Playing in all 12 keys ?

I do lots of modal exercises. I have written literally hundreds of them to expand my knowledge and technique. Scales, arpeggios, patterns, and just riffs that I don't want to forget. I have a program that has a programmable metronome. I can make it start slow and each time the exercise repeats it gets faster by a few BPM. Just going through one exercise, in all of the keys, in all 5 basic fingering positions, from the nut to the top fret can take me an hour. It has proven to be very helpful to both my knowledge of where things are on the neck to picking and fingering technique improvement. It's not for the faint of heart. It's a marathon. I have been lax for the last couple months due to many things taking place that have used all of my time but, I'm going to get back to it soon. I have reaped huge benefits from it.

One of the big things I have noticed from doing that practice procedure for the last couple years is that my ear for interval recognition has improved greatly. When I drill on something that repetitive, for that long, without stopping, I have heard those same intervals a couple hundred times so I can recognize them without having to think about it much. The best part of that is that my fingers get there before my cognitive brain does. They just know where to go.

Mickey Baker is the book I immediately thought of when I saw the thread title. Every example and exercise in the book ends with, "Now go and learn this in all keys and modes, you slacker!"

[ahem] well, that may not be exactly how Baker wrote it, but that's how I read it.

So I have finally finished the Mickey Baker lesson of transposing 3 melody exercises into his suggested keys.

The next exercise is to make up 3 different version of each the exercises and then transpose them into all the keys. It never ends !

But it must be doing me good as I was already playing around with variations before I had completed all the transposing.


The last paragraph of the lesson is the admonishment to follow the instructions as carefully as possible as " Ï am not going to take the time to explain every little thing as we go further in the book."

Actual practice is work. 

It's not as fun as jamming, and noodling only reinforces old/bad habits without introducing new approaches.  The very cool thing about structured practice is it provides you with instant feedback.  When the stuff starts to sink in, it works its way into your playing and that is the payoff. 

It makes playing more fun because you now know several different ways to get where you want to go--rather than the same worn out path you've taken for many years.