Challenge of the Month — December 2009

Before I post the new challenge goals, I'd like to do a quick recap about my November results.

First of all, I'm really proud of myself for completing the November challenge without missing a single day. Doing ALL the exercises EVERY day not only does feel great as an accomplishment in itself, but it really does make a difference in terms of the musical results you get.

Let's not forget, the Challenge of the Month is a means to an end - it's not (just) about doing the exercises every day, it's what comes as a result of doing the exercises that counts.

However, following through builds your discipline and that is important as well.

Ear Training

I decided to stay with diatonic notes only and to really drill in the functional sounds of those 7 notes first, before adding the remaining 5 chromatics. Check my Functional Ear Training post for a step by step breakdown of my first week.

Now I'm at a point where I consistently finish my 10 minute session in the 90-96% range with more than 200! correct answers at 120 bpm with root notes only (no cadence) and random keys.

Even though it won't be an "official" challenge topic anymore, I'll definitely continue my 10 minute ear training sessions. It just feels right to do this because I'm in the groove of firing up the Functional Ear Trainer software first thing in the morning.

The next few days I'll shoot for increasing my score even more. Once I hit the 98% I'll start to add the first chromatic note.

Chord Melody

10 minutes/day won't turn you into Joe Pass or Ted Greene - at least not in a month. But, it really is amazing how much you can improve and solidify your top note to chord connection.

Just the process of deciding which chords to use for each scale degree will force you to understand your chord vocabulary at a deeper level.

In my Chord Melody - The Major Family post I've explained the basics of getting started. So if you want to get into chord melody style on the guitar, check out the method of learning at least 1 voicing for each scale note on both the high E and B string.

Yesterday for Piano/Keyboard

This was the most fun part of my November Challenge. Many a days I continued to play beyond the planned and scheduled 10 minutes. Because it was fun.

Without the challenge of playing every day for a whole month I most likely would have moved on to another piece after 5-10 days. This way I HAD to continue and as a result I can bang out a nice, smooth rendition of Yesterday by heart that is my arrangement (though adapted from various sources).

Every couple of days I'll keep on playing the song just to keep it fresh in my repertoire.

Enough of the recap, here's what's in store for December.

December Challenge

This time I'll do a more theme oriented challenge. And the theme is: Chops/Technique

1) Guitar Chops

For increasing my guitar chops I'll play through The Precision Technique exercises by virtuoso Robert Conti. I intend to focus on flawless execution and my right/left hand synchronization.

Minimum of 15 minutes.

Most of the days I plan on playing through all the exercises, but I'll keep my options open and might decide to spend all the alloted time on ironing out a specific exercise or trouble spot in an etude.

An in-depth review of the Precision Technique book will follow sometime in January 2010 - I definitely want to use my own results and observations for the review.

2) Piano/Keyboard Chops

For my piano/keyboard chops I'm going to play technique exercises like broken octaves and finger patterns utilizing the Blues scale over a set of Blues playbacks in various keys and tempi.

This should bring the following results and improvements:

• improved finger dexterity and speed
• increasing my knowledge of the Blues scale fingerings in all the keys
• better timing due to playing to high quality playbacks
• more stamina and endurance because of non-stop playing of technical exercises for almost 30 minutes

3) Cubase SX5 Chops

This last summer I upgraded my main DAW Cubase to SX5.

All those modern DAWs (Cubase, Logic, Reason, ProTools) are so damn powerful and feature rich - it's amazing. And the danger is to limit yourself to only using a small percentage of all the possible functionality - it's time to get out of the comfort zone and to explore the unknown territory. So, during December I'm going to bite the bullet and dig into reading the manual.

I'm sure there'll be lots of discoveries where I'll kick myself for not having read the manual earlier.

Folks, let me tell you, it's important to know what you don't know, because then you can do something about it and fix your ignorance.

What's your Challenge?

I'm off to read my dose of Cubase manual for today, but I'd really like to encourage you to start your own personal challenge. Where would you like to improve and how are you going to do it?

Like this blog post? Buy me a cup of tea or leave a tip...

Related posts:

1. Challenge of the Month — November 2009
2. Challenge of the Month — January/February 2010
3. The Challenge of the Month Concept
4. Learn to Play Chord Melody — The Major Family
5. Upgrade Your Listening Skills with Functional Ear Training

Tagged with: chops • chord melody • Cubase • Ear training • Joe Pass • Robert Conti • technique • Ted Greene • Yesterday

Filed under: Challenge of the Month

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and never miss an update!