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What are your musical goals for 2011?


3shiftgtr

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Posted

What do you plan on getting better at? What are your guitar/music goals for 2011?

 

How are you gonna go about achieving your goal?

 

 

HAPPY FREAKIN' NEW YEAR my fine feathered HCLL guitar junkies!!!!!!!!:thu:

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My first goal is to selfishly devote at least an hour a day to playing/practicing guitar. I know its not a lot, but with work and a young family I have to be pretty economical. I use time constraints as my excuse for not progressing as a musician. IF I force my self to hold the guitar more often I can start thinking about more tangible goals.

Next step will be repertoire - Classic Blues/Jazz Jams & Campfire songs.

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I am putting an hour day - some days it's more specific practice, some days it's more running through songs already in my repertoire or just noodling around with different chords / arpeggios and such. Like bigboy78 - I have work and 2 kids (ages 4 and 6), so time is tight.

 

Goals - improve my skills, both technically and musically, expand my music theory knowledge, jam more with friends and possibly start sitting in with a band on a stage... never done that yet. I don't really want to be a PART of a band at this time - I can't commit the time for practice and gigs and all that, but I am not ruling out possibility of that in the future.

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I want to be able to play what I can play in the shed, on the stage.

 

I would love for this to be the year where I make that transition.

 

Technical goals: bending and phrasing that doesn't make me wince when I listen to it.

 

GaJ

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Leave the window or door open though, or nobody at the gig will be able to see you :) .

 

I think you meant:

 

 

"I want to be able to play on the stage what I can play in the shed."

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I'm going to get re-acclimated The Grateful Dead this year. Each year I pick an artist or two or a specific style/genre to delve into as my new years resolution, this year it's The Dead.

 

I was a fan in the 70's but stopped listening to live recordings all together in the early 80's which pretty much meant I stopped listening to TGD. The catalog is so huge by now though that it's always been a very overwhelming thought to get back into them. But with music.myspace.com and the Dead's Sirius channel I have a couple of good resources. Towards the end of the year, once I'm caught back up, I plan on visiting a few Deadhead friends and letting them take me deeper.

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I want to finish studying one book. This year I wanted to study Shred Guitar, Speed Mechanics, and 2 Blues books, and didn't do a thing.

I did practice quite a bit, but focused more on learning more in-depth about recording and mixing.

Tomorrow I'll outline a plan for my goals, with step-by-step tasks, and I'll post it here. They say if goals are made public one works harder to achieve them :)

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Keep writing and recording. Make an effort to release an album, we've certainly got enough material.

 

On a technical level, I just need to do everything better. One quality all my favourite players have is "Authority" and I don't hear that in my playing. I think this quality comes from command of the instrument, command of the groove, and absolute faith in what they're playing. So, I need to keep plugging away at every single aspect to get there.

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I was just going to post this same thread! I'm not sure yet, but I'm thinking:

 

1) Continue working on sight reading - specifically, be comfortable reading the higher registers.

2) Build jazz and classical repertoire - this will help with goal #1. I need to pick a number (20 jazz standards, 5 classical pieces or something).

3) Work on chord tone soloing, and learn to keep the chord progression going in my head as I solo. I normally focus all my attention on the solo, not the song.

4) Complete one instrumental song - I have a million things half written, but I need to finish. I normally write lyric-based music, so writing an instrumental is challenging. Finishing one would be very satisfying and a great learning process.

5) Continue to practice every day - I did really well last year getting my hands on the guitar almost every day. I want to continue with that.

 

That might be too many goals, I tend to do better with one big thing than lots of little ones. Easier to keep focus.

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I intend to write more. For me, that's a frustration. I don't take enough time to write because I keep getting distracted by tasks that are more "immediate".

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My goal this year it to get an album or originals completed. I have spent far too long playing for other people or playing other peoples music. This is the year I want to begin working on me.

 

From a practice perspective; I want to build some jazz repertoire, specifically continue to expand on my chord voicings. Mostly though I really want to focus on phrasing - adding some space between my lines... I feel pretty comfortable with notes but not so much with rests during a solo. I need to understand this on deeper levels.

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I decided to keep it very simple, and here it is.

I'm going to study Shred Guitar, by Paul Hansen.

Shred Guitar

 

It's a 10-week program combining theory and practice.

If you don't mind, I would like to post weekly updates just to make myself accountable.

 

Once I finish, I'll start Don Latarski's Blues Guitar

Blues Guitar

 

Don has a way of explaining things that I really enjoy. When I bought the book the audio CD was damaged and Don himself kindly sent me a CD he burned with the audio files.

 

Best of luck to everyone with their goals, and best wishes for 2011 :)

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1. Make as much progress as I did in 2010. I've only been playing 10 months, and I'm amazed at how far I've come, but I want more, and after that I want even more.

 

2. Develop confidence in my ability. I don't have a band or anything and I'm not in a position to get one due to my location. I play stuff to my best mate over the phone and always apologise before I play, and he always asks why? If I play over the phone to family it's the same, so no more apologies I'm just gonna play to the best of my ability. I want to get over my nerves.

 

3. Related to 2, develop a few acoustic songs and play to family and friends when I visit home for a good old sing song.

 

4. Write music for one of the many lyrics I have scattered about my living room.

 

5. Stop buying guitars.

 

6. Be more disciplined with my music reading.

 

7. Learn one full song per month (depending on difficulty), transcribing it myself so it's unique to me. It may not be a perfect copy, but it'll be mine.

 

8. Learn everything I can about that fretboard thing, every note, the notes that make chords, the position of every chord. I know this could take years, but I really want to be able to do what I want and know what and why I'm playing something.

 

Thats pretty much it, it's a lot but I know what I need to focus on:thu:

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All in all I think I need to keep up what I've been doing - It's so fun to experience personal development - and to keep pushing it further. I'd also like to be able to hang with those Jazz cats with their standards. Not all of them, but at least enough to not make myself look like a total chump and wing it. "ready for jazz" as they say. That's going to mean hitting the books, obviously...

 

- more song writing

- more shows

- more dynamic phrasing/voicing/runs

- more familiarity with chord form/positions across the entire fret board

 

Considering that I've reigned in my soloing to be cut down, slow and phrasey - let it loose, a little at a time.

 

How? Continued commitment to practice, practice, practice.

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Took a look at the Paul Hansen book in Amazon just now, looks like a good one!

 

Yes. I like it because it also includes a theory section, fingering patterns, and quite a bit of Blues.

I guess that using "Shred" in the title might draw more readers :)

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Get into Berklee. Attend Berklee. Do not fail out of Berklee.

 

All my friends seem convinced that I'll get in. I'm pretty confident, but not cocky. I mean, I'm a pretty good guitarist. I am at least somewhat competent in all technical areas of the guitar. I know music theory pretty well. I can improvise well, and my ear's...not the best, but I'm usually at least close to the note. Which is a big improvement, seeing as I used to be practically tone-deaf.

 

 

But I am far from the best guitarist in the world.

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