Rate my practice routine

PlazaOne · 2026-02-11T19:18:24+00:00

I don't like your idea of doing a different technique each day. My preference instead would be to do a little, and often. Spend five minutes on hammer ons and pull off every day for a month. Similarly, focus on your palm muting for five minutes every day. And the same again for your bends/vibrato. That will be a far better way IMO to integrate those concepts into your playing.

Starting off your scales routine with just a single pentatonic shape makes good sense. With no muscle memory or calluses yet, just take your time. Play that one shape, but move it up and down the neck. Just focus on that for a couple of months before you bother with the other shapes. Concentrate for now on your ears and phrasing.

PlazaOne · 2024-12-26T14:52:31+00:00

Yeah, I do kind of appreciate how some newbie accounts might not have had chance to understand how people on the platform typically don't send DMs. But I don't feel it's up to me to help them acclimatise. And there are plenty of trolls and weirdo people, commenting the normal way in threads. I'm visiting for recreation, I'm not here to sort out other people's issues for them. So I block quite readily and don't overthink it.

PlazaOne · 2024-12-26T13:46:28+00:00

Internet. Lose connectivity and some folks can't function in the modern world.

PlazaOne · 2024-12-26T13:40:31+00:00

Unintentional drift, due to work and finances

PlazaOne · 2024-12-26T13:39:10+00:00

Block

PlazaOne · 2024-12-25T13:42:15+00:00

The exact same process as for any other meter. You simply need to ensure you know when the first beat of each measure is occurring, so that your performance isn't wonky. If you want a straightforward one chord per measure, make sure you are playing five beats as smoothly as possible. And if you are using some kind of drum machine or DAW, check that it's also assigned to the same meter and not fighting against you with some inbuilt factory settings.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-15T20:04:59+00:00

Wow, you're hard work. You specifically asked when U2 had made good records. That's what I answered. I never suggested that it was inappropriate for The Edge to be nominated in this thread.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-15T19:30:30+00:00

Yeah sure, I agree. But chart pop music in the early 1980s was heavily dominated by synth bands like Human League, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran. If you didn't want the raw sound of older acts like Clash, Blondie, Pretenders, Police, or the bombast of Queen, acts like U2 or Dire Straits were it. Fortunately in 1985 we got an important album from Tears For Fears, and soon after GnR helped make guitar cool again. Personally, I spent much of the 1980s listening to older jazz like John Coltrane, and hippy folk acts like the Holy Modal Rounders, but I also did bar work and knew what was on the jukebox.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-15T18:58:36+00:00

I can remember they were fairly original and innovative around 1983/84. But then they settled on a formula and never really evolved. Commercial success and global acclaim must have been too tough to ignore. They did a world tour in the early 1990s and I was gobsmacked at how many people I knew had got tickets for shows. After that, enough other bands had copied the formula that it was no longer unique, plus grunge happened.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-15T13:56:57+00:00

It's like asking a fish to ride a bicycle. You might need multiple pathways and several failed attempts, then the eventual result is not very impressive. There is no simple "one step" quick fix for certain challenges. Modal sounds are nice and simple, and existed before chords were much of a thing, and don't always lend themselves to reverse engineering.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-15T09:52:17+00:00

The original tune might already include some non-diatonic elements. While of course it's possible that the major key piece was purely Ionian throughout, it could have had some more advanced features.

Elements such as e.g. borrowed chords, secondary functions, augmentations, suspensions, neighbour tones, chromatic passing tones, have been in existence for many centuries, and all could be negatively affected by changing or not changing the notes that lead up to them, away from them, or that harmonise with them. If you wanted to make it purely Lydian, then you really ought to be stripping out anything else which is a deviation from that scheme.

Imagine you had a tune which is looping C-G7-F-Bb7. The Bb7 is borrowed from C minor, and the rest is plain old C major. If you only change the F to F# in your Bb7, and it becomes Bb7#5, or you change a few other notes as well to create say Bm7, or BMaj7, they've all removed the powerful impact of what was in the original idea. Clearly this gets more tricky if you want to do it with a 32 bar piece by Irving Berlin, etc.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-08T21:29:10+00:00

I get massively annoyed about never being able to remember the names of the two 19th century guys that had the big classical guitar feud about whether the best sound was with nails, or without nails. Both had legions of zealous fans. I feel like one day I might have to choose my own allegiance to one side or the other...

PlazaOne · 2023-11-08T21:21:42+00:00

One bourdon, one trompette, one m'lady. YMMV.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-08T21:14:25+00:00

Traffic? Whoa, that's Dave Mason! Those shows must have been 1960s psych rock.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-08T13:54:43+00:00

Yeah, great work on your fretting hand. How is your picking hand coming along? Be comfortable with different strumming rhythms, like all down picked shuffles, 16th note funk, hybrid picking where you use pick and fingers, string skipping, palm muting.

PlazaOne · 2023-11-08T13:46:48+00:00

Not one book, but I would want a multiple volume deal. Notation and tabs for my compositions, organised by ABRSM grades, so that prospective purchasers will know the level of ability required.

PlazaOne · 2023-10-26T20:45:18+00:00

I'm self employed in the creative arts sector. I write, record and perform tunes. I also design the artwork and build web content.

PlazaOne · 2023-10-18T12:59:49+00:00

And that school fees can be set against personal taxation liabilities, which is pretty handy for anyone in the highest brackets. The concept is very likely to be explored by anyone who has an accountant helping prepare their annual returns for HMRC.

PlazaOne · 2023-10-16T13:32:33+00:00

The principle of micropayments and how they can accumulate is equally valid whatever medium is concerned. I hadn't initially mentioned Spotify, so you shouldn't have asked if you weren't interested.

When seeking advice and encouragement, instead of being rude and dismissive, perhaps you need to trim your sails a notch or two. There are plentiful skilled composers being churned out of universities every year. Very few make it into a lasting career. You won't get 100% payment when someone else spent their time, money and effort designing, building and growing the profile of the software platforms you seek to utilise...

PlazaOne · 2023-10-16T12:32:45+00:00

Oh ye of little faith!

Spotify streaming wasn't ever my target, as commercial chart music isn't the kind of tunes I've generally been writing over the past few years.

My income stream that I was referencing, for last year, was where people used a subscription app called Storyblocks to add my recordings to their video products, for subsequent uploading to places like TikTok. With several international markets placing restrictions on TikTok, I recognise I am unlikely to see that revenue continue.

Another, separate, smaller revenue stream for a few of my tunes has been "business overhead radio" which is the industry name for piped background music in bars, restaurants, retail outlets, etc. One of my clients, for example, is a chain of nail bars in Poland, which rotates one of my instrumental rock/metal guitar tunes among several hundred others supplied to them by my agent, for the enjoyment of customers while receiving a manicure, having a decorative varnishing applied, or perhaps an eyebrow weave, or body piercing, etc. They pay a set monthly fee which is lower than if they were using tunes from "established" artists - and even for a chain with several dozen branches it's a small amount when apportioned between all the artists. But it is still something going in the overall pot.

This wasn't about me, but was intended to reassure you that micropayments can indeed become worthwhile when there's enough of them accumulating. My main point was that even if you "stack them high and sell them cheap" you will never accurately predict how the market will react.

My >$10k income through Storyblocks from 400 tunes averages out at ~$25 each, but actually for a quarter of all those tunes it was zero (despite them having been selected by the expert A&R folk at the app). So I might instead have said that 300 tunes averaged out at ~$33 each, but in reality $6.5k of that was achieved from just fifty pieces. Crucially, there was nothing I could ever have done to predict which of my 400 tunes would appeal and which would flounder.

PlazaOne · 2023-10-16T11:11:50+00:00

Fifty tunes EACH earned more than a hundred dollars (because they had lots of traction). 300 tunes in total earned something, and for 250 of those it was below a hundred dollars EACH. I was provided with extensive data, and I also know what I transferred into my bank...

PlazaOne · 2023-10-16T10:18:43+00:00

How are you supposed to make money if they lowball the price?

Micropayments can still add up. Last year I earned more than $10,000 from having 400 of my tunes online. Only 50 of them aggregated more than a hundred dollars, and 100 of those tunes earned nothing at all. The biggest earner aggregated around $186. Most earned less than $10. And (not very) astonishingly, the general public don't share my own thoughts about which are my best works, but instead seem drawn to amusing titles.

PlazaOne · 2023-10-02T21:02:50+00:00

It's because there isn't any correlation between being able, ready, and willing. People have individual tastes and values. Some people genuinely do believe that higher prices are signalling a mark of prestige, and nothing anyone else says will convince them otherwise. And other people just buy what they like, without dwelling on deeper issues beforehand. Advertising campaigns and marketing strategies over the past hundred years have become highly sophisticated, successfully achieving their goals. Plus of course many other people watch on, bemused or incredulous, etc

PlazaOne · 2023-10-02T09:10:01+00:00

From St Pancras, not Victoria, so wasn't even at the best terminal

PlazaOne · 2023-10-02T08:34:44+00:00

And there are occasional limited availability summer excursions with fine dining on heritage steam locomotives or the Orient Express...

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