece at 120BPM... much faster than I've previously practiced at 104BPM).

Not just because this is a dance and that means it shouldn't go too fast; it's also got a required tempo of 104BPM (being an exam piece). So, by playing at 120BPM, I'll have to re-aquiant myself back down to 104BPM later.

When I get the measure dynamics right, it sounded great. I want a groove going on for a dance; just emphasizing the first beat gets me there ok. So, I've decided to play it 2/2 time.

I think the measure dynamics will take a couple more practice sessions. Frankly, I don't even think I need to phrase this song much; so there's some hope to wrap this up in 2 more days!

[Gitfiddlemann]

Hi Jack,
From what I could tell from this latest video, I don't think it's helpful to just keep trying to get through the piece at a quicker tempo, hoping that it will magically fall into place. This kind of practice is more harmful than beneficial imo.
All of that is eminently fixable though.
What I would do is isolate the phrases or measures that are giving you the most problems. Maybe it's 8 thru 11, or 12 thru to the end.
Learn to play through those cleanly and smoothly, at as slow a tempo as necessary. In 4/4 time, if that's easier.
Your left hand especially would benefit from slowing things down. Once you can get through it cleanly, then notch it up.
Clean slow will always beat choppy fast. No contest.

[JackC1]

Originally Posted by AndreF

Clean slow will always beat choppy fast. No contest.

Totally agree! I think it's a fine idea to slow down the tempo.

[Robin, Wales]

Hi Jack,

I noticed that the score indicates that m and i alternate consistently throughout. Is there some reason why you have chosen not to follow that? I noticed that was the way the student example you posted at the top of the thread was being played.

[JackC1]

Originally Posted by Robin, Wales

Is there some reason why you have chosen not to follow that?

No reason; just that I made a mistake. I should have followed the fingering from the beginning, a mistake I make very often.

If I don't do the notated fingerings from the beginning, I find it very hard to correct the fingering afterwards. In fact, for the past 2 days, correct fingering was a practice goal I've been working on.

[JackC1]

I've slowed the tempo down; and did 3 more practice sessions today. I probably should slow it down more, but that's always hard to do (I feel like I'm giving up some of the gains I've made even though I know it is the thing to do to learn faster).

I'm playing without the metronome most of the time. I've not checked my timing/rhythm in these videos. This is one area where videos are very useful; I can check my timing just by watching them with a metronome on.

I'm hoping to get a third play-thru on day 20 to wrap this up. I think I can do it with good rhythm even at this time. Dynamics and phrasing still eludes me mostly.

Today's another busy practice day with 4 sessions totaling over 1 hour! The last session, I was addicted and could have gone on forever but the tablet's display dimmed, which tells me that I've been at it for too long. LOL.

It's been so long since I've play this much on the guitar in a day (or even in a week). Thank you, Mr Thread and everybody!

My fingers are just fine too. I'm very surprised considering the pain and soreness I've had during the beginning of this thread. I think I've come back to where I was 2 years ago when I first started guitar: can't get enough on it. Cool. Life is good; but better with guitar.

[JackC1]

********************** DAY 19 ***********************

Wow, time flies when you're having fun. Can't believe this 20-day practice journal (almost a month!!!) is almost over. I'm glad that it is ending on a high note for me as I'm getting really back into the guitar; it's almost like I'm re-energized, like it's the first time (well, second time) all over again.

This reminds me of the "first time" gadget from comics Doraemon. I reused to read that comics when I was a kid; and recently (ok, a few years ago after retiring) re-read some of it when I picked up a bunch of old books from my parents' house. Basically, it's a magical gadget that helps people find love/enjoyment in everyday things by making them feel like it's their first time.

I've been working on the following:

1. Rhythm -- rhythm is ok. I should "acquire" the 104BMP tempo by running the metronome longer before each play-thru. I'm playing for real now... no more metronome

2. Damping -- Everything is good here. I may not be carrying out the legato as nicely as I want, but at least the strings aren't ringing beyond their desired durations. The interesting thing about this song is that even when the strings aren't damped, there's no bad dissonance (e.g. tritone) that is super noticeable. But we damp as best as we can and as notated.

3. Fingering -- I'm still repeating the m-finger consistently (for example I end on the m-finger in Measure 6 and start on the m-finger in Measure 7). I just want to start each measure on the m-finger. This might mean points taken off for the piece (it's an exam piece); but I find it much easier my way because it makes all the measures play/feel the same.

