In early January 2021, Kieran Quinn invited people to join him in committing to a 100 Day Practice Challenge.

You practice a new skill, or develop an existing skill, daily for 30 minutes a day, and share your work with the group every 100 days.

It’s been a brilliant motivator for me, because I’ve never really been the ‘practice-for-practice-sake’ type, more of a ‘practice-for-upcoming-gigs’ type. So with a year of lockdown, and the destruction of the arts industry in Ireland, it’s been difficult to keep the motivation high.

I’ve been working on pieces from the movie Sweet And Lowdown, which features Sean Penn in the lead role, miming to guitar parts played by Howard Alden. I’ve loved the movie for a long time, and a rewatch before Christmas made me decide to start learning some of the tunes. I bought a book of transcriptions online, an it sat on the bookshelf for a couple of weeks, until I joined Kieran’s group, and set my sights on some gypsy jazz tunes.

As I write this, it’s day 73. I’ve missed an odd day here and there but overall I’ve been very consistent, (even allowing for a distraction or two along the way) and I’ve been posting my 10-day updates in a YouTube playlist.

There are a few more updates to come, and on Day 100 I plan to record a ‘live’ video of me playing the six pieces I’ve been working on. I’ll also post individual videos and the transcriptions I’ve been using, for any guitarists who’d like to try their hand at them.

Here’s the latest update video: