John, good to hear from you. Thank you! I'd love any advice or tips you can provide. Practice daily is my motto and it seems to be contributing to the steady progress. Hope all is well!
Hey buddy, Rythm, tempo. You need to slow it down and be more precise with your tempo. When you play fast, it's hard for me to tell what the meter is at all. I would slow down, and work for a solid tempo. This is stuff I've worked on for years. Use a metronome, and that will help. I was just telling this to my sister when we last spoke. She's working on classical guitar, using tabs. She starts fine, then begins to speed up, and can no longer proceed. My best advice is to only play as fast as you can play the most difficult part of your piece. I hope that helps. I wasn't sure to say anything or not. I'm not a music teacher. I had two years of piano starting at 8 yrs. Everything after that is self-taught, but I'm a dynamite site-reader. I wish you continued advancement on those squeeze boxes. Merry Christmas. J. X.@@Concertina_Appalachia
@@johnxavier8732 John, thank you very much! Advice, tips are always appreciated. You hit the nail on the head. I am painfully aware of my unsteady rhythym and tempo and I expect it to be the roadblock in my way for a while. I tend to speed up and slow down when I play songs and that's something that's holding me back. Picking the right speed that suits my current abilities for any song is the key. Anything faster than that is just enforcing sloppy playing and bad habit building. The only training I've gone through on the concertina is the Jack Talty's concertina course on McNeela's website and he made the same comment of not speeding up at familiar parts and slowing down at difficult parts. I started off playing trombone around 10 years and kept with it until I was about 18. Played in a highschool band setting. I picked up guitar for a year around the age of 10 but never stuck with it. My timing seemed better back then from my memory but obviously playing with others and perhaps a more structured regiment helped keep me in line. I used to sight read bass clef pretty well but now I'm poor at that. I can sight read treble clef better now but I still notate my sheet music with note names to help keep me in line. I struggle with a metronome as I tend to lose the song a bit with the clicking but I should keep forcing myself to use one. Slow it down to something that seems reasonable and work my way up. One issue I have is I'm tending to play a lot of different kinds of music. My irish music repertoire sees me in all sorts of key signatures and that compounds this issue. 4/4 timing at a decent tempo is something I can stick with but going into jig (6/8) or slip jig (9/8) or other complex time signatures makes me forgoe counting at all as I play. Do you have any comment on how to use a metronome to help with playing in time signatures outside of standard 4/4? I haven't used it much yet but, there's a website called ABC Transcription tools by a guy named Michael Eskin. It's good for converting ABC notation into sheet music but it has a built in metronome and tune player that I think might help provide a beat to play along with while still keeping in mind the time signatures required for some of these tunes that aren't in 4/4. I suppose I just struggle to line the metronome up and my playing with all the offbeat portions of the rythym if that makes sense. I feel getting a steady tempo down and learning to count better will be another step to enhancing my whole level of musicality. I need to practice the very concept. I certainly have it within me to do so. Thanks again, Merry Christmas!
Metronome, definitely. There is no hiding from a metronome! You can't fool it.. Your dexterity is excellent, it's only the time-keeping. Play a - say - 120bpm piece at 70 or 80bpm, play it perfectly, grace notes, cuts etc. When it's perfect, up the tempo 5 beats. Don't increase the tempo until it's perfect. Then another 5 bpm. Etc... you get the idea I'm sure. My favourite 'music practice quote' is: 'practice until you couldn't play it wrong even if you wanted to'. I'm trying to adhere to that one myself at the moment, ha ha... All the very best to you.
Thanks for your comment. I had a Tai chi teacher; he was never into music. He started listening to Irish music when I started playing Irish whistle and Illean pipes. He wanted to play Bodhran. I purchased him a bodhran, and after a few weeks, loaned him my metronome. He gave it back a week later, and sarcastically said, "that thing is broken". Cheers mate. J. X.@@Whatzzzz999
Hi my friend. Your dexterity has come a long way. I have one tip to give you, if you want it. Otherwise, keep practicing.
