"Satin Doll" | Arrangement by Joe Pass

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Boy oh boy. Am I a horrendous jazz musician. I’ve been trying to chip away at improving this deficiency over the past 10 years or so, but to be completely honest, I haven’t made much headway—and that’s okay: it’s just for the fun of it. It’s a hobby. Most of what I’ve been doing is trying to treat music as a language, and learning some of the lexicon of jazz musicians that I admire. This is the A Section of Satin Doll as arranged by Joe Pass. There is so much to playing jazz, and these are some small baby steps I’ve made.

Thank you to everyone on Patreon for your encouragement and support: https://www.patreon.com/mikevitalemusic


Balancing My Time

I was talking to one of my guitar students the other day about making the time to practice guitar.  She was telling me that she was juggling a lot of activities in her life and it was difficult to find the time, which I completely understand.  So, I began a discussion suggesting time management and so forth—when it suddenly occurred to me: I suck at time management myself.

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There are so many responsibilities that I juggle within a day, it behooves me to prioritize my time and activities quite often.  Normally, I fill up a blank 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper with bullet points of things to do.  I scratch them off as I progress through my day, and I feel a sense of accomplishment scratching off my accomplishments by nightfall.  Nonetheless, I suck at time management.  Do you know what I mean?  Sure, I get lots of stuff done.  I also stress myself out quite bit.  Sometimes I forget to eat because I get so busy working on a project, that I lose track of time.

But, probably my worst offense in this department, is getting too wrapped up in one thing for long periods of time.

I decided to make a spreadsheet the other day to keep track of how long I work on things.  Practice guitar for an hour.  Write for an hour.  Etc..  So far, I'm sucking at that also.  I managed to make the actual spreadsheet—haven't been using it every day though.

Perfect example of me getting too wrapped up with something:  I spent a solid 8 to 10 hours recording yesterday.  Why?  Because I was having fun.  If anything, it was quite a productive day, given that I'm a musician and a songwriter and all.  However, there were a whole bunch of other things that didn't get done yesterday due to the fact that I was hanging out with my friend Anthony, recording, and having the time of my life.

I should be more organized and block my hours of operation off to 1 hour increments.  I can be like a T.S. Eliot poem where his sad protagonist, J. Alfred Prufrock, measures his life out in coffee spoons—30 minutes to practice singing, 1 hour to play guitar, 5 minutes to write this blog.  No time to check my grammar.