I was never happy with the name fo the blog, but it's so hard to find a name that wasn't taken. Yesterday I thought of this great new name for the blog, (or at least a better one than I had), so I put that in to action.
Had a great lesson yesterday. It was one of those days where you leave thinking to yourself "THIS is why I pay for lessons!". Keith finds and identifies for me the problems in my playing that might take years for me to identify and fix myself. Yesterday's issue was how hard I was fingering the strings. When I strum harder, I push harder, but even when I strum softly I was pushing pretty hard on those strings. Part of the problem appeared to be that my fingers were too far from the edge of the fret. I moved them as far over as I could without actually being on top of the darn thing and lo and behold, it required much less pressure to make a clean sound. (Or what passes for a clean sound when I play...) =) I also noticed immediately that I could play faster. Amazing. Who knows how long it would have taken me to pick up on this if I tried to teach myself from a book, or by ear? Great stuff!
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
12 Bar Blues
So... I've been very active practicing guitar. Not so active on the blog. Keith taught me to play the "12 Bar Blues", first with single notes. The way he taught it was very similar to this:
At any rate, it was really easy to play with single notes... I=G, IV=C, V=D. He added a swing rhythm and it sounded pretty cool I thought. ("doooo de-doooo de-doooo de-doooo..." is kinda what it sounded like.) After practicing that for a week(amongst other things), we played it together, only he went off and played a blues solo so I could hear what we were doing. I think it was the first time I felt like I was playing music for real on my guitar. It was cool.
The next week he added power chords to the mix. (I think that's what they're called. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.) I is now GDG, IV is now CGC, and V is now DAD. But he didn't stop there. He had me mute the strings at times. So it was more like "doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/". Honestly, this was hard for me at first. Trying to do the swing rhythm, whilst playing the new notes, AND mute the strings... my brain fumbled a bit. But I could see where we were trying to get, and I was excited. Keith told me this is great practice because the constant string muting(a big part of guitar playing) would be like finger push-ups for me. I like the analogy. =D
So I've been practicing this often this week. I have trouble moving from the I and IV to V. I need to focus on that. It's a lot of fun though... =D
At any rate, it was really easy to play with single notes... I=G, IV=C, V=D. He added a swing rhythm and it sounded pretty cool I thought. ("doooo de-doooo de-doooo de-doooo..." is kinda what it sounded like.) After practicing that for a week(amongst other things), we played it together, only he went off and played a blues solo so I could hear what we were doing. I think it was the first time I felt like I was playing music for real on my guitar. It was cool.
The next week he added power chords to the mix. (I think that's what they're called. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.) I is now GDG, IV is now CGC, and V is now DAD. But he didn't stop there. He had me mute the strings at times. So it was more like "doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/ de-doo /rest/". Honestly, this was hard for me at first. Trying to do the swing rhythm, whilst playing the new notes, AND mute the strings... my brain fumbled a bit. But I could see where we were trying to get, and I was excited. Keith told me this is great practice because the constant string muting(a big part of guitar playing) would be like finger push-ups for me. I like the analogy. =D
So I've been practicing this often this week. I have trouble moving from the I and IV to V. I need to focus on that. It's a lot of fun though... =D
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