This weekend, our group got together to practice for this Wednesday nite. We worked mostly on the one song we were assigned….Old Joe Clark….for 3 hours, with each of us critiquing our performance. I have never done that before. While I am not sure the practice will help me Wednesday, I did learn something. I thought I knew that song pretty well, but when we started practicing, I kept being out of step with the group. It turned out that I had learned the song with some extra notes in it, which ultimately had me off by a measure or so. I had been practicing the lead only… with the tef file… but had never practiced the lead while listening to the melody. Someone in our group suggested finding the song on YouTube.so that I can listen to the melody, while practicing the lead.
Having the luxury of practicing with a group like that can really help you focus on your weaknesses and tweak your performance.