Week 14 (February 24, 2010)
Entry posted by barrymclark
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This week's lesson got moved back a day as Sal had a gig so it was Wednesday instead of Tuesday as per normal.
The week previous, we decided it was time to start learning to improv. He picked Beyond the Sea. I love the song but I would be lying if I said that song didn't make me nervous due to the rate it goes through chords (every two beats it changes). Last night, it finally occured to me the disconnect I have between the notes and their sound. I know songs as changing positions on the fingerboard as opposed to one note to the next... if that makes any sense. Makes improv excessively hard and maybe even impossible. Everything would be contrived.
So, he said, "Start easy. Just root and third. Know them like you know the sound of your own voice." After noodling about with the root-third work over the first four chords repeated over and over again, that is where I had the epiphany about the disconnect I was having. I was still looking at it as first fret on the E string to fifth fret on the E string to open D to 3rd fret on the D string and I just translated that to 1-3-1-3 over the Fmaj and Dmin chords.
So....
I took the first chord, Fmaj, and just included the 7 for fun. I played and hummed in unison as I ran through the arpeggiated Fmaj7 over and over and over and over and over and over....
...then I dropped out the guitar and just hummed it. Then I sang it saying the note name at the matching pitch. I brought the guitar back in to make sure I was still at pitch then dropped it back out. Then changed the words to Do-Mi-So-Ti and just went back and forth with note names and those scale sounds as well as bringing guitar in and out. I kept it up during the shower. Checked pitch against guitar when I got out. Ate breakfast but kept it going in my head. Checked against guitar before I left. Sang it all the way in. When I get home, I will check it again. Next, I am going to beat on Dmin the same way. 
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