Explore!

Tuesday, March 3, 2020 by Gary Johnston | 21-Day Challenge

Welcome to Day 17 of the 21-Day Challenge!


Today I want you to put away your books and just pick up an instrument or sit at a keyboard or a drum kit, even an instrument you've never played before, and EXPLORE.

Blow into a recorder, a trombone, a sax or trumpet. Play a hand drum, shakers, a tambourine. Blow a kazoo. Pluck a banjo. Find a drum or keyboard app on your phone and play at work or on the bus.

Explore the ranges of the instrument. Tinkle the high keys, pound on the low ones. Bend a string. Rap on the sides of a drum or ukulele. Stop and listen to extraneous street noise and play along with passing traffic. Whistle back to the birds, scream back at the crows. Wear a different shoe on each foot and clump around the house.

Above all else, LISTEN. ENGAGE.

10 Minute Practice

Monday, March 2, 2020 by Gary Johnston | 21-Day Challenge

Got just 10 minutes to practice? Try this.


#1 - Warm-up - 1 minute


#2 - Intention - focused work - 7 minutes


#3 - Free creativity - 2 minutes

End on a high note!

Improvisation

Friday, February 28, 2020 by Gary Johnston | 21-Day Challenge

These past couple of days I've been working on my improv. 

What?! Isn't improv just made up as you go along.

Yes, but mostly no.

There are a lot of parameters to consider when improvising. Things like:

  • What key are you in?
  • What are the chords most common to that key?
  • What scales may be associated with the key and it's chords.
  • Plus many other things as you get more and more advanced.

For the beginner, no matter what the instrument, you can just add the odd "extra" note here and there to a piece you can already play to augment the melody or insert a scalar run or add notes to the harmony (accompanying chord) to add colour to the sound OR remove notes from the melody or harmony.

You can play the I, IV and V7 chords in the LH (piano) and improvise in the RH eg: in the key of C the chords will be C, F and G7 and you can use notes from the C major scale (the white keys) to build a melody.

If you know the blues scale find a backing track on YouTube and play along on the uke or piano.

Keep it light. Keep it fun!

PS: We've made it "over the hump" of our 21-Day Challenge. Congratulations! Keep up the amazing work.