I took this whole week off at the day job (and I'm trying hard to stay offline!) so my blog mojo is all off. Here's hoping that all of you are getting a chance to relax and be merry with your friends and family! I'm hosting a party of 8 tomorrow for the first time, and I guarantee that there will be music.
I am genuinely thankful for each and every one of you! I love making music with you and appreciate your great attitudes and hard work. My classes are the best part of my week!
Guitar 2 Rep played a bit of the old and a bit of the new last Thursday. Tom Petty's Yer So Bad is a fun one to strum through, picking the bass notes on the downbeat, and keeping the rest of the strumming light and jangly through a one two three-and-four-and combination of quarters and eighth notes. Then we tackled I'm Only Sleeping by the Beatles. Use a slow, dramatic upstrum on the opening Eminor chord of each verse for a cool effect. This time the riffs are written as note names instead of in tableture (what, you wanted me to make it EASY for you?) Use the G-chord shape as the base position for your fingers, and you'll find that little melody easier to pick out. The White Stripes and Talking Heads tunes got a little polishing up too. Whew!
Guitar 2 has faced down and bested the Dminor chord (a personal problem chord for yours truly). Be My Baby is a great way to drill that chord into your fingers. We decided on a stomp-and-thigh-slap combo for the opening percussion part, as opposed to the knock-and-clap way it's written on the page. We also started working on The Old Country Waltz. Note the typo--the Eminor in the verses should be changed to regular E major chords. There's only one actual Em in the tune and it's in the very last line. Pick the bass note of each chord and strum the other two beats as usual. It's 3/4 time (hence the "waltz"), so keep it light. You can connect the C and G chords at the end of each verse using the "Where Am I and Where Am I Going?" worksheet in the front of your packet. Replace the measure of C with the little walk, noting the exception explained on the worksheet that for 3/4 time you eliminate the chord strum on the 2nd beat and just keep on a-walking.
Guitar 1 also covered some new stuff and some old stuff this week. We're masters of the G chord now, and we've also tackled C and Aminor! Whew! We're a full week ahead of the standard curriculum with that development! Use the Tear for Fears song to practice moving between those two chords. It's just one finger--your ring finger--that does all the work, but it's probably not used to having to move independently of the fingers around it, so you'll need to practice to build up that dexterity. We talked quite a bit about the musical alphabet, half steps, whole steps, sharps and flats, and why Bill Clinton Eats Fries! Don't worry if that all kinda blew past you. We'll keep on talking about how to find your way around a scale, musical keys and how to switch between them, and scales. It'll click eventually. With those two new chords, you've got a whole new world of songs open to you. Take a flip through the songbook and see just how many tunes are now available since you can play C, G, and Aminor! Between that and the huge list of tunes we've worked through in the handout, you should be able to keep the relatives entertained all day tomorrow!
Hope to see you this weekend but I understand if you're travelling or trapped in a tryptophan coma. E-mail me with questions! I'm trying to stay off electronic machines this weekend but I'll make exceptions for guitar friends.
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