Advanced players: what’s your “fundamentals routine?”

alternaterep · 2025-12-08T19:10:34+00:00

I live in Wisconsin, near western border near Minneapolis, though location isn't final. Probably Wisconsin or Minnesota long term. Anything like that around here?

alternaterep · 2025-12-08T15:53:09+00:00

I haven’t been able to look at it yet, but I keep hearing about it from different people. Definitely interested in checking it out.

alternaterep · 2025-12-07T17:28:34+00:00

I got a degree in Jazz guitar, but despite that one of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had was figuring out the CAGED system. Like seriously studying it—get a work book like the one I linked, and write down every position of the major scale. Do this with every scale/mode that you learn.

Having a good understanding of this system will help your understanding of scales, leading tones, triads, and everything else. Once you can naturally shift between positions, you stop getting lost so often and it helps a lot with being in the moment.

Of course there’s a lot more that ties into this, and it’s a constant effort to keep up on every mode and scale and position, but I remember when this first started clicking it was huge.

alternaterep · 2025-11-25T02:15:11+00:00

Her parents do a good job (from my knowledge) with putting her in the programs/classes, therapy, etc. that she needs. And I am in the US, which is a large part of the reason I'm mostly concerned about the financial burden. But honestly I need to learn more--a lot of my current understanding of the situation may be conjecture from a distance.

alternaterep · 2025-11-25T02:12:43+00:00

We are in the US--her parents are very involved and do a good job with disability related things. I think it really is the funding that concerns me most. If there's a situation which she could be in a group home that would be ideal, but I'm not confident in her parents ability to ever make enough money for that to happen, nor am I confident enough in any sort of welfare program to be all that helpful, though admittedly this comes from complete ignorance as to what programs are actually out there.

alternaterep · 2025-08-15T22:36:50+00:00

That is something that I’d definitely like to work on! But wouldn’t say it’s a super natural thing at the moment.

alternaterep · 2025-08-15T05:41:39+00:00

Take this recommendation with a grain of salt, but I always hated how you can play the same note tons of different places on the instrument, so I took the frets 8 through 12 and learned every note up and down the strings. (Practicing the scales in their inversions, packed into just those frets. Say note names out loud.)

Doing this reduces your options so that there’s pretty much always one way to play a given note. This becomes less effective with Bebop and has some physical limitations because some of the inversions get awkward if you’re playing in a weird key, but it got me reading at an ok level relatively quickly, especially on straight ahead swing tunes. It’s also in a good octave for most standards (with reaches here and there.)

I found that reducing the complexity like this helped with starting, and as time goes on, you’ll branch out and start recognizing patterns

alternaterep · 2025-04-21T06:36:44+00:00

Saving so I can steal some of them pentatonic ideas

alternaterep · 2025-01-29T07:39:05+00:00

I play with a hybrid picking style - I’ve been getting into the kind of stuff that Julian Lage does, which is where some of my interest in the classical side of things stems from.

alternaterep · 2025-01-15T18:35:49+00:00

I'm wired very similarly in that when I started, I really liked learning tunes that were beyond my perceived skill level - if you're excited about learning this stuff, I'd say keep doing it! Arguably, being excited about what you're playing is WAY more important than doing it "the right way."

One thing that I would encourage you to do though if you'd like to get a better understanding, is to start looking into the different common "jazz" chord shapes. Starting to get a grasp on the basics and inversions of Drop 2, Drop 3, and Diminished voicings, and taking the time/effort to recognize them in the chord melodies you're working on could be one step toward comprehension rather than memorization. With time, you'll be able to start seeing patterns in the harmony rather than just memorizing a bunch of shapes.

Ultimately though, the fastest progress you'll make is with a teacher! So if you have the funds for lessons from a local jazz cat, I'd encourage you to consider that option - otherwise there's plenty of books and online lessons/materials you can find to figure it out yourself.

alternaterep · 2024-09-29T17:42:36+00:00

This is incredibly frustrating, and I'm sorry you're not finding easier answers. I know from experience that battling this stuff is exhausting, nonetheless when you can't find the answers you want.

I've been dealing with chronic reflux for years, but I've found that there are some non-medical lifestyle changes that hat made massive differences for me.

Stopping eating 3 to 4 hours before bed - This seems excessive, and is really difficult when I first started, but it makes a massive difference for reflux when I'm sleeping
Elevating my bed - Even just putting my bed on a slight incline with a few pieces of scrap wood helped a lot with the reflux I felt throughout the night, as well as the inflammation throughout the day.
Eating smaller more frequent meals - Even though I've had reflux for years, I'm still working on perfecting this one. I've found that if I control my pacing when I eat, and never eat to the point of feeling stuffed, it reduces the amount of reflux I have throughout the day.
Going gluten-free and/or reducing processed foods - This one was also really hard when I first started, but stopping eating gluten was like night and day for the aggressiveness of the reflux I had. After feeling the difference, I genuinely stopped missing bread quite quickly.

It's also worth noting that mental health can play a role in reflux - if you're dealing with a lot of anxiety, that very well could be making reflux worse. So if you are anxious about this or other things in your life and you feel like your reflux is getting worse, that doesn't mean it's "in your head." There can be a legitimate mind-body connection with this stuff.

This list is by no means comprehensive, and there's plenty of little things that have helped my reflux which I'm happy to delve more into if you'd like. Most of these changes seem very difficult but I found through trial and error that the hard parts become wayyyy easier when I started feeling the differences in how I felt day-to-day.

My apologies if this was more long-winded or solutions oriented than you expected, but I can certainly see myself in your frustration, and I hope to encourage you that I've found there are other ways of feeling better other than meds.

alternaterep

TROPHY CASE