# 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 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
#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 Pick a song or two we are focusing on
#2 Work on techniques for chunking and mastering the songs
#3 Exercises that establish better techniques for playing that song
#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