what can i improve?

voutoreenie

is this okay tone?

You know what David, I'm tell you the same thing I used to tell my students - if it sounds good, it probably is. Otoh, if it doesn't sound good? Then you gotta keep working at it until it does. And once it sounds good to you? That's also when you start trusting yourself more, which is a crucial component to this genre.

Actually, now that I'm thinking more about it, I think that last part about learning to trust yourself is actually pretty essential. When I first started, my confidence was shot after switching to rest stroke...I was primarily a "bridge player" and switching to an unanchored wrist was pretty jarring. To that end, you're already off to an awesome start with your technique so now for you comes the hard part that we all have to go through, which is practicing your ass off and make sure to jam with other players whenever possible.

Also, how's your la pompe? If your la pompe tone isn't there yet, your single note tone will never truly be there either.

davidjazzfan

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/125018#Comment_125018

To me it sounds pretty thin. I actually never practiced la pompe. How is getting a good la pompe gonna give me more popping solo lines?

paulmcevoy75

David since you posted a response from here on Christiaan's forum I'm going to post my response from there here as well:.

David, I'm not trying to be critical but you obsessively ask questions about your playing that no one can answer. You play well. You really need to just listen to your own playing and find your lessons from that. I know you struggle with that sort of thing but you seem like a gifted person and you should trust your own instincts.

Forgive me for being frank here, it's meant in the spirit of hoping you find some happiness with your guitar. I suffer from some amounts of OCD myself, mostly under control, but with OCD there's this idea of continually asking for reassurance. The questions feed on themselves. The more questions you ask, the more reassurance you need. It's a very painful scenario and I struggle with it at times.

My friend who has very bad OCD but is a wonderful person said something really beautiful to me "it's like you're mistrusting your own senses". I think that might apply to you: your ears and brain and fingers are producing good or great music even while your brain fights with them and tells you that you're not playing well. I think the advice "shut up and play your guitar" is really valuable here. You have great ears, great hands, you play well. Why do you constantly ask people who don't have that level of talent what you should do? You know what to do.

I think the best thing you could do for your playing right now is when you have one of these questions, take a 4 hour break from posting about it. Go out and take a walk and listen to some music. Then when you are calm, try to answer it yourself with your own knowledge. It seems like posting questions over and over is not helping you.

voutoreenie

That's a great post, Paul.

How is getting a good la pompe gonna give me more popping solo lines?

Because it's essentially the same technique; on that note, you should consider focusing on la pompe just as much as single note technique, if not even more.

billyshakes

https://djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/125004#Comment_125004

Meant to ask you, do you do this in all 12 keys or just in E as a warm-up exercise for your fingers?

What was new to me was the way he phrases the dim arp. He's actually just playing a simple dim triad w/o the Ebb (D). Typically, I see the diminished chord as a dim7 4 note arp, but he's consistent on this exercise with all the chords (major, minor, diminished) being just 3 note triads.

Buco

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/125051#Comment_125051

This is a good shape to use over both ø and o so you don't have to worry about practicing them separately. Even though I play o arp over ø and it sounds fine that way too. I've heard Django play that too, omitting the b7/bb7

paulmcevoy75

I'm realizing that triads can be superior to 7th chords in certain ways because the gap between 5 and 1 makes a certain motion (doesn't mean you have to play the tonic triad). I used to think triads were sort of "inferior" to 7th chord arpeggios but I think they have their own thing.

voutoreenie

Meant to ask you, do you do this in all 12 keys or just in E as a warm-up exercise for your fingers?

With Adrien's exercise in particular, I stick to E as the root because of how well it works chromatically up the scale but I do other arpeggio exercises up the diatonic scale in different keys. Imo, if centering around Adrien's arps, it just helps to memorize each "section" of the exercise form so you can apply said parts to scale intervals in any key (if that makes sense at all)...because regardless, both the sequence & arp forms stay the same no matter what.

I'm also starting to get into playing arps up the harmonic minor/altered scale...and that's where my brain really starts hurting lol.

What was new to me was the way he phrases the dim arp. 

Exactly the same for me and I'd guess a lot of other players too! It's not the dim arp I always knew and the sweeps while ascending plus double downs when descending back are what make it technically challenging but super rewarding once muscle memory sets in.

This is a good shape to use over both ø and o so you don't have to worry about practicing them separately. Even though I play o arp over ø and it sounds fine that way too.

Yup, exactly! Although I do love the dedicated ø arps as well because they're essentially dominant 7th and minor 6 arps, lots of tonal flexibility over so many different chord combos.

I'm realizing that triads can be superior to 7th chords in certain ways because the gap between 5 and 1 makes a certain motion (doesn't mean you have to play the tonic triad). I used to think triads were sort of "inferior" to 7th chord arpeggios but I think they have their own thing.

Same here Paul, and this exercise in particular really opened up my ears to using them. Also, they extend really well into other arps/licks/phrases during chord changes, just a great launching pad for connecting ideas together.