Mike Outram

Music - Gigs - Lessons - Blog

Practice 2.0

Seems to me that with all the interesting things I’m finding out about via Twitter such as NaNoWriMo, Home Taping, RPM Challenge and NaSoAlMo, that there really should be some sort of practice version. I reckon it could work if you had a way of connecting a few like-minded souls with a common goal, let’s say learning a particular tune or a solo, and the goal would be to get it down in the space of the month. The deadline and group network would be a great motivator, especially with the ability to record and share audio and video versions of your work so easily. I wonder if this would work in some sort of classroom environment, also? National PhD Month…

Does that exist already? If not, then I hereby create it! NaGtrPraMo – National Guitar Practice Month :) It needs a forum/focal point, I suppose. A Posterous maybe? And some people who are willing to set some challenges…



6 responses to “Practice 2.0”

  1. Ben says:

    im in… whats the tune? are we allowed to use excuses such as ‘i was really busy teaching..ahem’?

  2. Mike Outram says:

    Don’t know what tune to pick yet. Could be a hard one or not. What do you reckon? A solo, maybe?

  3. Ben says:

    a parker thing? too boring? a winkel number? dunno man the choices are endless!

  4. Nige says:

    Mike,

    Hi from Derbyshire UK. This concept you speak of works very well. The contributors to the Usenet newsgroup nntp://uk.music.guitar have an annual event where we turn up to play with each other. In the preceding months, we build our song list here: http://www.ukmgnational.org.uk, and then practice like billy-o against the original recording. We get up on the night and deliver the goods unrehearsed.

    The results can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/user/ukmusicguitar.

    We have just run our 2009 event and videos will be appearing shortly!

    Best,

    Nige.

  5. Mike Outram says:

    Hi Nige,

    That looks great! How many people do it?
    Having the deadline of doing the gig must be a good focus.

    You’ve given me some ideas too. I hadn’t thought about making it into a proper performance, was just thinking record something or video it.

    Will keep a lookout on your site/vids.

    Thanks for posting! M

  6. Nige says:

    Mike,

    About forty people have a go each year. They travel a fair distance to do it (from Scotland and the far sounth of England … one year a chap came over from Australia!).

    We make a weekend of it with a curry on the Friday, then an acoustic set on the Saturday afternoon, followed by the full-scale electric job in the evening.

    Loads of errors, mistakes and go-arounds happen, but it doesn’t matter. We all know that it’s a safe environment to screw it up!

    More vids up not in the channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/ukmusicguitar#p/c/DFEC9C9982E8B344

    N.

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