Use the Map Inside Real Forms

Day 43 | about 25 minutes

Build the tune maps

Focus: write the forms and the changes down before a single note is improvised over them.

• 5 min: Write the A and B forms and your agreed changes for Soldier's Joy, Salt Creek, and Big Mon. A form is the shape of the tune. Most of these are AABB: two parts of eight bars, each played twice. Write eight bars to a line, with the chord for each bar. Use the chords your circle plays. They may not match this site's pages, and the ones you write are the ones you improvise over. The map below shows Soldier's Joy written out. Do all three now: the rest of the week reads from them.
• 6 min: Mark every non-I chord; write one target tone over each change. A non-I chord is any chord that is not the home chord. Over each change, write one note to aim at: the chord's 1, 3 or 5. For an A chord that is A, C sharp or E. For a G chord it is G, B or D. Write one note, not three. A plan with options in it is not a plan.
• 6 min: Assign one FFcP zone to each section of one tune. Pick one tune. Give the A part one position and the B part another. The two boards draw the four positions in D and in A, and the brackets show where each hand sits. The map below puts the A part in Position I and the B part in Position III. Write your two numerals at the top of your page. Choosing badly is fine today: reversing the choice is Wednesday's fourth step.
• 6 min: Play only the target notes in time through that form. One note per change, in time, with everything else silent, all the way through. That is what the workbook means by a target-tone skeleton, and it sounds sparse and slightly ridiculous. It is also the best test there is of whether you know where the changes are: if you arrive late on a target, the form is not in your hands yet, whatever your fingers can do.
• 2 min: Mark the change least clearly heard. Write the bar number and the chord. A change you cannot hear coming is one you play through rather than into, and Sunday's checkpoint will find it.

• One map, filled in: Soldier's Joy in D, with the chords from this site's tune page. A bar marked D A is half a bar of each.
• A part, twice: D | D | D | A | D | D | D A | D. Non-I chords: the A in bar 4 and the A in the second half of bar 7.
• B part, twice: D | A | D | A | D | A | D A | D. Non-I chords: the A in bars 2, 4 and 6 and the second half of bar 7.
• A part targets, in Position I. Bar 1, D: F sharp, fret 11 of the G course. Bar 4, A: E, fret 9 of the G course. Bar 5, D: F sharp again. Bar 7, second half, A: C sharp, fret 11 of the D course. Bar 8, D: D, fret 12 of the D course.
• B part targets, in Position III. Each D: D, fret 5 of the A course. Each A, the half bar in bar 7 included: C sharp, fret 4 of the A course. The two targets sit one fret apart the whole way through.

What a target-tone skeleton is: The chord tones alone, one per change, played in time with silence in between. No melody, no filling, no decoration. It is the smallest thing you can play that still says what the harmony is doing, and every day this week starts from it, because a variation built on top of one keeps the form and a variation built on a fingering does not.

Soldier's Joy: the notes, the tab and the chartThe tune page, in D, with the chord marks over the staff and the chart the band plays underneath. Use the changes on that page or the ones your circle uses, but write down which.mandolintrainer.com/tunes/soldiers-joy/

Salt Creek: the notes, the tab and the chartThe tune page, in A. Its A part changes chord halfway through a bar and there is a G in it that is not in the key. Write that down before you improvise over it.mandolintrainer.com/tunes/salt-creek/

• End-of-day check: Three written maps, and one target skeleton played.

Day 44 | about 25 minutes

Soldier's Joy: position discipline

Focus: play the whole tune out of one zone, and let it still be the tune.

• 3 min: Review its written form and target tones. Yesterday's page for Soldier's Joy: the A part, the B part, the chords over the bars, and the one target note over each change. Read it through once and say the targets out loud in time without touching the instrument. Two minutes of that is worth more than eight minutes of playing through a form you cannot recite.
• 8 min: Melody skeleton in one FFcP zone; keep only the notes that define the tune. A melody skeleton is the tune with the decoration taken out: the notes on the strong beats and the ones that make it recognizable as Soldier's Joy rather than something else. Play that skeleton out of Position II in D, which the board draws, and nowhere else, even where the original melody would have gone higher or lower. Somebody in the room should still be able to name the tune.
• 6 min: Pentatonic variation in the same zone; preserve the phrase entrances and the cadences. A phrase entrance is where a phrase starts in the bar; a cadence is where it lands at the end of a part. Keep both exactly where the tune has them and change what happens in between, using the five notes D, E, F sharp, A and B out of the same hand. Coming in and finishing in the same places is what makes it a variation rather than a different tune.
• 6 min: The second chorus may cross exactly one boundary. One crossing in eight bars and you choose where. Position II in D shares six notes with Position I and six with Position III, so there are doors in both directions, and the useful place for the crossing is usually the start of the B part, so the neck says the section changed. One crossing, not two, because staying put is the discipline of the day.
• 2 min: Record whether the form stayed intact. Intact means the parts were the right length, the changes arrived in the right bars, and somebody playing along would not have got lost. Write yes or no, and if no, which bar it went wrong in. A variation that loses the form is a different tune played badly, which is the line at the top of this week.

