Notes - Lesson Review after Seminar

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Lesson: 1 hour

Lesson Overview - I decided to implement exercises that I had worked out with my previous lesson. This particular student wants to be a songwriter. She has been writing a song a week and we are working on her latest one. I had her play the song for me while I made TAGpoints in my head that we could use to clean up some of the inconsistencies with her technique.

These were the issues I saw with her playing during the song:

- Inconsistent strum patterns and technique
- Constantly resetting fingers for each chord played


I used these TAGpoints to address the issues:

• Stop pick at Marker: This TAGpoint is in conjunction with a visual marker applied to the instrument. For the electric guitars I physically put masking tape onto the guitar to mark where the pick (or hand) should stop when strumming down and strumming up. For acoustics we use the top and bottom edges of the sound hole.

• Keep fingers close to strings: This TAGpoint is a little general but is meant to keep the student from taking their fingers completely away from the fret board and then resetting them with each chord. The idea is to keep the fingers close to the guitar fretboard and strings so the that you can move between chords as quickly as possible. There is not a specific distance that the fingers need to be away from the strings, however the fingers should not be completely pulled away and then placed back on the fretboard one by one. Instead, the fingers should stay close to the strings between chords to maximize efficiency.

How I implemented the TAGpoints:

I began by going over the strumming TAGpoint. Explaining the reasons for the hand to not pass these points to ensure for efficient technique. I had her practice with the first chord of her song. I let her know "The TAGpoint is - Stop pick at marker" then signaled for her to start. I had her strum for 30 seconds 4 times. I had the student then strum the chord without tagging. When it seemed that we had given that chord enough time we moved to the second chord. The sme TAGpoint was applied to this chord and we practiced that chord for 30 seconds 4 times. I had the student then alternate between the chords to get the feel of how the strumming pattern should feel between the two chords. Her technique had improved.

The third chord of her song was a difficult from the second. This is where I had noticed the student completely taking the fingers away from the fretboard and resetting them one by one to make the third chord. I explained what I wanted her to do to achieve the next TAGpoint. I let her know "The TAGpoint is - Keep finger close to strings" and signaled her to move from one chord to the other, concentrating on keeping the fingers closer to the strings.

Notes - My TAGteach certification seminar

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My TAGteach certification seminar has finally come and gone. I have been studying and implementing TAgteach into this guitar method since I started it but I knew there was still more to know. My primary seminar really put a lot into focus with that. I am now moving forward with a clearer picture of the road ahead towards my level 1 certification.

Video - Montage of Complete Lesson 2

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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!!!

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.

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.

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.

Click To Learn Guitar Article Published Online

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I have an article published on the popular webnewspaper Broowaha. Here is the link for the article:

Article Link

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