Busy day. I’ll try to be brief. (OK, this isn’t terribly brief.)
A Few Points to Begin:
- Chat with my friend Steve O.
- Practice with “Friday” my Fender CD 60 for 60 minutes
- Old Town School of Folk Music class for 75 minutes
Chat with Steve O.
Steve called. An old friend moving away from Chicago. He was surprised/pleased to hear that I was playing/practicing guitar.
I think Steve was surprised at the number of songs I told him I was playing.
Key Learning from Steve: When musicians meet each other they ask two questions. 1) What songs do you play? 2) What is the key of those songs?
I don’t quite know what that means yet as a beginner guitarist. But I will learn.
60 Minutes of Practice on my Fender CD60
I always practice the day of a class at Old Town School of Folk Music. I want to be prepared.
Key Learning from my Practice: The song “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King is great strumming practice. I need to do it every day. Playing my known riffs without looking was a first. I’ll do that more and more.
Today’s practice, the usual:
- Finger stretching on fret board.
- Exercise of champions, Peter Gunn riff, Cream riff, E Minor Pentatonic scale.
- Practiced all my chords.
- Strummed my common riffs. For example: G, Em, C, D, G and Am, C, Em, A7, D . I made those sequences on my own. I call them my RK riffs.
- Played “Angel from Montgomery) (Prine), some Old Town School practice songs, and Edge of Seventeen (Hicks) from Justin Guitar website.
- Practiced Blindfold. That was really big for me. I’ll do more of that as I progress playing guitar.
As I practiced kid songs for my grandkids, all of those songs were easy to play. I don’t play them perfectly, but I play them. Let’s face it, these kid songs are not Bach. But I practiced these songs today for my grandkids and they came relatively easily. So I have officially reached “guitar plinker” status. All this progress in 4 months. Kids songs I played:
- She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain
- Jesus Loves Me
- Kumbaya
- The Farmer in the Dell
- This is the Day
- You are My Sunshine
Old Town School of Folk Music Class with Henry A.
Another fine class with Henry. Henry, yes, I appreciate when you give us homework.
Major Learning in Class Tonight
- Learning how to change the key of a song. This is not easy to explain. Let’s just say you can change the key of a song so it might be easier to sing instead of using a capo.
- Bending a note: I am right handed. Let’s just say you get your left hand ready on its string, you pluck the needed string with your right hand, and then you bend/move that same string along the fret. If you do it correctly, it twangs.
- Learning the Dsus2 chord. This was an easy chord to learn on the fly.
- Fun debate on shaping the A chord. I think it was Justin Guitar (my online class) where I was taught the pretzel shaped A. But our instructor Henry wanted the aligned A chord. I guess you need to look all of this up.
- Strumming. Henry A. used an easy strum for me to learn. Down, down, Down, down (the bold Down was emphasized; makes the strum more dynamic/interesting). 4 strums per chord.
- Henry A. taught this simplified F Chord in class
- Blank chord diagrams would help both instructors and students. Perhaps I will build one.
Henry also taught a simplified F Chord for Tonight. Shown below.
Songs Tonight for Class
- Chicago by Sufjan Stevens. This is where Henry taught us for the first time how to change the key of a song. We did it 3 times. PS: Sufjan Stevens has an album with Illinois songs. I’d like to purchase it.
- Rumble by Link Wray and Milton Grant. Henry used this song to introduce the Dsus2 chord to us. Thanks Henry. We even used part of the E Minor Pentatonic Scale for parts of this song. So Henry A. our instructor had us practice this technique all week and we were ready to use it tonight in a song (nice job Henry).
Asking Too Many Guitar Questions
My wife and son believe I may be the most bothersome student with all my guitar questions. Hopefully not an obstruction to the class. Thanks to my instructor Henry A. for his patience with me 🙂
Be Kaizen and Keep on Playing Guitar
I mentioned my website to a few of my classmates. I hope they drop by and visit KaizenGuitarist. If the goal of Kaizen is to “improve” or “change for the better” each day, I met that goal today. I learned a lot.
Be Kaizen and Keep on Playing.
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