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Here is a montage of the entire 2nd lesson I had with my late student. You can read below what we did on the first lesson. She does not own a guitar and did not practice between lessons. I wanted to see what her memory retention was and so I had her do the chord exercise with the Fmaj as soon as we sat down. To my delight (as well as hers) she was able to play the chord cleanly and effortlessly all without going home to practice!!! We decided to move forward and learn more chords for the song she wanted.
We moved to the Bmaj chord which I thought would give her the same trouble as the Fmaj but it did not. She was able to easily play that chord. I then had her do some chord shape exercises to get used to moving between both those chords. Since that was going well I showed her the Dm chord. Again, she was able to play it fine so we did some chord shape exercises as well as some strumming exercises to get her used to strumming all the chords. I decided to show her the last chord, Cmaj, to finish all the chords she needed to know for the song. She was once again able to play that fine along with the chord shape exercises. I decided to go ahead and start getting her started with alternate strum patterns. At first I had her play a downstroke then an upstroke. Each successful stroke got a TAG. Then I turned a metronome on and had her naturally just play an alternate strum pattern to see where her rhythm was at. It was fine. I decided to go ahead and have her start playing with the metronome.
First I had her just hold the chord and vocally call out each beat. She would call out 8 beats then have 8 beats to get to the next chord, then call out 8 beats, then have 8 beats to get to the next chord. I then had her strum the beats with the rest between each chord to have time to move to it. When she was proficient at this I lessened the time to 4 beats. When that was proficient I challenged her to just 2 beats. At first it was difficult but she immediately started over and was able to do it!!!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Video - Strumming Exercise 2
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Here is an example of an alternate strumming exercise I did with my second student. The TAG point is playing a down up down up pattern clean for one chord.
Here is an example of an alternate strumming exercise I did with my second student. The TAG point is playing a down up down up pattern clean for one chord.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Notes - First Lesson with Second student
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My second student is actually a friend of mine that wants use the method. She currently does not have a guitar but thought our first lesson was very fun. She already has some skills and a small knowledge base with chords and strumming. To take advantage of this I developed the second and third strumming pattern exercises with her. Since she already knew the beginner chords I teach everyone we are moving on to much more challenging open chords like Fmaj and Bmaj. This proved to be a challenge. We ended up only focusing on the Fmaj the whole time but by the end of the lesson I had her playing it cleanly. I developed a way to approach these types of chords.
For the Fmaj chord it was taxing on her hand to hold the whole chord and play it cleanly. It was also impairing her ability to learn where her fingers should be to play cleanly. Her hardest challenge was playing the 1st and 2nd strings cleanly as these are held down by finger 1 at the same time. So I decided to focus on just those. I had her hold the 1st and 2nd strings with finger 1 and play each until they were clean. Once she had a grasp with how the finger should be positioned to be able to do this we added finger 2 on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string. I then had her practice playing those three strings cleanly. At first she ran into problems but was soon able to readjust and get her hand positioned to play all three clean consistently. At this point I had her add finger 3 on the 3rd fret of the 4th string. What I thought would affect her playing the chord actually did the opposite. She was able to play the chord cleanly with the added note. This led me to understand the most difficult aspect of the open Fmaj chord is holding string 1 and 2 down with the same finger. Once that is perfected adding the rest of the notes for the chord are far less difficult.
My second student is actually a friend of mine that wants use the method. She currently does not have a guitar but thought our first lesson was very fun. She already has some skills and a small knowledge base with chords and strumming. To take advantage of this I developed the second and third strumming pattern exercises with her. Since she already knew the beginner chords I teach everyone we are moving on to much more challenging open chords like Fmaj and Bmaj. This proved to be a challenge. We ended up only focusing on the Fmaj the whole time but by the end of the lesson I had her playing it cleanly. I developed a way to approach these types of chords.
For the Fmaj chord it was taxing on her hand to hold the whole chord and play it cleanly. It was also impairing her ability to learn where her fingers should be to play cleanly. Her hardest challenge was playing the 1st and 2nd strings cleanly as these are held down by finger 1 at the same time. So I decided to focus on just those. I had her hold the 1st and 2nd strings with finger 1 and play each until they were clean. Once she had a grasp with how the finger should be positioned to be able to do this we added finger 2 on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string. I then had her practice playing those three strings cleanly. At first she ran into problems but was soon able to readjust and get her hand positioned to play all three clean consistently. At this point I had her add finger 3 on the 3rd fret of the 4th string. What I thought would affect her playing the chord actually did the opposite. She was able to play the chord cleanly with the added note. This led me to understand the most difficult aspect of the open Fmaj chord is holding string 1 and 2 down with the same finger. Once that is perfected adding the rest of the notes for the chord are far less difficult.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Video - First Song Lesson 6
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Here is a clip of my students first time singing and playing a song. This was during our 6th lesson. It is these moments that there are no criteria. I simply let the student play and have fun with it regardless of the flaws. The idea is to build confidence as my student had never done that before. If she feels excited about how it felt (which she did) she is likely to go home and practice it more. With some refinement through our exercises we will be able to eliminate many flaws and allow the student to focus on creating as opposed to practicing. The excitement of how it feels to be able to perform music is in itself the motivating factor with the guitar and is something that becomes arbitrary as we master the instrument more and more. We begin to forget how it felt the first time we were able to sing over music we were playing. The satisfaction of feeling like we had accomplished something that seemed relatively impossible before.
Here is a clip of my students first time singing and playing a song. This was during our 6th lesson. It is these moments that there are no criteria. I simply let the student play and have fun with it regardless of the flaws. The idea is to build confidence as my student had never done that before. If she feels excited about how it felt (which she did) she is likely to go home and practice it more. With some refinement through our exercises we will be able to eliminate many flaws and allow the student to focus on creating as opposed to practicing. The excitement of how it feels to be able to perform music is in itself the motivating factor with the guitar and is something that becomes arbitrary as we master the instrument more and more. We begin to forget how it felt the first time we were able to sing over music we were playing. The satisfaction of feeling like we had accomplished something that seemed relatively impossible before.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Click To Learn Guitar Article Published Online
www.clicktolearnguitar.com
I have an article published on the popular webnewspaper Broowaha. Here is the link for the article:
Article Link
Please leave your thoughts along with the others. It is this weeks most viewed article!
I have an article published on the popular webnewspaper Broowaha. Here is the link for the article:
Article Link
Please leave your thoughts along with the others. It is this weeks most viewed article!
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