1,300 Hours Later

[fearfeasog]

 

 

 

 

For what it's worth, I have always made the most progress when I've regularly played with others - preferably people who are more accomplished musicians than I am. People who push me out of my musical comfort zone.

 

I don't claim any universal truth here, but my OWN experience is that my musical progress has languished when I have spent all my time in my own house practicing, but taken quantum leaps forward when I've played regularly with more skilled musicians - even though that can be stressful and difficult.

 

 

hear hear! +1! spot on! and all those other loud and hearty agreements.

[JimLucas]

 

the cliche i keep reading is that maccann is like EC, but imho it is crane that is like ec....

I can see that the Crane is "like" the English because the natural notes are all in the internal columns while the accidentals are all in the two outer columns. But that's also true of the Maccann... well, except for that pesky D#. In fact, the Maccann layout is much more like the English in another way that's usually overlooked...

 

But when it comes to what it feels like to play them -- whether in general or for specific arrangements, -- the Maccann, Crane, and Hayden are much more alike than any of them are like the English. They even feel more like the Jeffries duet than like the English, in my experience.

[frogspawn]

I do have a metronome and now know I need to use it, both to achieve regularity when singing and for overall tempo when doing tunes. On the rare occasion when I have led a tune I have usually gone too fast.

 

How many BPM would be appropriate for a typical English tune session?

[adrian brown]

I do have a metronome and now know I need to use it, both to achieve regularity when singing and for overall tempo when doing tunes. On the rare occasion when I have led a tune I have usually gone too fast.

 

How many BPM would be appropriate for a typical English tune session?

 

I'm not familiar with an typical English tune session, but I suspect the question is a bit like asking "how long is a piece of string?". Using a metronome, at least in the way I suggested in my earlier reply, does not concern an absolute tempo, but has more to do with having an objective indicator of the regularity of your playing. In other words, it's fine to speed up and slow down if this is your intention - the problem is when you do it unconsciously at certain points in the tune, and using a metronome will brutally point this out :-)

Maybe I should start a new topic on 'using a metronome'?

 

Adrian

[Geoff Wooff]

 

 

Maybe I should start a new topic on 'using a metronome'?

 

Adrian

 

 

Perhaps it it Time for that!!!

[MatthewVanitas]

I made little progress on my Elise Duet for a few years, beyond some basic chording on the left and melody on the right, mostly playing alone. But this year I've been taking it to parties where the musicians attending will play some acoustic sets as the evening gets more chill, initially not so much because I was serious about concertina but more because most of my other instruments are too diatonic to keep up with a guitarist playing modern popular music. That got me some momentum, and now on my own I'm practicing about 45m a day on average, and learning a lot more about the instrument. That's also how I went from "Elise is plenty good for the long haul casual play" to "I need to upgrade as soon as possible!" in just a few months.

 

In a short amount of time I've learned that my old way of playing chords was way to ponderous, so doing more arpeggiated left hand. Also swiftly realizing that the whole "don't use the same finger for two consecutive buttons" thing is quite applicable. I'm doing a lot more deliberate transposing rather than the comfy rut of C, partially because the guitarist (unsurprisingly) wants to change keys more than I would on my own.

 

In solo practise I've been trying to do at least a basic version of pretty much any folk song that I now, just going through them one by one as they pop into my head.

 

Yesterday I went to a four hour band practice with a few friends, as we're trying to work up a set to play in local bars. A combination of the guitarist's own compositions (acoustic indie rock bits), a few R&B tunes, and a few bluesy Southern folkish tunes. In just that period I got a much better feeling for the importance of varying dynamics (which I don't much do alone), so I can build up into harmonies, swell and drop out on a chord (bandoneon-esque), etc. Having a lot of sudden revelations about adding deliberate dissonance for effect, which is something that doesn't always sound great playing alone but adds some great tension playing 9th chords, or 2d intervals, against the main progression.

 

The long/short of it is I sympathize with the feeling of not making sufficient progress over time, but given how at a few points in my life I've had similar flurries of learning based largely on serious study to expand my skillset, and by playing in sessions or ensembles, there is a clear way forward.

[frogspawn]

After posting this topic last November I gave up recording the time I spent practicing. Coincidentally I accumulated a lot of domestic pressures that reduced my available practising time very considerably, probably to less than an hour a week. Unexpectedly, this seems to have had very little impact on my playing ability. Sure, I have forgotten lots of tunes, but my 'actual playing' seems no worse. Indeed, learning to play the concertina seems to have proved rather like learning to ride a bicycle, which is surprising.

 

One thing I have done in the last six months is to get a lot more exercise (DIY, gardening, walking) and this has worked wonders in reversing musculoskeletal problems that had begun to make it difficult for me to play whilst standing, which is a prerequisite for my singing. So the domestic pressures may yet prove to be a boon.