Rock & Roll 101

June 24th, 2019

June 17th, 2019

I missed Andrew today! Hope all is okay, and he just forgot.

June 10th, 2019

June 3rd, 2019

May 27th, 2019

May 13th, 2019

May 6th, 2019

Andrew hadn't been able to put as much time as he would like into piano so this week we worked on his song, and I helped hjim chart it out and come up with some new ideas to flesh it out a bit.

April 29th, 2019

April 15th, 2019

April 8th, 2019

Today we did a piano lesson instead of a guitar lesson, and Andrew wanted to just focus on theory.

We talked about chord naming, inversions, left hand role, right hand options (rocking, quarters, arppegios), 11ths, major 7ths, dominant 7thd, 9 and add9, 11ths, and 13ths.

We briefly covered voicings, and then figured out which chords he was using in his own new piano song, and why.

April 1st, 2019

March 25th, 2019

March 18th, 2019

March 11th, 2019

March 4th, 2019

February 25th, 2019

Today we did an hour to make up for being away to Hawaii in a couple of weeks.

We went through some lead sheets that I had already, just to provide some variety settings for Andrew to practice soloing over.

He's getting pretty comfortable with soloing over the different chords, and would improve by focusing on melodic ideas and themes to expand on. That's really the next level that I'd love to see him play with.

February 11th, 2019

February 4th, 2019

January 28th, 2019

January 21st, 2019

January 14th, 2019

January 7th, 2019

Andrew moved lessons to Monday this week.

We recorded some theme development today - he sounded really good, has come a long way!!

He still hasn't recorded a theme development for me from hom, so remind him! :)

Next week there will be no lessons, as we're in Honduras.

December 18th, 2018

I missed Andrew today.

December 11th, 2018

Andrew switched to Wednesday this week because of an orthodontist appointment.

December 4th, 2018

We continued on Wednesday Dec. 5 with building themes, and expanded a bit into chords today.

After playing through some melody copying, Andrew create a theme, and I copied him (as mentioned last week), and then he built a theme on his own melodic idea.

He then did chords AND theme, and put it altogether. It sounded wonderful.

I suggested he record some over this week.

November 27th, 2018

Andrew rescheduled today for yesterday, but then didn't come.

November 20th, 2018

We continued with practicing melody copying, to develop a sense of the scale, and intervals. We stayed in the key of D this time, to give Andrew just a wee bit more context. I think I was making it too hard for him by jumping around to different keys.

After identifying the melodic phrase, I asked him to make it a theme and play a chord progression behind it. We did this for three or four different melodic themes, and I think it was a bit of a break-through.

Note to myself: A future stage might be to ask him to create the melody, have me copy it, but then he uses THAT as a theme and expand on it.

November 13th, 2018

Andrew and I continued with intervals, both recognizing them, and also with playing them back. We did simple melody copying, first without a chord background, then with a chord background.

He affirmed today that this is really helping him. I'm glad, because he has a lot of knowledge of scales and so on, and sometimes it feels like there's not a lot to show him- but he says he's really benefiting from the application of theory!

November 6th, 2018

Today we started with practicing of finding various numbered spots in keys, like the sixth note of E flat, the 3rd note of A flat, etc etc. This will be a good thing to do every week, and he should try to add it to his memorization list.

We then did some melody copying, where I play a melody and he tries to copy it on a different part of the neck.

We did a scale (1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 5 7 6 1 7 2 1) together. (and talked about melody passwords).

We then did some theme creation over chording, and recorded that - in E today.

October 30th, 2018

We recorded some songs today in lesson to work on improvisation, but I didn't have the recording set high enough, so they were too quiet. we'll try next time. :)

Good job - keep working on A B A B, A A A B, A B A C, and other patterns to get used to them.

October 23rd, 2018

Oops - went over again!

We worked through the scales more, continuing what we did last time - we focused on playing back themes after being given numbers, such as 3216123 etc.

I asked him to learn his song with open chords (the one he just wrote), and also to work on this scale:

1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 5 7 6 8 7 9 8

October 16th, 2018

I'm think Andrew may have forgotten today. It's 3:14;

He did a great job on Sunday! Tody I wanted to work through a bit of playing melodies in different keys - me singing a melody out to him and him trying to find it and play it back to me, in first the original key and then in an alternate key.

That will bring up the conversation of relative pitches again, and how we can get used to thinking of melodies in terms of the number of the note in the scale.

October 9th, 2018

Haha, we went over 5 minutes again today!

We started with reviewing his themes that he'd been practicing. It's coming along better - I want to hear even more of that recurring theme in the melodies, though. It's still a tad random.

We then tried it with some other chord patterns, just so I could hear the way he's thinking.

We then did it to 12 bar blues chords with the intent to apply those same techniques there.

We then did inversion ear testing and chord identification. Practice with an ear app on your phone / pc, especially chord names... major sevenths, sevenths, and add 9s were problematic

October 2nd, 2018

Today we went over 15 minutes again! The lessons go so fast! :)

We spent a large part of the time working through some strategies to use themes in lead guitar parts, after the experience on Sunday. I was able to direct him, and find a few examples where guitar parts use repetitive motifs as they move through a song.

We also did some ear practice of copying riffs.

We played a few of our favourite acoustic guitar songs together also, just for fun.

September 25th, 2018

We spent todays lesson focusing on theory again.

First we reviewed some of the details from lsat week such as major / minor chords of each key, and some interval testing

Then we did some quizzes on relative minors and I gave him some hints on finding the relative minor for any key. His homework is to memorize the relative minors for each open chord key (C, G, F, E, A, D)

We then talked about melody and themes, specifically expanding motifs, and how to use them in solos and melodies. We did some "jamming" in E, on a 12 bar blue pattern, in order to practice this. Think of it as expressing ideas, not using as much vocabulary as possible. Try to communicate when you solo, not just impress.

Work on that - check out lots of songs from Eric Clapton, Joh Mayer, BB King, to get an idea of soul - how to play solos with theme and with purpose.

I also asked him if he'd play once in a while at church, and he was willing to play - we put him on the schedule for this Sunday. Hope it works!

September 18th, 2018

We went over 15 minutes again today - we get carried away! :)

Today we focused mainly on theory, because Andrew is really able to figure out any song he's interested in just by learning it from ear. I think what may be the best use of his time is to learn things he might not otherwise know to research on his own.

So we did some ear training, specifically, fourths, fifths, minor and major thirds, octaves, and a couple of sixths.

Andrew, your home work is to practice these with an app or a web site that will randomly play you intervals.

We also talked about natural and harmonic minors, why they are different, etc.

We did some drills on common notes between chords - another thing we should focus on more.

September 11th, 2018

Andrew is a talented young man! We started out talking about his goals for music, and what he'd like to learn. He's not quite sure yet, but this is normal for younger age.

We talked about the fretboard, and the relationship between chords (1,3,5, and 2,4,6). We talked about different scale positions, sevenths, sixths, 2nds/ninths, and touched on sus fourths too.

I asked him to come with a booklet next week to write in, and to find a song that challenges him that we could begin working on.