Having navigated the waters of Beyond the Sea (pun intended) numerous times... enough to be comfortable with the changes, I went into this week's lesson ready to go with it.
It was fun being able to jam with Sal on another song. Having him pick up a melody line on top of the backing chords and embellish some.
His challenge to me this week is expanding the backing chords into utilizing the melody in the chord changes. That is to allow the melody to dictate to me the chords I use as oppose
Not much to tell this week really.
Sal has a gig so we didn't get together this week.
I am getting more comfortable with the changes in Beyond the Sea and continuing to play Autumn Leaves.
On YouTube, for Beyond the Sea, I play along with the Robbie Williams version because it has footage from Finding Nemo on it. haha.
I started this week figuring I would have to cancel the next two lessons because money is just too tight right now. I called Sal up on Monday to let him know and he insisted I come anyway. "Don't worry about the bread," he said. "It's more important to me that we keep this going."
That meant more to me than anything I could put on here. That definitely signaled to me that I wasn't just a half-hourly pay.
That coolness aside, we immediately dug into Beyond the Sea. That song really moves
Alright, I am back meeting with Sal after a couple if missed weeks.
We jumped right in with learning All of Me and then later in the lesson picking up on Beyond the Sea. These were songs of my request as they are in constant play in the ol' iPod.
I got a bit of a jump on the lesson as I get there early. He gave me the sheet music for All of Me and let me use a teaching room not in use to get familiar while I wait.
This song is another great example of how chord tones can make the li
Sort of a bummer of a week on a couple of fronts. Mainly because the boy - 6 month old son- got an eye infection which babies are prone to get but also, and leastly, I had to cancel my meeting with Sal to tend to his needs. Don't regret it, just a bummer.
Anyways, the upside on both counts is that the boy is better and the week off from Sal I have seen as HUGELY beneficial.
How? Well, it gave me a couple of weeks to practice what I have picked up and not having more piled on every week.
As posted last week, Sal and I weren't getting together this week. Still thought I would post anyways as I am still working on it regardless. This time without a get together with Sal has proven helpful too. I am able to really play around with what I have learned and beat it into my head a bit more as opposed to learning it just a little before I get a mess more crammed in there.
So, it is more of the same. Autumn Leaves played all kinds of ways. Doing some minor improv stuff. Very, very mi
Alrighty.
Week 5 was great, but I will get to that. I figure I should put more in detail what I am doing with what Sal teaches me for those interested so..... here goes.
Since my week 4 meeting with Sal, I have been using Autumn Leaves as my playground a bit as I am more familiar with it and using Georgia on my mind as more theoretical study. Which is proving just as helpful.
On Autumn Leaves, I have experiemented a bit on that one like I mentioned. I would play it straight the way I
This one had hardly any blur to it at all. That was nice. Still a boatload more info than I can take in for a session, but still very productive. Some of it was reinforcing what I knew already but tons of new info and things I can do for study and practice.
Lots of sub work. Dim7/7b9 and I/III sub'ing.
We used Georgia on my Mind for working lead melody into chords and sub practicing.
At the end of it, I as looking at his Super 400. He has owned it since about '78 and, from what I saw
Today still had a touch of that blur that I have experienced in previous weeks, but there was notably less of it and the lesson was even more focused than it was last week.
We started on Autumn Leaves where we left off last week. It was in this that he introduced me to tritone subs. "You can actually use those things?" Yep. Made a different animal of Autumn Leaves right there on the fly. Just amazing. It was this week that really drove home to the both of us just how musically illiterate I a
This one was less of a blur, but still a blur. It all made sense, but the time I was there seemed to shoot by just wayyyyy too fast.
This time, it was more focused as well.
We started and ended on Autumn Leaves. To a powerchord heaving, heavy-metal expatriate, this was just mind blowing. A simple thing to you long time jazzers, but the door into a new world for me.
Learned about the Jazz or Real Harmonic minor where I had only met the regular harmonic minor in passing at a bar once
What a rush! I will admit, it was kind of a blur. Even with all the info he was throwing my way, somehow, it was sticking. It was things I knew, but now they were starting to make sense as I was hearing these theories in play as opposed to having them as book learnt knowledge.
Although I was clearly the lesser of the two people in that little studio, I definitely felt good leaving.
I brought my Gibson J-55 to jam along with him and his Super 400. That is a well worn guitar. Very cool.
Tomorrow is my first day learning from Sal. I know very little will happen tomorrow as I imagine it will be more of an orientation of sorts. Him getting a feel for what it is I am looking to get out of it and figuring out how best to get to that point.
All the same, I am absolutely pumped about the experience I am about to have learning from a person I consider to be a true master of his craft.
