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Kate Kristiansen
Past Notes
January 2nd, 2018
Kate must have forgotten today.
December 19th, 2017
Kate is ill today, so cancelled lesson.
December 12th, 2017
Kate had to cancel this week, hopes to do an hour from 3:30 to 4:30 next week.
December 5th, 2017
We went through Silent Night a few times, and worked on the chords we've been learning.
We then added Jingle Bells (and I wasted some time by writing it in C, which has an F in it!)
When we're more comfortable with the chords we're already doing, we'll introduce the F chord again.
November 28th, 2017
Today we had a great lesson! We spent an hour this week, to make up for last week, and focused on the chords Em, Am, G, and D.
We wrote out a few songs - a simple version of the Huron Carol, Island in the Sun, and Silent Night.
We did different strum patterns and also talked briefly about which note is the "bass note" of each chord.
November 21st, 2017
Kate rebooked this week, to do an hour next week.
November 14th, 2017
I wrote out E minor, A minor, G, and D in the book for Kate.
We then working through the transition of playing these chords, while keeping one finger on the fret if possible.
We did a strum pattern of down, down, down up, down.
November 7th, 2017
Kate and I worked through the guitar today.
We talked about the parts: body, neck, head, machine heads, bridge, sound board, nut, frets.
We then talked about half steps and whole steps, and how a major scale is made of whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step.
That moved us to sharps and flats. Sharps represent an upward motion in note pitch, singing sharp would be singing a little higher than the note, singing flat is singing lower.
Wherever you start on the guitar, if you follow this pattern, you'll play a major scale.
We did an F scale, a B flat scale, and an Eb scale.
We then talked about minor and major chords, and I taught her an E minor and an A minor chord.
We strummed in the pattern DOWN, DOWN, DOWN-UP, DOWN
Here's a chord sheet I wrote out.
http://rockandroll101.ca/images/guitar-chords-chart.png
Look for those two chords, and see if you can practice switching between them smoothly.
October 24th, 2017
Here is Back in Black:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kiq9HDUkNxg
Keep it simple, don't try to do everything the kid does until we talk about it more.
Try to play aloing with just quarter note beats, and save the eighths until you start to feel like you have the quarters down.
Remember to count even on stuff that's easy, so it becomes part of your brain patterns.
October 17th, 2017
We strung Kate's mandolin and talked about frets, octaves, and harmonics. The strings tighten to the inside of the head of the instrument, not the outside.
We talked about tuning, matching the two close strings so they're the same note for all four pitches.
This is one site for tuning:
http://www.get-tuned.com/online_mandolin_tuner.php
There are lots of tuners online, some of them show a meter instead of having to match a pitch by ear... the meter will indicate as you're getting close.
There are good apps in the app stores that do this as well.
We then moved to the drums for the last bit of the lesson, and she showed me what she's been working on.
October 10th, 2017
This was Kate's first week- she wants to learn lots of different instruments.
We started out this week with the drum kit. We learned the names of the various parts of the kit - the hi hat, the snare, the kick, the tom toms (including floor tom), the ride, and the crash cymbal.
We sepnt the majority of the lesson the "boom chuck" beat, otherwise known as the quarter note beat. We then spent the last five minutes on the eighth note beat.
Things to remember:
1. Don't lift the sticks up so high
2. Count while you play
3. Use the "head" of the stick on the cymbals, not the shaft
4. cross the arms, so the left hand plays the snare, under, and the right hand plays the hat, over
5. if you make a mistake, misplay or miss a hit, just keep the count going, don't start again.
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