Work, with Miles Okazaki

Part 2 of the sight reading study on the Allegro Assai from Bach's Violin Sonata in C major.

Beginning of a series on a violin Sonata by J.S. Bach. I talk about how great the violin pieces are, and then I get into looking at the final movement of the Sonata in C major. Most of the talk is about strategies for choosing fingerings, and figuring out quickly which is the best one for you. A while back I made a home recording of this piece, which you find in the on my website, www.milesokazaki.com or on Youtube.

This is one of the most powerful ways I've used the scrambler idea - creating random sequences of keys to get as quickly as possible by ear. Let me know if it makes sense what I say in this video, as I may have gone over things pretty quickly. I spend a couple of minutes at the beginning talking about training for the marathon, which you can skip over if it's boring.

Here are two more ways that I use the scrambler to create randomized exercises.

Here is a video on a musicianship exercise that I like to do. A very simple idea but not necessarily that easy to do. I'll do a series on page 35 from my book, called "The Scrambler." I'd suggest printing out the screenshot attached to this video if you'd like to work on it.

This video is open to everyone. A few people have asked me for book recommendations, so I go through what's on my studio shelf. It's a long video, starting with biographies and then going more into theory and guitar stuff. One book that I didn't talk about is my own, Fundamentals of Guitar, which can be found online at Amazon or Mel Bay.

This video is open to free members. I address two member questions from previous posts, one about picking on three adjacent strings, and one on the Bach Chorales. I'll do some series videos on Bach at some point (a big project), but this answer can get people started. The chorale I discuss is attached. There are also a few gig announcements in the video, tomorrow at the Stone, NYC, and upcoming complete Monk shows. More on this later.

Another long video, welcoming new members and getting a little deeper into bebop language on the guitar, in celebration of Bud Powell's 100th Birthday this Friday. I go through the intro and the head, showing my fingerings and talking a bit about how the notes relate to the harmony. The full video of me playing the solo can be found on youtube.

Here we go into one of the classic rudiments: Flams. These are not easy, so don't get discouraged. They're also not that necessary, but in my opinion they give you another cool tool for the kit. I demonstrate the attached exercises, and also talk about an instance of one of the patterns as it appears on this track with drummer Dan Weiss, who is doing the same pattern with his feet. The pattern starts about halfway through, at 2:57.

Today's picking technique has to do with making a very quick double stroke leading into another string, what drummers call a ruff or drag. I give some examples of how I use it, and have attached a page from the book with more exercises.