I like Scott and Stephen's back-and-forth / collaboration. I took an off-shoot of his personal challenge and tried Wild World by Cat Stevens, possibly because I was thinking Scott, Stephen. Anyways, it took all of a half hour. The walk up C Dm E sounds sweet with the standard arpeggiated bass side. My approach was chords in the left with doubled or singled notes in the right. The changes can be fast, which is nice for practicing playing without looking, even though the tempo is slow.

Keep up the inspiration, Sinkerr twins. It helps.

Awesome, thanks for checking it out, guys! Sagehalo, I'd love to see a vid of that, what a great tune...

lol I am here to sound terrible for YOU!! hahaha

I love Cat Stevens! I'd love to see/hear what you did with it! All of a half hour? You rock! And collaborating with Scott was a lot of fun--we'll be doing more! We're both trying like us all here to get more people Sticking with it, and we both love making music and mangling music and especially encouraging music. Thanks for the encouragement right back!

(I'm humming that guitar riff for Wild World now! Please share when you're ready!)

Jayesskerr,

This was greate, but you've gotta try Cat's in the Cradle for your next challenge! That would be awesome!

I might try it. lol I'm a very busy mad scientist! hahaha

The current challenge is to let myself 'forget' this bit of music and see just how my 'recall' works...

Awesome. I still retain it. Shaky as heck, and very, very delicate... Damn, I think I really like Beethoven...

Played through it a couple of times just now, and then hit it with the metronome.

50BPM - Check.
52BPM - Check.
54BPM - Check.
56BPM - Check.
58BPM - Check.
60BPM - Check.
63BPM - Check.
66BPM - Check.
69BPM - Check.
72BPM - Check.


Only took 20 minutes, and 72 BPM is where it really seems to fall apart. Now I goes through it again with the metronome, except maybe I'll do it two or three times per setting...

Okay, so where did the time go? It feels like I just slaved away at this Beethoven 9th Symphony like, 2 days ago... But lo and behold it was Sunday! Jeepers! I thought I hadn't played it for two days, but really it's been 3! Yikes! Not that anyone's gonna read this, but what the hell, might as well document it...

Anyways, I am glad to announce that I could still remember it, and a little quality time with a metronome yielded THIS;

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGPzdP-zMbU[/youtube]

Now, I didn't spend TOO much time with the metronome, but that's fine. I think I got it to a point where it'll be much, much easier to refine. Really only one major crash and burn, the next posting will be a lot better I think. Much less delicate and fragile, this piece may just survive despite my best efforts...

Here's what I'm gonna do (yes I'm obsessed) I'm gonna take it apart, bar by bar again. Only THIS time, it'll be a bar PLUS the 1st note of the next bar (Both hands of course)practiced, so stuff overlaps. Then we'll hit the piece in it's entirety with a metronome starting again at 50 BPM, and taking it as far as it goes.

I feel like memorization is not an issue, but rather the "recall" portion is... Anyways, good fun. Lemme know your thoughts, and yes it's still terrible playing lol Sorry, Ludwig.

Much better! On many levels.

I think the vantage point from the front is much, much better for us the viewer. I always think the eagle-eye view would be better because that's how I'm looking at the Stick when I'm playing, but the good old front view is still good. Now if you can move that camera around, like in Dan and Emmett's recent video (with Emmett doing Hotel Cally and finishing with La Mer), then you're taking it to the next level. I'm getting my 11-year old boy to be my camera man for my next video and we'll see how that works. I'll still set up a camera up front though. Good old, good old front view.

Sorry to tangent onto video stuff, but that's another hat we all wear as rocking musicians who like to show our stuff with rocking videos.

To the song, much smoother and tempo up now. Good job on that! If I'm ordering up what I want to see next on "Ode to Scott's Stick Joy," (you can steal that one, cheers!), I want to see some more work on dynamics. I don't exactly what you're supposed to do with that comment--it's just some shit my kids' piano teacher always tells them when they're coming along on their songs but are still worried about the notes. So just keep practicing that and it will all smooth out and then you can think more about dynamics. Also, you'll need to add a rainbow, if you can do that too--that'd be great!

No, good progress and keep Sticking with it!

lol Rainbows, got it! I'll be sure to add those! I am just getting ready to do some "Stick" practice so there will be another vid soon, not that anyone gives a rat's ass hahaha Thanks for checking it out, man!

Funny thing, this little piece, although far from being my favourite by a long shot, was selected because I thought easy win when in actuality it was something that was a bit beyond my actual ability. I stuck with it, and slogged my way through. I think I may have severely 'over-practiced' the various aspects, but that's fine.

Step 1 (I think) in learning a piece of music is just being able to remember it. The steps I took pretty much burned it into my DNA and i can remember every aspect of it at pretty much any measure, no sheet music required. Also, I have this little section of the neck that I am better acquainted with on the Stick... Plus all of my existing repertoire seems a bit more, ummm "with it". Hard to explain. And my guitar playing; Jeez. Every aspect of my guitar playing has improved over this year, yet I barely practice... Music is getting fun, really fun and I think it's because although I work very hard, and have a clear objective in mind, I have been "playing" more. Just having some fun, and that is super important. Play music, not "work" music... So yeah, this piece of music surprised me, and although it's at the level of your average 5 year old come recital time, It's exploding through my playing, and set a sort of precedent for future tunes...

Anyways, yesterday's practice served to get me warm and fuzzy with an increased tempo, and identifying a few recurring errors. Today, I'll try and polish it up a bit and speed it up more. That will be the main objective of today's practice, and then I guess I better get another piece ready to "learn in one day" eh?

As for the camera, I might experiment with some more angles, I do have more cameras and I could most definitely make a production out of my videos, but at the moment the content is not too great, hahah mostly just reference material for my blog on my website!So maybe until I do something cool I'll keep the vids as straight ahead ones, and work on my "from the headstock" views..

More to come!

My piano has gotten a lot better, too, especially my left hand, which I'm going to talk about and focus on in my day 260: All About That Bass video I'm working on tonight. Hopefully be up this weekend! And you know I preach about having fun--it's really the only reason we do all this crazy, elaborate, complicated, frustrating shit! (I know, I know...Great Art and all that. That too!)
No, you're right--this isn't anything to worry about getting fancy camerawork on. Like you said, front view and we're good. But for my 3rd Stick performance video, I'm going to try and overachieve on it. It's REAL easy to just say "F it! I'll do it live!!!!" (Bill O'Reilly) but it's also cool to do cool things. I'll work on doing some cool things.

Rock it out, Scott!