Class #4 – 9/29/09
Everyone- the big focus this week is going to be on trying to practice EVERY DAY, if even for only 5 or 10 minutes. The idea is to keep these ideas fresh and spend a little time with them each day to let them grow naturally.
Intro to Guitar (3:30pm)
We’ve got 6 chords to work on, and 6 days to work on them, so it would be best to pick one chord to work on for each day of the week. The chords are:
C (EZ version), G (EZ version), D, A, E, and Em
One way to work on these that would really get them stuck in your brains and under your fingers is to work on them in order, and build as you go so that you don’t forget the ones you worked on the day before. So you could do C the first day, then C and G the next, then C,G, and D the third day, and so on. We’ll do a quick check next week to see how these are going, and then we’ll move on to reading and playing melody, which should be a little easier than the chords
Guitar 1 (4pm)
You’ve got an extra week to work on the seventh chords and your 12 bar blues progression, keep going on it to get those 7th chords locked in solid. This week we worked on rhythm figures that work over the different chords. Each one is pretty simple by itself, the difficulty comes in when you have to switch between them. What you can do to practice these is work on each one by itself for a while, then work on switching back and forth between 2 of them. (maybe start with E and A) After you feel like that’s getting comfortable, work on a three chord blues progression. You’ll find that the key of A allows you to do all three figures with open strings (A, D, and E) while in the key of E, you have to do the B figure in closed position. Start small and work towards big.
Intermediate Guitar (5pm)
Same as above for the rhythm figures and the 7th chords, I want to start using these next week for backgrounds for us to improvise over. Work on that Em pentatonic scale as well, simply familiarizing yourself with the pattern and your note choices. You can work on the scale methodically, going from root note (E) to root note. You can also play around in the scale and make up your own patterns, as long as you’re playing the right notes, you’ll be in good shape. You can improvise over this E Blues pattern:
You can also practice your seventh chords over this pattern, it’s in E, so the chords will be E7, A7, and B7. Use your ear to figure out when they change.
See you next week.