4. Measure dynamics -- I'm having a hard time with this one; and I think it's just because I'm not spending enough time on this piece. I have to get really familiar with a piece before I can apply the dynamics in a natural-sounding way. This is the area I'll be focusing my next practice sessions on.

5. Phrasing -- I really like the way I transition from Measures 8 to 9 and Measures 12 to 13 when I let the last note in Measures 8/12 ring out their full duration. This goes back to damping; I should also put some effort to delay their damps to be just after playing the first beat (instead of simulatneously).

I'm probably over-thinking this whole thing anyway. I mean, if I fail Delcamp, I guess there goes my entire retirement future! JK. I have a feeling that I can pass with just what I have right now.

I probably can't put the crazy practice time in like yesterday (frankly, 1 hr /day on the guitar is an unbelievable amount of practice time for me; and I'm impressed!); so, realistically, I'll be happy with good rhythm, damps, and fingerings for this song.

The last play-thru (starting at @8:00 mark) probably was the best one. I've checked it at 119BPM with the metronome. Unfortunately, way too fast; but the tempo is pretty steady. Again, Measure 12 is problematic. I just need to hunker down and play this measure for 10 times!!! I really should.

Practice video; starting you on the last play-thru (@8:00); please pretend you didn't hear Measure 12 : )


I'm entering the period where practice videos are being reviewed by me (mainly to check my timing). For newbies who's reading this, I think it is very nice to record your practice sessions because you can go back and review them (using the metronome's tap-tempo feature) and check your time. As I've mentioned before, I normally don't review my practice videos; they just get copied straight to my Youtube practice log (which is private except for this particulr song that I'm sharing with you).

Now that I'm watching my video, I noticed that the mic sound level is just super low with certain headphones. My sincerely apologies! I've increased the mic gain.

[JackC1]

Another practice session today. Making progress. I think, tonight, I'm going to try to record my third play-thru.

[JackC1]

Well, well, well, pulled another practice session today. Initially, I wanted to record a play thru, but I realized that Measure 12 is just terrible. So, I remembered to play it 10 times!!! I may have over done it. It's now overcooked and burnt, which usually doesn't taste very good.



Here's something funny. At work, we all know that 90% of work is actually done in the last 10% of time. It's funny that, in retirement, right now, I'm experiencing the same thing: 90% of practice is happening in the final 10% of time. And, just like working, the deadline sometimes isn't all that real (unless it's "tapeout" back in my chip-design days; man oh man, that's real). so, I actually have 7 more days until this piece is due

However, I think I'm in a position to wrap this thing out within my initial 20-day estimate. The extra days will be icing on the cake. The trouble is sometimes when I have too much time, I end up with several "good" versions and can't decide which one to submit

[JackC1]

********************** DAY 20 *******************

Hey, hey, hey, it's fat Albert! I don't know, each time I want to say "hey, hey, hey", that's what I think of. I didn't even like that show when I was a kid.

So, hey, hey, hey, it's Mother's Day!!! To the moms around the world who celebrate this day: Happy Mother's Day. You've earn it. Without mom, where would we be? Well, definitely not born.

What's up with the 3x word repeats anyway? They do stick in my memory pretty well though, like I still remember the old Usenet newsgroup: wesley.die.die.die; sure, it's just an alt group, but still... I mean seems other people like the 3x words too.

Happy, happy, happy, Mother's Day Day Day. hmm. Doesn't work here. If I say it out loud; it reminds me of some children's book. You know, without looking up in the Internet; I think it's a book about a girl wearing purple dress and an elephant.

BECAUSE...

BECAUSE today's Mother's Day and although everyday I want to do nice things for my wife; today's extra speical. When I was younger, I used to think these special days were silly because I aim to be mindful of everybody everyday, having a speical day means somehow I don't need to be all that mindful except for this one day (or for a month, like Feburary is Black History Month; I never knew that until 1993; my oh my, I'm living under a rock or something. Now my Google calender tells me all kinds of holidays. Cool!!)

Now, older and wiser, I think these special days are days where I need to be extra. So, sorry, guitar practice, today was pretty much all about my wife (although I did have a lengthy call with my mom too). Oh, I also had to clean up after my son's breakfast operation. That's the problem with kitchen novices, once they finish making the food, they forget the cleanup!

