Of practice and CDs

I thought it might be a good idea - a belated New Year's resolution, perhaps - to learn and memorize one song a week.  I think I have four under my belt so far:

Killing Me Softly
All My Loving
I'm Only Sleeping
Dream a Little Dream of Me

Okay, perhaps not attention-grabbing stuff at the local open mic, but it's something.  I'm trying to heed my own advice - any time spent playing the instrument is time well spent.  And I found that so much of my playing ability that rested in finger memory had gone away, but with patience and some nudging, that ability is returning.  It also leads me to think about fretboard shortcuts - how many ways can a person make a D6 chord?  I think that sense of exploration can be as important as the more married-to-the-sheet-music learning approach.

Of the new CDs

On the passing of Dave Brubeck, I felt compelled to buy two of his better-known works: Time Out and Time Further Out.  I got a kick out of learning that "Time Further Out" was really an experiment in the blues, and course "Time Out" is a pure classic.  Great Saturday morning listening.

(In fact, it's becoming a bit of a routine now for us to put 5 CDs in the CD player and program it to random. After a long week of work, workouts, and whatnot, it's good to have that downtime.  I'm finding the 5-CD approach to mellowing out to be rather effective.)

I surprised Judy with a CD of two John Hartford albums: Aero-Plane and Morning Bugle.  I thought that Aero-Plane would be easy to find, given that it's considered a New-grass classic album.  I was surprised to find that Amazon didn't have it at the time (sometime last summer), but fortunately someone decided to put out both albums.

And for myself: Sounds that Can't Be Made by Marillion.  I'm listening to "Gaza" as I write this: a 17:31 excursion into the world of those in the Gaza Strip, done in a rather haunting fashion and with as little side-taking as possible.  After the last few albums of theirs that I got: Somewhere Else and Happiness is the Road Part 2, it's good to see these guys showing their more proggy side.  And, to their credit, they can do the catchy four-minute song to show that they're not all 23 minutes of fairies and elves in 11/8 (though you won't find any four-minute hook-laden songs on this one - the shortest song on this new album is 5:44).  Now to find the time, the time I haven't seem to find in months, to sit down and listen to a CD - really listen - and see what effect if has on me.  I figure if an act spends some 12-18 months polishing up their latest effort, I can spare an hour or 80 minutes of my time.