Rock & Roll 101

February 19th, 2019

Pauline accidentally double-booked today.

February 12th, 2019

lesson cancelled from the snow.

February 5th, 2019

Pauline and I worked through the song again today, focusing a lot of keeping an optimistic attitude.

January 29th, 2019

January 22nd, 2019

January 15th, 2019

January 8th, 2019

December 18th, 2018

Pauline and I worked through the end of the chorus for most of the lesson today, where the chords change from Eminor to D quickly.

We also talked about the bass note matching the name of the string for E chords, A chords, and D chords.

See you in January!

December 11th, 2018

Pauline was still ill today, but came in anyway, and we worked through the Joni Mitchell song Clouds. We talked about how to emphasize the low note of the chord (called the tonic of the chord) with the thumb, and I wrote the string number out for her to each chord in this song.

We also simplified the chords in this arrangement to make it more pleasing to play and listen to.

December 4th, 2018

Pauline is still feeling sick today. I told her not to worry about the payments, and just let me know week-by-week how she's doing.

November 27th, 2018

Pauline called that she was feeling sick today.

November 20th, 2018

Today was Pauline's first Tuesday.

We continued working on stratregies for strumming. She had difficulty remembering last week, so we recorded the lesson.

Playing a beat, and leaving a beat or two out will help develop a sense of time. Also, remembering to count in the beginning is important to developing an intuitive sense of time.

We did a bit on vocal techniques, especially breath support and vowel pronounciation. We talked about dipthongs, the combination of two elemental vowel sounds to make a new type of vowel. (For example A as in TAKE, or I as in MIGHT - another example would be OU as in SHOUT).

November 12th, 2018

Today was Pauline's first lesson, and she brought her guitar in for me, and we sang through a couple of songs together. She has a lovely voice, albeit a bit quiet. She can harmonize well by ear also.

We talked about strategies for strumming - counting each number of each bar (for example, 1,2,3,4,5,6) and then strumming on each one, and also trying to eliminate one of them as a patter, for example 1,2,3,_,5,6.

We then talked briefly about diaphramatic breathing:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=diaphragmatic+breathing

She's moving lessons to Tuesday, and next week will be the first at 3:30