Today was a good day! Well, besides guitar practice; hmmm. kind of. I did just pull off a practice session today. A fairly long one too, so it was a good day for guitar too. Because I didn't think I had enought time, I decided not to make the final play-thru recording. Instead, I put more practice into Measure 12; I've definitely repeated that more than 10 times by now.

I shall extend this journal by 1 extra day so that I can post a final recording.

Today's another mundane practice:


Oh, and what's up with Father's Day? Nobody really celebrated that until like just 10-20 years ago. And why don't we combine both Mother's and Father's Days together into a single Family Day? This can cover brother/sister/grandpa/grandma days too. I remember reading a children's book a while back (like 10+ years ago when my kids were young) that was about Holidays some lady celebrated by dressing up or something. I briefly thought about writing a book about the less popular holidays like (oh, I can't even say it here; it'll have to be communicated in-person).

As we sail through life, and the past 20 days... 20 days... If I use this https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/n...2/20220831.htm and assume mostly men here (sorry ladies and moms; ok, shall not use men's life expectancy). Let's say, a person's life expectancy is 70 years. Assuming the first 18 is just not all that guitar-focused and the last 5 is also not all that guitar focused; then this past 20 days is 0.1% of our guitar life. I'm glad to have spent it with you!

Today does not mark the end; oh, that's tomorrow.

Thanks!

[JackC1]

********************* DAY 21 *******************

It's like living in the future!

Now, if I knew it'd only take me 5 minutes to record a clean-ish play-thru, I'd have done it yesterday. Hahaha. Anyway, here it is; the final product of 21 days of guitar fun:




Today's practice session:


Since I still have a few days before the exam submission deadline, I'm going to try to record a better version (I'll use the above play-thru as my exam backup). I'd like to share with you each exam candidate; but I'll probably stop sharing my practice journal videos (i.e. the boring stuff).

Let's see: too bad Youtube doesn't have a way to sum up the time of videos. An interesting thing about this particular piece is that I've isolated all of its practices for this Thread. Normally, I'd mix practicing different songs in the practice sessions. Which means -------> I can actually figure out, without tooooo much difficulty, the amount of time I've put into this song!

So, the stats are in:
- 21 days
- 32 practice sessions
- 339 minutes (close estimate) = 5 hours and 39 minutes

And the above play-thru video is the final product of all of this.

I'm (frankly) surprised and a bit disappointed at the amount of time that I've spent on this peice and the result. I think there are pluses and minuses with having a Thread like this. It is definitely an interesting experience though.

Firstly, I want to thank everybody for your support and advice. This Thread has certainly kept me practicing way, way, way more than I normally would have. So, THANK YOU!!! The extra sense of accomplishment whenever I update this Thread was very motivating!

Of course, the advice I've received here is also much appreciated. Although I'm not able to implement many of them ATM; I think just because my skills aren't there yet; they'll be kept in my mind for years to come. So, again; another big THANK YOU!!

I hope to share with you my final exam submission; a better version than the above play-thru.

Thank you for staying with me. I couldn't have done it without you.

[TBman]

Keep posting Jack, we need more people sharing the day to day practice and "almost there" projects we all work on.

[JackC1]

What you see here is the result of 24 minutes of playing in a 2hrs practice session.

After each play-thru recording, I'd check the timing (turns out the "easy" measures 3, 7, 11, and 15 are frequent problem areas where I guess they are just too easy and I relaxed my counting and played them too fast).

I also had to reject a really good play-thru because I played too fast at 112BPM. However, once I figured my problem areas, I was able to get my timing down pretty good; just needed to get my tempo to 104.

Finally, I was able to get a decently timed recording at 104BPM. There're some tone issues; but I feel that timing is much more important with Delcamp exam at my D02 level.

Thanks.

[JackC1]

Hi,

I want to say "thank you" to everybody.

Below is my submission to the Delcamp exam.


I think I can say, with almost full certainty, that I'll not be playing this song in a long, long while By next week, I'll have probabl forgotten it.

Out of curiosity, I looked up my last year's exam piece (also a dance: a waltz in G major):


Although my last year's peice was tenichally easier, I played it with more nuance for the Waltz, which I feel is missing in my performance of this year's Pavane.

The biggest factor I can think of that helped last year was the incredible amouont of practice I put into the guitar. I'd play the guitar for an hour everyday, even if it's just noodling around. Sometimes, I miss that good old time where the guitar is so new and fresh and that I just couldn't get enough of it.

