P1
The Seed Minute
One motif. Sixty seconds. Develop it or shut up.
Packs 01–03 gave you the material and the design lens. This one is different: it's my recommendation. Not "here are some notes" — here is what I think you, specifically, should be doing when you pick the guitar up, based on everything I've watched you build, buy, and complain about. Seven repeatable practices, one session protocol, a four-week rhythm, and a deck of constraints to stop the noodling.
Each one is a repeatable unit with a job. You never do all seven in a night. You pick two or three, and the protocol in §08 tells you which. The design rule for the whole pack: every practice has a constraint, a clock, and an exit. That's what separates practising from wandering.
One motif. Sixty seconds. Develop it or shut up.
One note → sentence. Phrygian Dominant, B string only.
Loop E7→A7. Draw a card. Obey it for four minutes.
E Dorian ↔ A Dorian. Colour tones only, then free.
Lou Reed ladder. Time and touch, not notes.
Halvorson move. Known line, one note thrown an octave.
Record eight bars. Play back once. Write one sentence.
The single highest-value minute you can spend. It's Pack 01 compressed into a ritual: one motif, one minute, nothing that isn't a development of it. If you play a note that doesn't descend from the seed, you've broken the exercise — start the minute again.
THE SEED (Pack 01) — or make a new one each week e|--12--15--12--------| B|--------------15----| E G E D ← ends hanging on the ♭7
From Pack 02. Say something with one note before you're allowed a second. E Phrygian Dominant on the B string only — the spicy scale you actually like — so the exercise sounds exotic instead of like homework.
E PHRYGIAN DOMINANT · B string · E F G♯ A B C D E B|--5--6--9--10--12--13--15--17--| E F G♯ A B C D E ↑♭2 is the flavour ↑♭6 is the ache
This is the anti-noodle. The Trip vamp (E7→A7) on the looper, and a card drawn from the deck in §09. You play the vamp for four minutes obeying that one rule. When it's over, the rule is gone and you draw another. The card is the design decision you weren't making.
THE LOOP · record this once, clean, Jan Ray only E7 A7 e|--0-----0---------|--0-----0---------|--0-----0---------|--0-----0---------| B|--3-----3---------|--3-----3---------|--2-----2---------|--2-----2---------| G|--1-----1---------|--1-----1---------|--0-----0---------|--0-----0---------| D|--0-----0---------|--0-----0---------|--2-----2---------|--2-----2---------| A|--2-----2---------|--2-----2---------|--0-----0---------|--0-----0---------| E|--0-----0---------|--0-----0---------|------------------|------------------| guide tones: E7 → D (♭7) & G♯ (3) A7 → G (♭7) & C♯ (3)
From the One Note Apart pack. E Dorian and A Dorian share six notes; only C♯ becomes C. That's the whole switch. The practice is hearing the colour tones flip, then forgetting the theory and just playing across the change.
E DORIAN E F♯ G A B C♯ D colour = C♯ (6) · D (♭7) · F♯ (9) A DORIAN A B C D E F♯ G colour = F♯ (6) · G (♭7) · B (9) colour tones, 12th position over Em9 → over Am9 → e|------------14--| e|------------7---| B|--14--15--------| B|--7---8--------| C♯ D F♯ F♯ G B
From The Drone Ladder. This one isn't about notes at all — it's time and touch. Two-string barre on B and e, open e ringing, E natural minor rungs. You are a rhythm section for four minutes and the only thing being judged is whether you'd want to play over you.
THE LADDER · barre B+e · open e drones under everything · E natural minor fret: 0 3 5 7 12 e|------0------3------5------7------12----- + open e|--0-- always B|------0------3------5------7------12----- E D/G E/A F♯/B B/E
The Halvorson move, from the study pack. Take a line you already know cold and throw one note an octave — up or down, same pitch class, different string. The line is the same. The ear is not. This is how you get wide-interval "wrong" sounds without playing a single wrong note.
