Now that my monster translation is out of the way, I can really get back into my guitar playing again. The problem is that I have no focus to my practice and my time is limited, so I really need to put a schedule together.

Here are the things I would like to work on:

1. Accompaniment – working through my Frank Kilkelly book (Accompanying Irish Music on Guitar), first brushing up on the four sets of tunes I’ve already worked on and then getting onto another set;
2. Open mic stuff – since finding the local open mics and meeting a bouzouki player, I’d like to start playing with him more. This will involve accompaniment as well as some flatpicking and fingerpicking. I also need to keep working on my songs and have asked a girl at work if she’d be up for joining me on some vocals. I also know a violin player whom I’m trying to turn to the light of trad music. She’s coming around I think!
3. Flatpicking – I noticed at a recent UK gathering I attended that if one does not practice flatpicking, one gets rusty. I thought I’d share that, just in case you didn’t know. My Parking Lot Pickers book is a heck of a lot of fun to work from, particularly playing along with the CD. This will cover accompaniment too.
4. Fretboard knowledge – I really would like to finish Volume 2 of the Skeptical Guitarist, work through Steve Kaufman’s Figuring out the Fretboard DVD and work through Mary Flower’s Fingerstyle Ragtime DVD.
5. Sight reading – I’d like to progress through my Fred Noad book. I’ve started going through it from scratch about four times, and each time I get a little farther. I’m about a third of the way through it and it gives me a great sense of achievement when I learn a new tune from that book. I know it will do a lot for my playing.
6. I really must work on El McMeen’s arrangement of The Mist Covered Mountains of Home. It’s one of the most moving arrangements I’ve heard and I could play it fairly well a couple of years ago. I’d like to get it to performance standard.
7. New tune to learn – I’ve had a desire for a long time to learn El’s arrangement of Fanny Power. There’s just something about it that moves me (as is the case with a lot of El’s arrangements, but this one in particular).

Fanny Power

So I’ve put together a spreadsheet of things to practice each day and will try to get in 30 minutes a day of what it says on the spreadsheet for each particular day. That will take the thinking about what to do when I get the time each day and should go a long way to helping me to progress.