How Should I Approach this Exercise

[Bongo Boy]

I've found a 36-bar jazz warmup exercise--the first few bars are shown below. It combines a little chord melody (All the Things You Are) with linear scale runs, and while it repeats chords, those repeated chords differ in voicing. The material is by Bill Bay fr Just Jazz Guitar magazine.

What would you recommend as my first approach to this--i.e., should I a) begin with chords only and learn them all, b) play thru the whole thing repeatedly, c) play thru a few bars until I can, then add in a few more until I can play, say, the first 8 bars, and so on, or d) other?

I recall Guni suggested that, with Autumn Leaves, I separate chords from melody, at least initially--and I wonder if that applies here as well. Any suggestions?

Some of the chords are relatively easy for me, some are quite difficult. I certainly can't get into ANY of the chords on tempo, so I'm ignoring tempo completely for now.

I bow before the iBreathe collective. Here is the sample:

[EricV]

Hi there,

well, here´s how I would approach this:
I would play through the whole thing slowly, and would make mental notes of the parts that are difficult to me. I.e.if one of the runs would be difficult, I´d isolate it and practise it on its own, with a metronome.
After I worked on the "problem-parts", I´d play my way through the whole thing at a slow tempo.
If I´d want to memorize the whole thing so I wouldn´t need the TAB / notation anymore, I´d split it up into 2 or 4 sections, and practise those separately. Once I can do them at an even tempo, I´d try to chain them together.
That´s i.e. how I learned the "Perpetual Motion".

If you have trouble with the chords, set your metronome to a slow tempo, then try to play them without the runs. Once you can do that, take the first bar and play that one with a metronome, changing between the first chord and the run. If you can do that a few times without making a mistake, in time, move on to the next.
So basically, my method would be:
- Find the problems part, isolate them, work on them
- Cut it up into small pieces and practise those on their own to memorize them
- Finally merge them together
- All above steps are done with a metronome at a really slow tempo. Once you memorized the thing and can play it at an even tempo, start working on increasing the tempo gradually..


I bow before the iBreathe collective
Huh ?
:)
Hope this helps
Eric

[Bongo Boy]

Originally posted by EricV
Huh ? :)

Oooops! My mistake. That should have read, "I put myself before the mercy of the iBreathe Collective." :D

[EricV]

Wayyyyy better... I was thinking about throwing a lightning bolt but... I´ll show some mercy today.
Hope my suggestions will help
Eric