Linnstrument Practice Methods

LinnStrument
1

Hi,

First time posting, long time music nerd. I have a Linnstrument but have struggled to get into it - past experience is that having a regular structured practice routine is the best way forward. Does anyone know of any good resources/teachers for building a routine?

Thanks!

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I’m not a teacher, but I have found a way that I really enjoy practicing chord shapes on my Linnstrument while ear training at the same time.

Find a song you’d like to learn and listen to it on your phone or whatever device you prefer. Try to sound out the simultaneous notes of the melody and bass line, one bar at a time. You’ll now typically have 1 or 2 notes of the 3 or 4 notes that comprise the chord for that bar of the song. Using trial & error and prior experience, figure out all the chords of the song.

I find that this combines melodic and chord playing on my Linnstrument in an intrinsically rewarding way. You will find yourself naturally getting better without boring drills.

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I’m not a teacher, but I’ve taken a lot of lessons in my past and know how to teach myself at this point. I’ve been using the following format for learning my LinnStrument.

The categories are:

  • Engineering - Everything related to learning the technology behind the LinnStrument. Menus, features, etc.
  • Synth Exploration - Everything related to learning the synths and presets that I’m using with the LinnStrument.
  • Playing Technique - Practice technique for scales, chords, etc. Often practicing with a metronome.
  • Song Practice - Practicing specific songs.
  • Creation - Jamming, song-writing, etc.

I try to write out my lesson plan at the start of the week for each day I’m going to practice, so a specific practice session might look like this:
Engineering (5 min)
Learn how to save/restore presets.

Warmup (5 min)

Synth Exploration (10 min)
Explore lead sounds in Pigments.

Playing Technique (10 min)
Major pentatonic exercises 15-20 from practice video.

Song Practice (15 min)
Time After Time 60 bpm

I use trello to organize, so things are easy to keep track of. When I find something interesting or inspiring, like a youtube video on pentatonic licks or a song I want to learn, I save it to my trello board’s backlog. Then I go through the backlog on the weekend to setup lessons for the week.

It might sound like a lot, but it’s really not bad. If you took lessons, it would just be someone doing this for you with some accountability. Anyways, this system works for me, happy to elaborate more if you’re interested.

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Speaking about interactive ways, there are very nice courses here:
http://www.micrologus.com/courses
The instrument type is settable, you can choose the 8-string bass which is essentially the tuning of the Linnstrument. These courses are based on routines rather than songs/licks though, so that might be not everyone’s cup of tea.
Jeff Moen has a video course on Linnstrument, but this course does not provide an interactive routine: http://jeffmoen.com/
There is also a GeoShred course by Mahesh Raghvan on LivDemy platform: Your Live Music Academy | LivDemy
Some routines there are quite helpful for learning the slides, but Mahesh’s course is for GeoShred, so some tricks are specific to be performed on polished glass surface.
I also tried Piano booster / Synthesia software in score mode (no real use of it in piano roll mode imho, but Synthesia has actual score training for ages), or if you want to pay significantly more you can try Playground Sessions or Piano Marvel for a similar interactive sight reading experience. These courses are unfortunately for piano mostly, but you can load any midi into Piano booster (which is free) or Synthesia.
This video also helped me developing some techniques playing Linnstrument percussively rather than slide’ishly and if needed utilize just a single row of the Linnstrument fully: A Complete Guide to Practicing ContinuuMini (Part 1) - YouTube
Most of the times you play Linnstrument changing the rows (“strings”), and so I would opt for either the tools where you are free to use whatever fingering you like (Piano booster say with your own scores), or Misrologus courses (the first link) that are nicely suitable for guitar-like layout intruments.

Linnstrument is so versatile in terms of playing techniques that recently I splits my learning routines into percussive-style (piano-like / marimba timbres, using Pianoteq instruments and AAS Chromaphone frequently) and fluid-style (violin / slide guitar / woodwind, using ROLI Equator 2, Rhizomatic Plasmonic, Audiomodelling stuff)

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