Somehow, I'm reminded of a joke that I read year and year ago so I looked it up. It wasn't as funny as I had remembered it; but in case you'd like to read it (WARNING, it is probably R-rated) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-dog-named-sex/

For the folks interested in Delcamp:

I've posted something about it in this Thread https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/...8&postcount=31 in response to a question.

More generally, Delcamp is a classical guitar forum (you can avoid seeing the Ads if you create an account and log in) https://www.classicalguitardelcamp.com/ that offers free online classical lessons. The biggest difference between Delcamp and many other free online lessons is that Delcamp lessons are focused on peer feedback.

One of the hardest things about self-teaching is deciding when to pass/fail myself. Even when I try to be objective, I still find it hard to really acknowledge my problem areas and repeatedly practice those troublesome sections. This means I tend to pass myself too easily and... (we all know how that'll end up in music) I get stuck later on the the harder pieces because I didn't really learn, fully, the prior skills.

I find that the Delcamp peer feedback system keeps my much more honest with myself; and I generally learn the topics more thoroughly, properly preparing me for the next challenge.

As mentioned before, the Delcamp online classes are totally free. Near the end of the class year, there's an optional end-of-year exam (yes, you guessed it; my Pavane is my end-of-year exam piece). This exam is also totally free. To me, it serves 2 purposes:

1. It validates my year's hard work of learning the classical guitar by letting me perform for a bigger audience than just my classmates and the occasional drop-in tutors and senior students.

2. It serves as an objective judgment on whether I'm ready for the next level or if I should repeat the same level.

Each class year runs from September of the current year to June of next year. Each month, for D02 (second year class), we get assigned 2 songs. (It used to be 3 songs in last year's D02, but it's been lowered for this year.) The methods books (since it is in difficultly progressions) are here:

https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d01/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d02/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d03/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d04/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d05/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d06/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d07/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d08/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d09/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d10/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d11/
https://www.delcamp.net/pdf-delcamp-volume-d12/

(Use the books to find the level matching your skill level. You can start at any level in the Delcamp classes.)

I'd say, for D01 and D02, most songs are folk songs (which I love) with a few classical pieces like selections from Sor and others (like the waltz and pavane above). Starting with D03, based on my listening, it's pretty much all classical. There're no modern songs that I remember hearing.

The instruction pace is pretty relaxed. I mean, 2 songs per month is really more that much. For those concerned about time, I manage to get by in D02 with about 30min - 1hr of practice per week.

I'm currently debating whether to continue Delcamp D03 or taking in-person lessons. I worry about burning out if I take in-person lessons, but I also don't want to not have a real guitar teacher for too long. Currently, I'm leaning to in-person lessons. (This year Delcamp added the condition that, in order to take the free online class, one cannot have a guitar teacher.)

I'm also thinking about quitting the classical guitar altogether because I just don't see much point in learning it. I'm very much an acoustic guitar person. So, I'm currently offically confused

Anyway, one thing is for certain, I'm going to take the rest of the month of May off from classical gutiar and practice my acoustic guitar. Oh, another thing that's clear, this Thread has been very motivating to me and has definitely helped me put in the hours to get my exam piece better than I could have done without this Thread.

Thanks again guys (and gals, now that I know there are women on AGF). Which reminds me of an funny event. Back in my college days, when I was visiting a friend, I see rice on the the floor of his dorm room, I asked what's with the rice. Turns out it's to celebrate his (MUDD, multi-user dungens and dragons) character marrying another girl-user's character. I asked him, without thinking, "how he know the other player really is female?" It wsa pretty crazy for that bunch of MUDD folks, later that year, they all hopped into a car and drove across the country visiting and staying at the various MUDD players' locations. I'm too old fashioned, I only played locally hosted multi-player games where I all I have to do is just shout across the room to ask somebody to pick up my dead character. It's funny, currently, my son plays these online games and he's shouting into the phone just like me when I was playing them 40 years ago. Oh wait, I did play some non-locally hosted multi-player games; I don't know if anybody's familiar with Silicon Graphics (precurosr to Nvidia, well kind of), I used to play their flight simulator often during grad shcool. We'd tap into the log files and see when others play it, then we'd go in and shoot them down. Ah, one thing I missed from those days are the arcades; I was praticularly good at Tetris; and I always loved it when a group gathers behind me to watch. These days, arcades are just no fun; hardly anybody watches others play anymore. Oh wait, this is a guitar forum

Thanks again guys and gals of AGF!!