Autumn Leaves Therapy... · Marc's Jazz Guitar Academy

Autumn Leaves Therapy...

All right I hit a kind of a wall a few weeks back so for my one year anniversary at the JGA I decided to offer myself a Autumn Leaves therapy in the last 4 weeks...

My problem statement was simple: In improv I could get to 3 notes above but could not sound anything else then mechanical... and I was stressed of missing a change of making a bad note. So I got into AL therapy: play AL and improv everyday until I fix it...

I did internalize a bunch of insights from mentors in this adventure... the key one being:

1) Play the melody at multiple locations on the fingerboard... its all in the melody

2) Noodle around the melody... progressive evasions from it

3) 3rds and 1,2,3 notes from above... feel I can grab the tonic and 5th from the third

The big one... just trust my ears and let go after I got the rest under my fingers.

The result:

I can now put BIAB for a bunch of reps of the form and improvize truly and even give myself some challenge doing so - hit the 3rd, hit the 5ths, let go completly... fun is back, wall is broken.

Do I sound musical and good yet? Not really but it flows and I can build from there. Over is the stress of performance, just the fun of playing.

So here is a video, not the best of 20, just one I can do anytime... with different flubs and improv lines then the other one.

https://youtu.be/GzGLiBDZnVU

Thanks to all feedback along this first year and onward! I just need to practice more now ;-)

Cheers.

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Autumn Leaves Therapy...