Soldier's Joy: the notes, the tab and the chartThe melody to take the skeleton out of, and the band to play it against at whatever speed the variation is still honest at.mandolintrainer.com/tunes/soldiers-joy/

• End-of-day check: The variation still sounds like the tune.

Day 45 | about 25 minutes

Salt Creek: two-zone conversation

Focus: give the A part one zone and the B part another, and let the neck say the section change.

• 3 min: Review the form; choose one zone for A and another for B. Salt Creek is in A, and its A part changes chord halfway through a bar, so read your written page carefully before choosing. Give the A part one zone and the B part another, and write the two numerals down. The boards draw Position I in A and Position III in A, which is the pair this day works with.
• 8 min: Play the target-tone skeleton through both parts. One note per change, in time, nothing else, all the way through both parts. In Position I in A the landing notes are low: A at the second fret of the G course, C sharp at the sixth, E at the second fret of the D course. In Position III they sit an octave up: A at the seventh fret of the D course, C sharp at the fourth fret of the A course, E at the seventh. The half-bar change in the A part is where this falls over, and finding that out now is the point of the step.
• 6 min: The A part asks; the B part answers using the same rhythmic cell. A rhythmic cell is a small rhythm you can repeat, three or four notes long, whatever the pitches are: two short and one long, say. Use the same cell in both parts, so the A part poses something in one zone and the B part answers it in the other with the same rhythm. The two sections then sound like two halves of one sentence instead of two exercises.
• 6 min: Repeat, reversing which section sits higher on the neck. Swap the zones over: the A part in Position III and the B part in Position I, everything else the same. One version will be better and it is usually not the one you picked first, because the B part of most fiddle tunes wants to sit higher, and it is worth finding out whether this one does.
• 2 min: Note the cleaner route. Write which way round went better, and say why in terms of the crossing. These two zones share exactly one note, the A at the seventh fret of the D course, which the third board shows: one door means the section change has one place it can happen, so whichever direction put that door on a strong beat is the cleaner route.

Salt Creek: the notes, the tab and the chartThe two parts written out, with the chords over them, and the band to run the form under you while you swap which zone each part comes from.mandolintrainer.com/tunes/salt-creek/

• End-of-day check: Section changes and zone changes align.

Day 46 | about 25 minutes

Big Mon: controlled outside color

Focus: one resolved blue approach per phrase, and no more.

• 3 min: Mark where flat 3 to 3 or flat 5 to 5 serves the phrase. Look at your written page for this tune and pick the two or three places a blue approach would actually help: usually the bar before a strong cadence, or the second time a phrase comes round. Put a small mark there, and leave everywhere else alone, which is the discipline of the day. The board shows the shape of the move in G; find the same pairs in the key of the version you play.
• 8 min: Melody skeleton plus chord-tone targets in one zone. Two things at once now: the notes that make the tune recognizable, and a chord tone landing at every change, all out of one hand. Play through the form with nothing else in it at all. Where the skeleton and the targets fight each other, the targets win, because the harmony is what a listener is following.
• 6 min: Add no more than one resolved blue approach per phrase. One per phrase at the most, on the way into a target, short then long. Resolved means the flat 3 moves up onto the 3rd and the flat 5 up onto the 5th, immediately, every time. The places you marked in the first step are where they go and the only places they go.
• 6 min: The second chorus crosses two zones while keeping the same targets. Two crossings in eight bars and the target plan does not change: the same chord tones at the same changes, found in whichever hand you are in when you get there. That is the test of whether the plan was written in degrees or in fret numbers.
• 2 min: Listen for unresolved color notes. Play the chorus back and find any flat 3 or flat 5 that stayed where it was or ended a phrase. Write down how many. Zero is the aim and one is forgivable. More than that and the color is happening to you rather than being used.

Nothing of this tune is printed here: Big Mon is Bill Monroe's and it is still under copyright, so there is no page for it on this site, no chart in the Jam library, and no melody, chords or key on this card. Work from the version you already play, the way the plan intends.

• End-of-day check: Blue notes intensify the line without blurring the harmony.

Day 47 | about 25 minutes

One-chord phrase laboratory

Focus: ask in one zone and answer in another, with silence taking a quarter of the time.