John, good to hear from you. Thank you! I'd love any advice or tips you can provide. Practice daily is my motto and it seems to be contributing to the steady progress. Hope all is well!
Hey buddy, Rythm, tempo. You need to slow it down and be more precise with your tempo. When you play fast, it's hard for me to tell what the meter is at all. I would slow down, and work for a solid tempo. This is stuff I've worked on for years. Use a metronome, and that will help. I was just telling this to my sister when we last spoke. She's working on classical guitar, using tabs. She starts fine, then begins to speed up, and can no longer proceed. My best advice is to only play as fast as you can play the most difficult part of your piece. I hope that helps. I wasn't sure to say anything or not. I'm not a music teacher. I had two years of piano starting at 8 yrs. Everything after that is self-taught, but I'm a dynamite site-reader. I wish you continued advancement on those squeeze boxes. Merry Christmas. J. X.@@Concertina_Appalachia
@@johnxavier8732
John, thank you very much! Advice, tips are always appreciated. You hit the nail on the head. I am painfully aware of my unsteady rhythym and tempo and I expect it to be the roadblock in my way for a while. I tend to speed up and slow down when I play songs and that's something that's holding me back. Picking the right speed that suits my current abilities for any song is the key. Anything faster than that is just enforcing sloppy playing and bad habit building. The only training I've gone through on the concertina is the Jack Talty's concertina course on McNeela's website and he made the same comment of not speeding up at familiar parts and slowing down at difficult parts.
I started off playing trombone around 10 years and kept with it until I was about 18. Played in a highschool band setting. I picked up guitar for a year around the age of 10 but never stuck with it. My timing seemed better back then from my memory but obviously playing with others and perhaps a more structured regiment helped keep me in line. I used to sight read bass clef pretty well but now I'm poor at that. I can sight read treble clef better now but I still notate my sheet music with note names to help keep me in line.
I struggle with a metronome as I tend to lose the song a bit with the clicking but I should keep forcing myself to use one. Slow it down to something that seems reasonable and work my way up. One issue I have is I'm tending to play a lot of different kinds of music. My irish music repertoire sees me in all sorts of key signatures and that compounds this issue. 4/4 timing at a decent tempo is something I can stick with but going into jig (6/8) or slip jig (9/8) or other complex time signatures makes me forgoe counting at all as I play.
Do you have any comment on how to use a metronome to help with playing in time signatures outside of standard 4/4? I haven't used it much yet but, there's a website called ABC Transcription tools by a guy named Michael Eskin. It's good for converting ABC notation into sheet music but it has a built in metronome and tune player that I think might help provide a beat to play along with while still keeping in mind the time signatures required for some of these tunes that aren't in 4/4. I suppose I just struggle to line the metronome up and my playing with all the offbeat portions of the rythym if that makes sense.
I feel getting a steady tempo down and learning to count better will be another step to enhancing my whole level of musicality. I need to practice the very concept. I certainly have it within me to do so.
Thanks again, Merry Christmas!
Metronome, definitely.
There is no hiding from a metronome! You can't fool it..
Your dexterity is excellent, it's only the time-keeping.
Play a - say - 120bpm piece at 70 or 80bpm, play it perfectly, grace notes, cuts etc.
When it's perfect, up the tempo 5 beats. Don't increase the tempo until it's perfect. Then another 5 bpm. Etc... you get the idea I'm sure.
My favourite 'music practice quote' is: 'practice until you couldn't play it wrong even if you wanted to'.
I'm trying to adhere to that one myself at the moment, ha ha...
All the very best to you.
Thanks for your comment. I had a Tai chi teacher; he was never into music. He started listening to Irish music when I started playing Irish whistle and Illean pipes. He wanted to play Bodhran. I purchased him a bodhran, and after a few weeks, loaned him my metronome. He gave it back a week later, and sarcastically said, "that thing is broken". Cheers mate. J. X.@@Whatzzzz999