I started this week off by working through the examples in Lesson 11, trying to gain a better understanding of chords and triple stops as that theory is still a weak area that I have trouble wrapping my mind around. This is why I ended up putting off working through the IIB Music Theory course, I couldn’t devote enough time to it to truly get out of it what I wanted to. Once I am completely through the TMBG course I plan to focus all of my attention there and restart the course. I also spent some time getting used to fingering 3 note chords as traditionally I have not used this in my playing.
From here I moved on to learning “Austin Bound”. There is really only three distinct parts in this number, so I slowly worked on mastering each part. The first two parts came fairly easily, the third took a little more work. I managed to get to the point where I can play each part pretty fluidly and have started putting them together, working towards making the transitions between sections as smooth and fluid as possible. I am extremely happy with my progress at this point, things seem to be moving much quicker for me in this lesson.
As for my electric upright playing, I’ve been devoting at least one practice a week to this end. Most of my time is spent working on different fingering, just getting a feel for the neck and developing correct plucking technique. Typically I run through a couple of easy bluegrass tunes as well to keep things enjoyable. I’ve picked up a couple different method books that I have started working through as well. At some point I will probably post reviews for these, assuming I can find the time. With my TMBG studies, upright studies, plus blogging here and now on Bass Players United, it has been a busy summer!
