Pages

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Long Term Plan

I try to devote at least 10 hours a week to practice. Right now that practice simply consists of playing tunes on tenor banjo by reading the tab. I almost never practice scales, arpeggios, music theory, ear training, intervals, rhythm, memorization, music notation, or other fundamentals. I would like to work this type of practice into my routine at some point as I think that would help my overall development.

My banjo uke is supposed to arrive today. So now I'll have that instrument to practice as well. Within the next year I'd also like to get a 61-key Yamaha type keyboard, as well as a short scale bass guitar. My ultimate goal being to gain enough competency on all these instruments to create my own home-recordings, where I would record the lead melody on tenor banjo, for instance, then lay down the chords on banjo uke or piano, and add a bass track. Ideally I'd like to learn a limited number of tunes well enough to be able to play them on a combination of, say, 3 out of 4 of those instruments.

I'm fond of how piano is used as a vamping/chording/accompany instrument, especially in Cape Breton/PEI type music. I think it would be fun to play along with fiddle & accordion tunes on keyboards in this way.

For bass I'd like to approach it a little more avant garde, as most of my favorite bass players fall outside traditional music, like Chris Wood of Medeski Martin and Wood. His bass playing in the side-project The Wood Brothers (with his brother Oliver Wood) is a good example of a "roots meets contemporary" playing style that I'd like to emulate.

I dunno...this is all really far off but I think it would be a fun project.

No comments:

Post a Comment