Practicing: Some Sandole Literature

Here is a sample Week One lesson from early on in my studies. As I mentioned in last week’s Sandole post, the material I received from the Maestro was tailored to me and my needs and weaknesses. That’s the way Sandole taught – instruction for the individual. Therefore, my lessons aren’t necessary indicative of what other students received. Also keep in mind that I am a trumpet player. Sandole’s guitar students, no doubt, received different material. So, for whatever its worth, I’m just putting this out for people to see some of the literature. I’ll tell you what I did and you can of course feel free to use it in your practicing if you’re so inclined. As an aside – dig the Maestro’s writing. I always rewrote it so that I could read it! :)

Here is A1 – a chord progression with an accompanying melody line. The idea is to memorize this line and then play it back in all twelve keys at the lesson. As I mentioned in my initial post, I stink at memorizing, so I took the lazy way out and wrote out all twelve keys (sometimes I would memorize the original, but I was never good enough, nor did I usually have enough time to memorize all twelve keys). Even just playing through A1 lines was a workout though. To mix it up I would switch up my articulations and dynamics, and sometimes I would play the lines straight almost like contemporary classical etudes and other times I would swing the lines.

Here is an arpeggio from A2 (this is my writing from my first notebook- I couldn't find the original paper that Mr. Sandole wrote on). Same principle: memorize it and play it in all keys. This I could do. I didn’t always play them fast, but I could play them without mistakes. Subsequent Week Ones would have me playing an inversion of the original arpeggio – again in all keys. This cycle continued every Week One until I exhausted the notes and started a new arpeggio.

A3 for me was usually piano voicings. They were pretty basic for me since I had no (and still don’t have much) piano chops.

And here is one of the exotic scales that I would get sometimes. I amassed a whole bunch of these. Again the idea was to memorize them and play them in all keys. They could also be used in Week Four compositions. I have gone back to these scales to give me ideas for tunes I have written.

So there you go. I’ll try to post a Week Two lesson next week.