Office Hours with Jason / August 2023

I need a plan for improving Call & Response

• If it’s hard to learn the full “call” then slowly learn each note. Keep rewinding the track and listening.
• It’s a painstaking process at first. But it’s a good way to develop the skill of playing by ear.
• Another idea is to download the track and import into tempo adjust app like ASD.
• Try to sing the call instead of playing it. The goal is to develop a mental model.
• Sue says
  • it’s a lot of work to learn a tune
    • sing the tune
  • uses a recorder and slows it down
    • what app do you use?
• Tom says
  • there are apps that tell you if you’re wrong
  • how much looking at tuner
• Pete says:
  • To Tom’s question, I’d say it helps to learn the intervals in a scale – major second, minor third, etc. – and then just let them sink in through lots of practice. Figuring out melodies in your head can also help (ie, converting a favorite Beatles song or whatever it might be) to sheet music in your mind.
• Associate intervals with a song
• The tonedear.com website, free, just identifying intervals by ear, helped me a lot. Just a few minutes at night while I fall asleep. Then, listen for intervals in tunes.

Can you give me some tips for navigating my way through jam sessions?

• On the first rotation of a song at a jam/session, just listen…
• Learn simple chords
• Practice ear-training with call-and-response tracks and other apps like Tonedear.
• Ask people in advance what tunes are played. If you don’t have time to learn any of them, just make a playlist and listen.
• Play a long-term game.
  • Record the session. Then listen to it later.
  • Try to learn at least one song
• Tom says 2 types of jams
  • everyone has ipads
  • no one has any sheet music

It’s challenging to go from low second to third finger on the G string. What can I do?

• Bring the elbow in
• If it’s still difficult or painful, then try using the 4th finger. GL2-4 instead of GL2-3.
• This is a link to a free pdf of a book of wrist, hand and finger exercises for viloinists: https://ia902607.us.archive.org/19/items/wardjacksonsgymn00warduoft/wardjacksonsgymn00warduoft.pdf

What strings do you use? How do you choose?

• Dominant G, D, A. Pirastro E.
• Learn more here: Recommended Fiddle Gear

How do I keep myself motivated to practice? Does the two-minute rule really work?

• Obviously, I haven’t tried it. I am hard on myself – it’s 30 minutes or nothing!
• —
• The two-minute rule trains you to do it every day.
• But in order to succeed, you eventually need to practice more.
• I suggest 20-25 minute sessions followed by a break. You can get a lot done in that time.
• Learn more here: The Practice Challenge of Fiddling

I’m having trouble getting back into the rhythm of playing after having a month with very little practice time

• Find a skill that you previously learned and put it back on the workbench.
• This helps you get over the intermediate blues. [[The Ultimate Intermediate Pitfall]]

How tight or loose should I have my bow, and any suggestions on rosin?

Any more ideas for playing faster on tunes?

• In general, am now in the 120 – 130 bpm range but would really like to be in the 150 -160 bpm (where quarter note = 1 beat)
• —
• Record yourself playing with a metronome at your fastest speed.
• Listen back. Where do you stumble.
• Isolate those hard parts, then speed them up past the target tempo.
  • So if your goal is 150 bpm, try to get these to 160 bpm.
• Speed up scales past your target
  • Aim to go much further with this. If your target for a tune is 150 bpm, then speed up the scale to 180-200 bpm.
• Play the tune extremely slow with metronome. This is the Jedi Knight way to play faster.

What would be a good daily practice to better develop Accompaniment and Improvisation?

• Accompaniment
  • Learn and master D, G, A chords.
  • Then learn and play backup on 20 songs that only use those chords.
  • This trains you in the basic practice of backup.
  • After that, it will be easier to add other chords and more complex progressions.
• Solos for jams and open mic?
  • Learn the melody of a song
  • Then fiddle with the melody. Add variations, compress or expand the melody, fill the spaces.
  • Start by composing solos.
    • Record then listen.
    • Repeat this process, refining your ideas after each pass.