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Time Bandit!
That’s my varied musical interests and attempts at learning all of them at once. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first I have a question about practicing lessons after moving on to the next week’s challenges.
I get the keep moving and not worry about perfection approach and benefits, but I would like to get these lessons down. I watched and played with each of the 3 blues lessons on the first day and now put in at least 10 minutes on each for the rest of the week. I would like to keep honing them as I progress through the rest of the 30 Day program and onward. Now at the start I can find the time and am motivated to keep working on them, but obviously as the lessons and skills pile up, if I spend 10 minutes reviewing each plus the day’s allotted 10 minutes, it would soon take over my life. LOL.
Advice?
I’ve been playing for a few years now since restarting after a 30 year break and a big problem is deciding what to work on, hence this course’s appeal. It gives me that focus and direction.
I want to learn a wide variety of styles, and have dabbled in many and learned some songs. As I’ve added repertoire over time, it’s been hard to keep moving forward on any of them. So I don’t lose what I have, I try to play through what I know, but now rarely take time to learn new things in any of them. This now means a couple a hours each day or an hour here and there over several days. I keep my guitar(s) in reach at all times, so I can grab it and play whatever moves me at any time. Which I absolutely love, but again, not moving toward greater knowledge or skills on any of the various styles and instruments I want to play. I often think I should let go of all but one and focus on that, but I’m old, LOL, I don’t have that much time left to spend a few years on each and then go to the next.
I have thought of setting a day each week for each of the types of music/instrument, but so far I haven’t followed through which is probably due to the ADHD that underlies this broad array of goals/desires. I need to apply Tony’s approach somehow to make that schedule a reality.
I think I could put in an hour a day on top of the time I put into this course, as well as an hour running through the songs I know, if I can make myself create that plan. But then to go back to my original question, as the time adds up on this, I’m back at the overwhelmed point.
I’d love to hear from Tony on this.
FYI, I play flat pick acoustic country/folk/bluegrass, fingerpicking folk/blues, bottleneck blues, electric blues and country, and lap steel in Hawaiian, Country/Western Swing, and Blues.
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2 Replies
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There is no easy answer to this issue. I have tried to come up withz a sustainable system to keep a repertoire current. Many true performers who play for a living have the same problem. But with all this North Star analysis and some contemplation on Comparative Thinking one has to ask himself why do you care? How many songs do you need in a playlist. Perhaps you could try building a playlist each quarter by season. There is Christmas, St. Patty’s, Spring Buegrass, Summer Blues, Fall Folk. You can change it up each years cycle. Truthfully, no one really want to hear us play for hours on end. Even at a Bluegrass or Folk jam 10 songs will be more than enough. TAC can cycle through 4 benchmark songs. Norwegian Wood, Sweet Home Chicago, I Can See Clearly Now, Folsom Prison Blues, Landslide, Friend of the Devil. That’s a good start.
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I think you can spend as much time on each lesson as you want. The 10 minute deal is mostly just to keep one progressing. For me personally, I spend about 10% of my playing time on TAC daily Challenges. The rest is my time to play songs, work on new songs, or just goof around with my guitar.
I’ve probably forgotten more songs than I know. I don’t really have a playlist per se either. I do have a large binder of songs that I refer to often. I love coming back to a song that I had kind of forgotten about. Almost like meeting an old friend again. I’m always working on something new though. Often I don’t even finish learning a new song as I tend to get bored and loose attention. I’m sure it’s my ADHD coming out as well. I couldn’t just play a few songs over and over and over again. That’s also what I like about TAC. Something different every week.
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