Iterative Routine

Here I am going through my iterative routine on the 3rd degree of the Ionian mode. I.e. I am mapping stuff to the third of a major chord - the Ionian scale [in a pattern, b/c who plays straight up an down a scale in real life?], a major 7 arpeggio, and one lick.







I start each iteration by singing the note, and as you can see, I have a hard time making my voice go to it. Study singing, kids!


Here is my study sheet for this mode:

In the video I am working on the 3rd, which is the second clump of chords and licks. I do one voicing at a time, one scale pattern, one arpeggio, and one lick. The next time through I will change it up - maybe the open voicing and a different lick, plus reverse the direction of the scale pattern and arpeggio.
When I make a little progress with one chord tone (/degree - i.e. the third) I will move on to the next, which in this case with be the 5th.
When I start to get a grip on all the chord tones I try to mix it with other types of chords in exercises, e.g. Bb^ C7 D-7 in slow progression. Finally I try to fit what I've learned into a real song.
One huge weakness I can see in what I'm doing is that it is steering me down the jazzer type chord-scale road, where you just string together fragments that fit the chords. I definitely don't want to play like that, but I feel like I need this iterative practice just to map out the general sounds of music in my mind and on the fingerboard.
Maybe I can balance this with some focused study of melody apart from the whole chord-scale thing.

BTW other news:

• as you can see, i have moved to a new room. My office is now my entire basement,which was finished until a recent flood in my neighborhood. The carpet was fugly anyway. I need to rip out the siding and the drywall in my adjacent workshop, but I can't muster the energy after all the cleaning.
• today is my 39th birthday. that means that by my timeline i've got exactly one year to become what i consider a natural musician. yay! so one year from today i will either come home from gigs peaceful and excited most of the time, enjoying the process, charged up for the next new thing, or i will conclude that i'm as good a musician as i'm ever going to be, which would be depressing