Challenge of the Month — November 2009

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I'm excited to get started with the 1st installment of the monthly challenge. As I said in the main post explaining the concept, for me this will be the proverbial kick in the $%§$ to make sure I follow through and hopefully you will get some ideas out of this as well.

Here are my topics for the month of November:

Goal #1 - General Musicianship

You need to have good ears for truly expressing your musical potential. What a surprising revelation.

Thanks to my classes in college and my own continued practicing, my ear training skills are pretty good already. But sometimes I still second-guess myself and don't trust my aural perception.

To increase my confidence I'll spend (at least) 10 minutes every day using the Functional Ear Trainer software to drill in the individual notes from the chromatic scale. Unlike traditional ear training which puts the focus on recognizing intervals, scales, chord qualities and rhythm - functional ear training is a method to recognize individual notes in the context of a key.

For the first week I'll stay with the 7 diatonic notes before introducing the remaining 5 chromatics one by one.

It's always back to basics. Only when the foundation has been established it makes sense to start focusing on things like speed or key changes.

Goal #2 - Guitar

One of the most challenging playing styles on the guitar is chord melody where you combine single note melodies with chords. This gives you a full, complete sound.

It also requires a solid:

• understanding of harmony
• fingerboard orientation
• knowledge of chord voicings
• playing technique

The key to chord melody is a "top down" approach. It's absolutely essential to not just learn the chord shape and fingering - you need to get deeper into the chord. What's the function of the highest note in the chord voicing? That's the glue between the chord and the melody.

Also, it's not how many chords you know, it's rather how many chords do you know to use. Fortunately it doesn't have to be a gazillion voicings to see some results.

I've always somewhat procrastinated on tackling chord melody. Sure, I've learned the occasional arrangement in the solo guitar style, but now it's time to elevate the skill to the next level.

This month I'll focus on the major family of chords.

For every note in the major scale (plus a few selected chromatics) I'll drill in some useful voicings. I'll keep the scale note on the top 2 strings and will put the emphasis on recognizing that scale note relation with the chord shape.

My daily minimum: (at least) 10 minutes

Goal #3 - Piano/Keyboard

Browsing through my sheet music, I've found a couple of arrangements for Yesterday by the Beatles.

A perfect opportunity for me to:

• practice sight reading
• create my own arrangement out of the sheet music
• experiment with various stylistic techniques
• add a great tune to my repertoire

For the first week I'll probably just play through the sheet music to check out the available material. The daily minimum is 10 minutes, but I'm sure I'll play longer anyways.

Next week I'll post an update about my experience and progress, but in the meantime...

What about Your Challenge?

Please feel free to share your plans in the comments.

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Related posts:

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

Tagged with: arrangement • Beatles • chord melody • Chromatic scale • diatonic • Ear training • harmony • Interval • sight reading • Yesterday

Filed under: Challenge of the Month

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