• 3 min: Choose G or D and three zones. One key and three of the four positions, written down: I, II and IV say. The boards draw Position I in G, where the questions come from, and Position IV in G, the furthest of the answers. Three zones means three different answers to the same question, which is the whole shape of the day.
• 8 min: Four-bar questions in Zone I; four-bar answers in II, III, then IV. A four-bar question is about sixteen beats and it ends somewhere unfinished: on the 2nd or the 6th, or simply hanging in the middle of a bar. The answer is four bars out of a different zone that closes it by arriving on a chord tone. Ask the same question three times and answer it from a different zone each time. What changes between the three answers is the register and the color; the question is what holds them together.
• 6 min: Repeat using a single five-note motif transformed rhythmically. One motif of five notes, chosen by degree, used for every question and every answer, with only the rhythm changing: even the first time, then with the first note held, then with a rest inside it. Five notes and a dozen rhythms is more material than five rhythms and a dozen notes, and this is the step where you find that out.
• 6 min: One chorus with silence occupying at least a quarter of the time. Eight bars with at least two bars' worth of silence in them, spread around rather than saved up at the end. Count it if you have to. Silence is the hardest thing on this page to do on purpose, and it is the thing that most reliably makes a line sound like a player rather than an exercise.
• 2 min: Save one phrase worth keeping. Record it, or write the notes down. One phrase, the best thing you played today, and it goes wherever Week 4's best diagonal went. By Week 8 there should be a small handful of these, because the last card of the workbook asks for the phrase you would take anywhere.

• End-of-day check: Phrases converse instead of running.

Day 48 | about 25 minutes

Progression pressure test

Focus: three choruses over a form you wrote this morning, in one zone, then two, then three.

• 3 min: Write a 12 or 16 bar I, IV, V form in a random key. Draw a key out of the seven, then write the bars out: four of I, two of IV, two of I, two of V, two of I is a plain twelve. Write the chord letters rather than the numerals, so the translation happens now instead of mid chorus. The board draws all four zones in E, a key nothing this week has used, which makes it a fair one to draw.
• 8 min: First chorus: remain in one zone and target every change. One hand for the whole form, a chord tone landing at every change, and no shifting even where the reach is awkward. The awkwardness is the information: a zone that cannot cover a change is a zone you have not finished learning.
• 6 min: Second: use two zones. The same form and the same targets out of two hands, which means one crossing somewhere. Put it on a chord change rather than in the middle of a bar, so the move and the harmony agree with each other instead of arguing.
• 6 min: Third: use at least three zones, moving only after a target. Three hands in one chorus, so two crossings at least, and every one of them after a landing rather than instead of one. This is the chorus the exit standard is asking for, so play it two or three times rather than once.
• 2 min: Mark form or landing errors. A form error is a part that came out the wrong length or a change that arrived in the wrong bar. A landing error is a chord tone missed, or corrected onto late. Count the two separately, because they need different repairs: the first is counting and the second is aim.

• End-of-day check: Three choruses, form intact.

Day 49 | about 25 minutes

Phase 4 checkpoint

Focus: three choruses recorded, then listened to without the instrument in your hands.

• 3 min: Choose one of the three tunes at random. Draw it rather than choosing it, because the one you would choose is the one that is ready. Then spend the rest of the three minutes with your written page for it: the form, the changes, the targets, the zones. The board draws the variation road for the tune in D, the five pentatonic windows with their brackets underneath.
• 12 min: Record three choruses: melody skeleton, one-zone variation, three-zone variation. Three choruses in one take, in that order, with the band or a metronome underneath. The first is the tune with the decoration stripped out, the second is a variation that never leaves one hand, the third uses three zones and moves after landings. Twelve minutes is two or three attempts at the whole thing, not twelve minutes of fussing over the first chorus.
• 5 min: Replay without the instrument; mark form, time, targets, and transitions. Put the mandolin down and listen. Form: did the parts stay the right length. Time: did the pulse hold through the crossings. Targets: did the changes come through in the line alone. Transitions: did the zone changes sound chosen. Mark each of the four, and mark the bar where each fault happened.
• 3 min: Repair the single most damaging flaw. One flaw, and it is almost always a form error rather than an ugly note, because a listener forgives a bad note and cannot follow a lost bar. Fix that one thing at half speed and leave everything else alone today.
• 2 min: Write next week's repair priority. One line naming what Week 8 should spend its Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday on: a key, a zone, a joint, or a chord function. Week 8's Monday audits everything anyway, but a line written while the recording is still fresh is usually more honest than an audit.

Soldier's JoyOne of the three to draw from, in D.mandolintrainer.com/tunes/soldiers-joy/

Salt CreekThe second, in A. The third is the Monroe tune, which is not on this site.mandolintrainer.com/tunes/salt-creek/

• End-of-day check: Form, pulse, and deliberate landings survive the recording.