Day 233: All My Loving

The morning started out rainy here in Chaumont, NY. Now, at 11:00AM the Sun is out.
Good guitar practice this morning. In a perfect world I would still be practicing, however, among the hats I wear is a landlord hat. Thus, I must go to one of my vacant apartments and finish tidying it up for some new tenants that I must meet there tomorrow.
I have been working on a fairly simple solo guitar arrangement of the Beatles song, All My Loving. Well, it's simple, and not so simple. The arrangement is by Australian guitarist Joe Washington, from his book The Beatles For Classical Guitar. This is a great book, but none of the solos are easy. Some are simple, but, NOT easy. Most I would consider difficult. All My Loving is simple enough to memorize, and most of the chords are simple enough to execute. The difficult part is in playing the piece cleanly and Legato (that is, smoothly and evenly). For me, the most work has involved the last few bars of the ending. There are four chords that I hav had to practice seperately, over and over. I usually practice such fragments 100 times during a practice session. Usually I repeat the part in groups of five or ten times, make a note of it with hash marks, and go on until I reach 100 repititions. Very often I will make these marks in the margins of the music along with the date the practice took place on. Sometimes I use a piece of scrap paper, or a blank page in the music book or sheet.


The four chords at the end of the piece require ( at least for me), extra practice until they are played effortlessly and cleanly, with all notes ringing clear, and sounding evenly. That takes some work. Extra effort in such places can make a real difference in performance of the piece.


Incidentally, you can see from the photograph that my Joe Washington Beatles book is quite beat up. I've had it for 20 plus years. It has been out of print for a long time. A Google search turns up like new copies for sale at $250.00. That's right, two hundred fifty dollars.