Monday

Rode exercise bike for 1/2 hour.

Started the first Alan Swain (I tried it before, but this is a restart). On page 4 of the the first book; started with three chords.

LEARNED CHORDS:

Cmaj7

Dmin7

Emin7

Sunday

Rode exercise bike for 1/2 hour.  With my dad, wife, and two daughters today for a visit. My son had to work so he didn't accompany us.

A (now replaced) challenge

Adapted from my challenge put forth earlier this week:

1) Give the Alan Swain material a year. A good solid year of practicing at least a half hour a day. The key will be to use the half hour productively in a way that involves one or both of: memorizing chords, and playing them in songs. Take my time. Don't make mistakes. Be patient. Use the half hour wisely.

2) Don't share solo piano recordings with others for a year. I think that by sharing my practice I am getting sidetracked. My goal at this point needs to be to learn the piano, rather than have an audience. Don't put the cart before the horse.

- Change of Plans -

Ok so here's the story. I am switching piano methods yet again. But here's what's going on. I like the open piano chords, but I think the Alan Swain material is at the detail that I need. It seems to not be extremely different from the material I have been using, but the Swain material (in two books) seems to teach the material in a detailed way that I need. 

Saturday

Rode exercise bike for 1/2 hour.

How we as a society might be dealing with troublesome issues is by unfortunately giving them lip service when issues are brought up, but then not really doing to much to actually change situations. Read on about a personal hero of mine and among other things, how he was given a lot of superficial acknowledgement (and then he almost lost his life for not giving up):

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-police-are-still-out-of-control-112160

All sides need 2 B listened to. Yelling at each other = those in power will change nothing. Black Lives Matter? Yes. Police Lives Matter? Yes. The Democrats might have something important to say? Yes. The Republicans might have something important to say? Yes.

With the band today, worked on making a demo of three songs: "Under the Boardwalk," ""Memphis," and "White Sport Coat." Sounding pretty good; didn't record the complete songs, but just shortened versions hopefully to be used on some kind of band website some day. 

Practiced my 1/2 hour of piano. Learning more about proper right hand placement for these open chords. Added two more chords to my knowledge base, and fixed one of which I was fingering incorrectly. 

Chords Learned:

C

F

G7

Am

Bb

Dm

Friday

Rode exercise bike for 1/2 hour. 

Ok so I figure I learned two (open) chords yesterday. I realize it will probably get confusing as I add on to my list of known chords, but I figure that I only have 34 chords left to go. Not going bad at this rate, but must stay patient. 

Learning them in the context of songs, I think, is important. That is, it's one thing to be able to play a chord. But I wouldn't say that playing a chord is playing music. 

Playing music would be the ability to move from chord to chord in a smooth way within the context of songs. Saying I "know" these two chords is a lot different from saying that I can smoothly play them one after the other, especially if you additionally take into account that in a song, there would be a melody note to accommodate.

Put in my 1/2 hour piano practice; now know the Dm, F, G7, and C chords (open). Starting out, things were a bit difficult, but practicing without mistakes, and relying on shapes seemed to settle things down, and facilitate learning. Interesting how utilizing some of Sudnow's and Swain's practice ideas was helpful. 

I'm learning the chords one at a time as they are presented in the Beatles song, translating the learned chords into learned chords with melody notes.

Chords Learned:

C

F

Dm

G7

Thursday

Rode exercise bike for about 37 minutes.

Connected with a Sudnow Method student and it looks like we might hopefully keep in touch. 

Started the Susman material today, and worked mostly on the F major chord and the Dm chord. Will try to work on the Beatles song "All My Loving" to use the chords in context. 

Started making a demo recording for what might hopefully be included on some kind of web page for our band.

THE JULY 6TH CHALLENGE

Rode exercise bike for 1/2 hour. Figured out if I utilized the piano idea I originally had yesterday, I'd need to memorize 252 chords/melody note combinations.

Feels good to be working on my health. Today might only be day 3, but I feel a little momentum building with regards to keeping the good habits.

Really looking forward to starting the Bill Susman material. It is somewhat like Alan Swain's approach, and somewhat like David Sudnow's approach. The Susman stuff appears to be more my style, though.

What's great for me though is without my background in The Sudnow Method, the Susman material would have appeared much more inaccessible to me. Exposure to The Sudnow Method with the help of my piano buddy helped me to learn scale tones.

What's cool too is that exposure to Alan Swain's material may help with learning how to have chords ingrained in my memory.

So here it is. The July 6th Challenge:

1) Give the Susman material a year. A good solid year of practicing at least a half hour a day. Try to have the chords ingrained by using Swain's ideas regarding practice, but also learn songs.

2) Don't share solo piano recordings with others for a year  I think that by sharing my practice I am getting sidetracked. My goal at this point needs to be to learn the piano, rather than have an audience. Don't put the cart before the horse.

New Direction

Attempted to try a new way of learning how to play piano from fakebooks "on the fly" utilizing the Sudnow Method, but it did not quite work out. As a matter of fact, if I tried to implement my idea, it would require memorizing over 400 chord shapes!!!!!!! Reviewed some stuff from Bill Susman's "Play Like Me" piano site. Ordered one of his books. Will see how it goes! Started yesterday yet again to take action to improve my health. Yesterday and today I rode the exercise bike for 1/2 hour and started to take care of myself better.

July 4, 2016

So many different musical directions are possible. Guitar comes natural to me, yet the piano calls me. 

Tempted, and just might, utilize the Sudnow Method again. Might try to internalize some chord clusters in isolation to learning songs, also, in order to facilitate an old goal I have had which is to play songs on the fly using fakebooks. 

Still can't get away from that guitar, though. 

July 3

Started working on "Wichita Lineman" for solo piano. Not used to it, but using a R-5-3 pattern in left hand.

Graduation

Nice time today; band played for my son's graduation party. And he played drums on a song ("I Saw Her Standing There")!

Piano Friday

Interesting development. I was looking at maybe utilizing a piano method book strategy. Was also looking at buying a course. Then I got some input from my piano buddy. She gave me some cool things to work on. I'll be trying my hand at "Wichita Lineman." 

Holding Pattern

Bored with guitar.

Want to play piano but I'm focusing too much on negatives. Thinking of going back to basics. Learning how to read music. Yes, that means good ole method books. And bass cleff. 

Piano Post

Find myself drifting again musically......would like to play piano again.....do I have the discipline to learn inversions? Such a beautiful instrument. I just don't think there's any other way for me to learn piano than to get chord inversions imprinted in my brain....memorizing songs may make them sound nice and all, but once I forget them, they are lost. I'm thinking that if I can just learn those inversions, then my chances of playing songs from fakebooks would be drastically increased. Patience needed. 

I don't really think I want to learn anything more about improvising guitar. I think I can hack my way through it, and that's ok. But the piano! Been saving money for a new acoustic guitar. But do I really need that? The piano!!