Anyone ever take the '5 day practice challenge'?

[Trillian]

I've watched several of Tony Polecastro's acoustic demos, and figured 'what the heck' to his practice challenge. I've been playing a long time but he's got some smokin' flat picking licks so I figured anything he has to say is probably worth a listen.

Day 1 was kind of neat, just a couple of warm-ups but with challenging patterns. The first he calls the 'Queen Latifa', it's just a symetrical warm-up but with a nice 'split level' fingering with string skipping added. I can already think of dozens of evil variations on that one theme so I can stay busy with that alone for quite a while. Also one using all four fingers to do single note slides, which I've never thought of.

I probably wouldn't recommend this to someone who doesn't yet have a decent grasp of alternate picking and fretting technique because he doesn't really talk about that and 'bad habits' are easy to acquire without that (ask me how I know...) but it looks promising and I'm eager for day two. Nice job so far!

[Louis]

Yes ,Tony is good and it came in my E-mail and tried it ..I'll never be a hot shot guitar player like a pile of you boys  hanging out here ,but the site I keep going back to is Active Melody cause there's so much free stuff and Brian there has a real act of teaching . Cause being a solo vocalist what I  look for is licks and riffs to stick in my songs here and there .As an example Trillian on the one where it's about the end of the rainbow and lands on "D" I insert that lick at the end of " Can't help falling in love " and works nice .

[Trillian]

I'm much the same way when I sing and play solo, I love to put little things in the arrangement to liven it up, even if it's just a rhythmic hook, percussive effect, or memorable horn riff or something. It seems to be appreciated by listeners, and it sure adds to the fun factor to me. I never had the blazing flat picking runs either, I think doing this can only help my playing all the way around, even my electric playing.

[Trillian]

Well so far day 1 is my favorite, and the most challenging for me. I'm keeping it going though, can't wait to see what the big song is tomorrow.

[Trillian]

All done, day 5 was a very nice little arrangement of 'Whiskey Before Breakfast' which I'd not yet learned on any instrument. The arrangement sounds like a natural for the dulcimer too, it should sit on there just right. So the highlights for me were day 1 and day 5, and I can add another Bluegrass standard to my small list, which is 'Wildwood Flower' that I learned last week, and this. Before that the closest I got to bluegrass was a song called '39 by Queen, a sort of Skiffle song about time travel LoL. I'll definitely check out Active Melody too, thanks for the tip.

[Louis]

How you making out over there  trillion?  I ran across this guy Steve Kaufman On  U- tube cause I'm always checking for Acoustic licks and riffs and he's got a few runs called C runs and G runs whitch are not bad. Myself  I'm a vocalist and will never be a lead man but I like to learn runs when I play and since you liked the 5 day challenge you might like this .I always keep  going back to Brian at Active Melody though, he's not in your pocket all the time and is very good at explaining and teaching.If you take his Acoustic lessons I find there's a pile of stuff guys like me and you can use for runs .Today I'm going to pick up the Trio from Digiteck ,they say it was the hit of the Namm show this year .

[Trillian]

When I looked at Active Melody and from what I could tell it appeared to be heavy on blues. Not that I couldn't find something to learn, I'm sure, but I've played blues until my blues had blues and it made my blue eyes blue. I'm definitely more interested in flat picking right now, though I've also been going back and re-learning some of the acoustic stuff I used to play, you know, the usual chestnuts by Zeppelin and Yes, etc.

For the past 4 years my job has been mainly to 'entertain' senior citizens, and pretty much all they would let me do was sing and play, every day, all day (and night). It was absolutely great for me as I never spent much time singing before that, and it was also good for my arranging as you mentioned. Other areas of my music have been largely dormant however, and since I'm out of work at the moment I'm picking those up again. I've been playing lots of piano lately too, boy did I miss that.