Music and Songwriting/Max Fram-Schwartz

We're still working on strumming but he's travelling so we're adding an audio playlist and a hitlist to make it easy to practice on the run and move forward without time for dedicated practice

ambient social with more than words

20 minute flash practice session

Asynchronous mutual practice

Hook-Line-Anchor teaching principle

The LA tree

= Old Notes = Plan for Max's Intensives

6/8 strumming songs

Gravity and Daughters by John Mayer

The goal is to build a sense of balanced musical development. You will find some areas are more difficult for you than others, but you will also be able to evaluate which of these things matters most to you can focus on them in the future. For the time being I recommend you follow your instinct about what you like but also be willing to do some things you're not excited about because I recommend them as helpful in your learning process.

General categories of stuff we're going to cover

Music learning techniques (chunking, hitlist, etc.)

Technical Vocabulary (picking patterns, licks, etc)

Abstract Awareness of the style (improvisation, theory, etc)

Performance Prep (practice habits, polishing ethic, motivation tactics, etc)

I have some questions I would like answered through this process and I will be reducing the cost of your lessons conditionally on the accomplishment of certain realizations on my part. I know this is a bit abstract, but I think I need to leave it open so that it remains in your interest to think creatively as we move through this process. The two major things I want to get out of this process are…


 * 1) 1 A sense that I have evaluated a technique of students logging their practice that is both motivating to them and helpful to other students who follow the same path


 * 1) 2 A sense that I have evaluated a model of collaborative learning where some combination of self-instruction combined with teacher guidance produces a better result than could be achieved without blending both methods

At the end of the process I'd like to make at least one recording of something we've worked on, so be thinking as we go of what piece we should do that with. I'd like it to be something we can demonstrate the gamut of things we worked on with.

I am having a difficult time visualizing the exact beginnings and ends of our path, so I'm going to propose a general process. We're going to…


 * 1) 1 Pick a song or two we are focusing on


 * 1) 2 Work on techniques for chunking and mastering the songs


 * 1) 3 Exercises that establish better techniques for playing that song


 * 1) 4 Improvisations which expand and explore the techniques in the song.

Whenever we change the song we're working on, we're going to go through this process again.

Right now, we have “Fire and Rain” and “Don't Think Twice, It's Alright” at the top of the list. As soon as that is finished I'm going to suggest we go to one of these…

The Boxer

Homeward Bound

Landslide

Close to the end, I'll suggest you pick a branch-off song to start moving you into your next phase before you get burnt out on Travis picking songs.

I think I should be ready to start Monday in earnest. Sound good?

Caged open shapes moving to different frets with travis picking

using open travi chords to teach chord chalans

There are 2 stroke and inverted 2-stroke patterns

Hypothetical outline of technical stuff

Fundamental stroke exercise

Very simple hybrid position improvisation

Pattern rudiments; displacement scale

Phases we went through;

Working on just songs

breaking one chord down into a structured improvisation

it had 3 phases, then 5, then we focused on musically building the tension

we took homeward bound and playing it with different travis patterns

we talked about the common travis patterns and how to build them

we started with the finger rhythm and the most common string placement

then we added a drone bass, then the original pattern

next I'll encourage him to modulate it over chords

then change the fingers he uses to a more free set over the same rhythm

then add common rhythmic variations (snaps)

finally start fusing it with other patterns we have developed

setting up cycle or non-cycle

using phrasing and melodic cadences

indian dwelling idea

mugham free rhythm

A/B 4 cycle intro

pedal mukra before position shift, adding notes on another string to reshttps://youtu.be/ya9vCmjnDQwolve deadness of doubling

Chord chalans open string boxes picking etc.

Sound of Silence – Use opening improv as solos or extended improv in the middle

Blowin' in the wind – Variations with basslines

Landslide -

Dust in the Wind – added the snap, talea

Homeward Bound – Pattern variations

Fire and Rain

rather than forcing speed drills, do more songs with similar technique and save speed drills for certain advanced tempi or major jumps

finger placement

drones, pinches and alternates

stock patterns

Dust in the wind, the first snap

walking basslines

Playing small structured solos

Playing variations and understanding their impact

Warm-Up into improvisation

chord words, brush chords with word trigger

4-stroke bass songs

John Prine songs – In Spite of Ourselves, Jesus; The Missing Years, Let's Talk Dirty in Hawaiian

Blowin' in the Wind

Country Roads

Don't go back to the beginning, it's a disease

handles, contextualization

Using Country roads as a 4 stroke etude. Change the fingering with a capo and work it out again.

Value of practicing at different speeds

Short forms to focus on transitions

patterns, ripples, repair mechanisms

the goal is to develop a constant evolution of creative ideas. There should be a rapid-fire never-ending self-sustaining loop of creative input. Kindle a fire.

Students can be trained in your method and reduce the price of lessons if they turn in reports on KPI of each method. Students can also receive cost reduction by filling out reports on songs they've studied and adding organizational ideas to the system.

Web editing, KPI reports, links and reviews, transcriptions,

different ways of approaching a song; for record exactness to expand vocab

to learn a specific lick

to take as an abstraction of an exercise

singer songwriter music is not

such great heights has a swing, hammer, 4 stroke, syncopated patterns

simplify while singing and playing, makes it easier to sing and play, saves the fancy stuff for when it gets attention

different forms of the a minor walkdown,

The Boxer,

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Revisiting all this stuff

New plan

Mastering/Revising the “How to Learn Music” Sequence

Curating performance

Sight-reading/party environment playing

write notes on the logging system

Record your half of “More Than Words”

Phase in “Your Body is a Wonderland”

Phase in sight reading

did you update your log?

did you update your song list

20.2.2017

Testing community hypotheses

Marking times on processes?

How to involve students?

What’s the next move with the piano?

John Mayer Love song for no one – jump on horse with strumming patterns

talked about making a database with pedagogical organization features

Ask Max about integrating what he has done with a Wikiversity course?

Sequenced love song patterns

make a sample of the kind of Wiki page you mean

Played all 5 songs, move to hitlist