BASE LINE (E minor, 12th pos) DISPLACED — A up, C down, same notes e|--------------12--| e|------5-------------12--| B|------12--13------| B|----------12----------| G|--12--14----------| G|--12------------------| E|------------------| E|--------------8-------| G A B C E G A B C E ← identical pitch classes
The one nobody does. Record eight bars into Cubase, listen once, write one sentence. Not a mix session. Not "fix the clipping" (though: fix the clipping). One sentence about the playing. It's the feedback loop the other six practices are useless without.
Twenty-five minutes. Four blocks. The Jam Engine pack had a version of this; this is the version built from the seven practices, so every block is a thing you've already got the instructions for. Longer sessions run the protocol twice with a break, not one long wander.
| Block | Minutes | Practice | The Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| OPEN | 3 | P1 Seed Minute ×3 | Clean tone. No pedals yet. Ears first. |
| CORE | 12 | P3 Constrained Vamp ×3 cards or P4 Switch ×3 passes | Alternate nights. Lead tone on. Timer visible. |
| STRETCH | 7 | P2 · P5 · P6 — one of them | Whichever the week grid says. Not the one you fancy. |
| CLOSE | 3 | P7 The Listen | Record, one listen, one sentence. Then stop. Actually stop. |
The exit rule matters most. Stopping at 25 with a sentence written beats 90 minutes that ends because your hand hurts. The point of a protocol is that it ends on purpose — the same reason a phrase ends on a guide tone.
Weekdays 19:30, Saturday 10:30 — the slots you already set up. Sunday off. The STRETCH column rotates so P2, P5 and P6 each get two hits a week and nothing goes stale.
| Week | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P3 + P2 | P4 + P5 | P3 + P6 | P4 + P2 | P3 + P5 | Run twice: P4 + P2 / P3 + P6 |
| 2 | New seed · P3 + P5 | P4 + P6 | P3 + P2 | P4 + P5 | P3 + P6 | Run twice: P4 + P2 / P3 + P5 |
| 3 | New seed · P3 + P6 | P4 + P2 | P3 + P5 | P4 + P6 | P3 + P2 | Run twice · read all P7 sentences |
| 4 | New seed · P3 + P2 | P4 + P5 | P3 + P6 | P4 + P2 | P3 + P5 | The Statement: record 8 bars, no constraint, keep it |
Twelve cards for P3. Print them, or just pick a number. Each is a single design decision borrowed from Packs 01–03. One card, four minutes, no exceptions. Add your own from P7 sentences — "never left the box" becomes "card 13: leave the box every bar".
Every phrase is followed by two full beats of silence. Count them.
Only the Seed and developments of it. Nothing else exists.
Every phrase ends on a guide tone of the current chord. D/G♯ over E7, G/C♯ over A7.
B string only. Slide to move position.
One spice note per phrase, resolved. C over E7. A♯ over A7. Hold it a beat too long.
Every phrase climbs, peaks, falls. The peak is the loudest note.
You may not play E over E7 or A over A7. Ever.
One pitch. Rhythm is the whole solo. Mute, accent, ghost.
Phrases in pairs. First ends unresolved, second ends home. No orphans.
Every phrase contains one octave leap (P6 style).
Wet/dry rig, volume at 6. Every phrase starts clean and ends dug in — or the reverse.
Nothing above the 7th fret. Open strings encouraged.
Nothing on. Guitar into the Badger, DCX bypassed, volume 7. You want to hear whether the phrase works without help. If it needs the Mesa's tail to sound like music, it isn't music yet.
Suhr S, Landaus. Jan Ray → Broadcast low gain → Butter Machine. DCX on as the desk. Wet Mesa with a medium BigSky hall — enough that cards 01 and 06 have somewhere to land, not so much that space stops being silence. Mobius off for P3; light Drybel vibe allowed for P4 because Dorian wants to float.
P2: Butter Machine alone, volume 8 — this is the honk practice, let it bark. P5: Jan Ray only, TimeLine off, everything dry. Rhythm hides in reverb. P6: clean plus a touch of AC+, so the octave leaps are naked and you can hear whether they're even.
Packs 01–03 are the "what" and the "how you say it". Pack 04 is the "when, and for how long". It's the pack that makes the other twenty pay rent. Next in the series, if you want it: Pack 05 · The Solo — architecture across a whole chorus, using P7's sentences as the brief.