Practice Routine – Week 8

Last weeks practice routine was a little easier to complete than week 6, the reduced workload took some of the pressure off and actually gave me time to have some fun playing music.

So this week I will continue with a similar routine, spending about 20 – 30 minutes each day on the Guitar Reading Workbook and this week I get to finish off practicing the Major scale patterns, which is writing out and playing each one of the five Major scale shapes, this final week is for the G natural note.

So next week I get to move on to the next chapter of Barrett’s book, the Guitar Fretboard Workbook, which is on The Natural Minor Scale.

I am finding the time bracket is working quite well in regards to doing the exercises in the Guitar Reading Workbook, I am taking a slightly different approach with this book compared with the other books I have been going through.

Instead of practicing one exercise X amount of times or for X number of days I am just going through the book one exercise at a time, so once an exercise has been completed and I have a basic understanding of what the exercise is about, I am moving straight onto the next one.

If I get stuck on something or I am not understanding what the material is trying to teach me, I either go back and review everything up to that point, or I just re-read the chapter or page until it clicks and I understand the lesson.

Below is a breakdown of what I had learned from the Guitar Reading Workbook last week.

• How the staff lines and spaces are numbered, and what the different pieces of information on the staff are, like measures and bars, double bar lines, terminal bar lines, down beats, count offs etc…
• What the note and rest values are, ie; quarter, half and whole.
• How important it is to write out notation clearly on the staff.
• What repeat signs are and how to write them out so they are easily seen and understood.
• What the treble cleff is and how it determines the pitch of the notation.
• The musical alphabet and what the different notes on the staff look like.
• Relation between the notes on the staff to the fret location on the guitar.

So I am happy to say that I now have a very basic understanding of how to read music, in just a few days of going through the early chapters of this book I can now read basic music notation. WooHoo. Thanks Barrett.

So getting back to this weeks practice regime.

• Exercise 1: Write out each day, one of the five major scale patterns for the G natural note, play the scale with different timing and recite both the scale degrees and notes of the scale.
• Exercise 2: Spend 20 – 30 minutes studying and completing the exercises in the Guitar Reading Workbook.