for the past month i've been working off of the project management software. i gotta say, it's super effective. i've been fairly loose with my planning and it's changed a few times but it really keeps me on track. each day i sit down i know exactly what i'm working on. everything has a due date, which is probably the most important part of the system... without it everything is sorta open-ended and can end up not getting the attention it deserves or takes up time that might be better spent on something else. combined with the ol' pomodoro timer and it's really an efficiency machine. i'm sold on this method.
each morning i spend an hour at work and that day's tasks. a warm up, 25 minutes of one topic, 5 minute break, and 25 of another. most days i end up doing another hour-long session in the afternoon/evening and some days i squeeze in a 3rd short session. i've been doing that for a few reasons: first is obvious, i want to learn this material. second is i find that if i do 2 sessions a day the material is way fresher when i sit down and it's been long enough since the last session that i've had a chance to absorb the material. 3rdly, repetition, repetition, repetition. there's no getting around this fact of music, a lot of what is learning is internalized through tons of repetition and multiple sessions are way more efficient than one long one... and i certainly don't feel like burning out.
and this has happened... well, at least to some degree. when i sit down with a metronome, jam track, or whatever, i very much feel the pulse in a way that i never did before and it feels outrageous. over the past several years i've certainly used a metronome a lot... as a tool to help learn tough passages and to learn the basics of rhythm, etc., but i've never used it in the same way i've recently been using it. i've been really just playing simple rhythmic figures at a steady tempo of 60-70BPM. i'll just sit with my eyes closed and play them over and over, using only one fret, and focusing on how each subdivision feels. at some point you really get to know the character of each one. this one is sturdy, that one is groovy... and that one is fonky.
i was playing along to a jam track... nothing terribly difficult, but some very staccato notes on syncopations that absolutely need to sit right. i had tossed it into Reaper to record for some self-evaluation and i did a few takes so i could comp a passable track... and uh...both were really close. each was one take straight though and both takes were, basically, equally as viable. to me it read as this: this is validation of my efforts. it is proof that the work that i've put in to my instrument is paying off. they're far from perfect takes, but they are very much in time and are very much consistent. when i saw the wave forms pop up and for the most part they looked like a copy/paste job i was a little taken aback. in the past i've definitely been a player that needed several passes and a whole mess load of punch-ins to fix botched lines. this time i recorded only twice, no stops, and there is no need to fix anything on either take. that is tangible progress.
okay, okay... i know i just blew my own horn for the past few paragraphs, but i think it's really important to recognize progress when you can and be proud of it. by my own measure i've come a long way and am absolutely following through on the promise to myself. it's nice to be able to actually see it sometimes.
