Mon, 09 Oct 2006
I’ll be participating at the Auburn Bluegrass Festival on October 14th. First, I’m the musical director for the kids bluegrass band which we’re calling the "Placer County Porch Pickers" The PCPP consist of :
- Sean Robinson, Mandolin (Age 15)
- Alexus Lyons, Vocals (Age 16)
- Ben Anderson, Guitar (Age 16)
- Mehgan Lange, Vocals and Fiddle (Age 10)
- Josh Matthews, Guitar (Age 8)
I’m also going to be doing a guitar clinic at 1:00. The clinic is called "How to increase your bluegrass vocabulary" The title comes from something that John Moore said in a clinic I went to. He said "When I’m playing I’m not thinking of every single note that I’m playing just as when I’m talking I don’t have to think of every word in the sentence. I just have a concept of what I want to say and then I say it. When I’m soloing it’s sort of the same thing. I know where I want the solo to go and I play it but I’m not planning out every single note."
So I thought "Well that’s great John, we would all like to solo as easily as we speak. But how do you get to that point?"
Well I ended up developing a practice technique where I think of individual licks and phrases as my vocabulary words. I then specifially practice moving from one riff to another in a completly composed fashion (Not at all improvised) and from that I end up increasing my vocabulary enough that when I’m actually soloing I have this vast selection of "words" of riffs to pull from.
In my clinic I’ll be providing handouts with examples of riffs and how to build solos from them. I hope to see you there.
AND THEN, as if I’m not busy enough, I’ll be leading a slow jam at 5:00 at the bluegrass festival.
And speaking of slow jam. We’ll be having a slow jam at Music & More at 7:30pm this Tuesday. It should be fun.
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