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Showing posts from October, 2012

Guitarist Tom Morello on practicing

The most valuable piece of advice that anyone gave me was a high school friend who was a more advanced player than I was. He said, "If you want to get better, play at least an hour a day, every day." At the time we would jam on the weekend for six hours, and I might practice some chords once or twice after I had done my homework. I said, "I'm going to try that," and I really felt my playing rise. It gave me confidence that this works, and that encouraged me. The other thing is that it has to be playing. While I was very committed to developing technique, when I was doing eight hours a day it was like two hours of technique, it was two hours of theory, it was two hours of improvisation, and then it was two hours of "free swim," where I could either do more technique or I'd work on some funny sounds or whatever. Some of that felt like work, but a lot of it was really fun. The third thing is you get better when you play with other people, an

October 2012 teaching schedule

-- My teaching schedule for October will be uninterrupted. -- The  Theta Music Trainer  assignment for the month of October is these 4 exercises: Scales  --  Tone Drops Theory & Notation  --  Chord Locks Rhythm  --  Flash Rhythms Tuning & Pitch  --  Speed Pitch -- The next student recital will be held Saturday, December 15 from noon to 4pm in the recital hall at CSUEB. Please save the date! -- The song of the month for October is "Beautiful Day" by U2. Have a happy day, Jesse