Development blogs

Week 1

I have studied frequencies on various different youtube videos. I have learned that every instrument in the mix needs its own space. Kick drum and bass guitar are the low end, guitars and keys are mid range and cymbals are the top end.

I now feel my timing has improved on guitar (As seen on development plan) I can now be in the pocket with a metronome without slightly speeding up or slowing down.

I have started to put jazz songs together in a playlist

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

For my ear training I have worked on my single note hearing

Week 2

I have now started listening to jazz alot and I am now picking up an ear for it.

I am trying out mixing my own ideas and I feel like my ear is getting better for hearing where everything should be in the mix

I am now starting to see slight improvements on my alternate picking. I now feel comfortable

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

For my ear training I have worked on my 3rd intervals hearing (major or minor)

Week 3

This week wasn’t as productive but I have studied altered chords for my jazz playing.

Altered chords

For a C7 and possible extensions the tones are

1 3 5 b7 9 11 13

C E G Bb D F A

And possible alterations are the b5, #5, #9, #11, #13.

This is what makes an altered 7 chord.

To improve my technique I learned ‘Always with me always with you’ by Joe Satriani

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

Week 4

I am now looking at drum sounds, since we are recording our single I think it would be useful to know about drum sound. I looked at how you can pan parts of the drum kit to where they actually are on the kit to make it sound like its in the room.

I also looked at half whole and whole half diminished scales and how they are used in a jazz blues context. I leaned. Often in jazz blues on the 4th bar of the first chord an altered chord will be used to build to the 4 chord. Depending on the intervals of the altered chord you can use either the half whole or whole half scale to match the intervals and give a jazzy sound.

To work on my technique I have worked on my bending intonation.

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

For my ear training I have worked on my major minor and dominant 7 hearing

Week 5

I studied a 2-5-1 progression today. This is used in jazz often. It is played as a 4 bar phrase. For example. A 2-5-1 in the key of D would be Em-A-D. The 2 and 5 will be played for one bar and the 1 chord will be played for 2 bars.

To work on my technique I watched Paul Gilberts intense rock instructional video on youtube and have now noted for next week what to practice from that video

I have learned how to dial a good guitar sound to study my sound side of things. The guitar live ideally needs mids to cut through is what I’ve learned.

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

For my ear training I have worked on my inversion hearing

Week 6

I have learned the chord progression to ‘Autumn leaves’ for my jazz playing (as seen on my development plan page)

Technique wise I have started the intense rock workouts

For sound I have looked at how drums were recorded on ‘when the levee breaks’ by Led Zeppelin. They were recorded in a big room with loads of natural reverb.

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

Week 7

I have looked at how compression works. It gets anything too high or low in frequency to compress in more for a tighter and more professional sound

I have practiced the same as last week in jazz because of lack of time.

For my technique I have watched John Pertucci’s Rock Discipline to pick up ideas for next weeks routine

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

For my ear training I have worked on my altered chord hearing

Week 8

I have started to use compression in my own ideas to fully understand it. I learned the threshold button is to alter what sound limit the compression will start to kick in on.

I have studied inversions for my jazz playing because they are used alot. I leaned that a 6 chord on the one chord is the same as a minor 7th chord on the 6th.

I have practiced John Petrucci’s rock discipline techniques and it has benefitted. One technique is playing to a metronome at a certain speed, for example, 120bpm. I played quarter notes to it then eighth notes then sixteenth notes.

For my bass playing I have practiced my right hand technique for half an hour

For my ear training I have worked on my complex chord hearing