Rock & Roll 101

December 22nd, 2020

James won't be coming until the new year.

December 8th, 2020

I missed James tonight, I hope all is okay!

December 1st, 2020

James is unable to come this evening.

November 24th, 2020

James did we tonight - we went over the chords again, trying to improve his time to switch between them.

Hopefully we get to a point where we can start learning some songs he's interested in, as this makes it much more fun. Keep practising those chords!

November 17th, 2020

I missed James tonight.

This week, please continue to work on switching between our chords so far: G, Em, Am, A, D, A7, Am7, Em7, and D7.

Here's a chart to help remember:
https://rockandroll101.ca/images/guitar-chords-chart.png

November 10th, 2020

We worked through all the chords again, trying to speed up changes. He's got:

G, Em, Am, A, D, and we added A7, Am7, Em7, D7

Keep working on switching between them, and maybe try to think up some songs to learn :)

November 3rd, 2020

We reviewed all of the chords we've been learning, and he actually did a good job remembering how to play them. Not all of them sounded clearly, but he knew the shapes.

We tried to play through Seven Nation Army - he wasn't as enthusiastic, but we relearned it, and tried it a couple of times.

He is struggling with the pain-factor, and the ideal of wanting to get right into playing "Too Hot for Teacher," etc. We need to somehow get him to playing songs so he has more motivation to learn new chords, but his switch chord speed is quite slow, so that makes it difficult to start learning any.

October 27th, 2020

Oops! James was just a couple of minutes late.

We went over the Seven Nation Army song together - he's keen on it, I think, because Alex is doing it.

It's a bit of a challenge for him, but if he spends some time practicing, I'm sure it will help. :)

Will I be seeing Elizabeth again in the future? :D

October 20th, 2020

Today James came alone, and we worked through the chords as usual, and practiced playing them as quickly as we could.

We then played through the recent songs together, twice, before adding a new song "Seven Nation Army." I'm not just certain he understood how to play it, as it was a bit hard to explain to him. I'm not sure exactly why. :) I think he was excited to play it, but not wearing his listening hat.

We also added the E chord, and raced to play it as quickly as he could.

October 13th, 2020

Great job today! We went through the chords with James and I tried to help him speed up the transitions by "shaving off a second" in his time.

I encouraged him to try to add a day to his practicing, so he's doing it twice a week. I said if he wanted to blow me away, and do it every day, I'd get him a chocolate bar. :)

We went through Happy Birthday, A bit of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, Down by the Bay, and maybe another one?

If he can speed up D, that will go a big way to him feeling better about playing.

October 6th, 2020

James was here today, and we started by reviewing part names of the guitar, which he has down cold.

Then reviewed E minor, G, and A minor, and D strumming for 32 beats. Then revisited A major, which James had forgotten a bit.

We added a song, Down by the Bay in G... instead of a C chord, we're using an A minor. C is a tad hard for little fingers.

September 29th, 2020

September 22nd, 2020

James and Elizabeth did well with their chords today! We learned a couple of new ones (A major and E major) and reviewed the difference between the major and minor chords.

We did the quiz thing, where James tried to beat his best time in playing chords. He's getting better every time!

We reviewed Happy Birthday, and tried putting Row Row Row Your Boat to chords as well (using D and A).

September 15th, 2020

We reviewed our chords from last week, and strum patterns, and then added some new chords and two songs to play: Happy Birthday and (I think?) Mary Had a Little Lamb.

We ran out of time while I was trying to reinforce the A minor chord... using the racing game. I wanted to be sure not to overwhelm him or panic him, but I think he responded well to that approach.

September 8th, 2020

James and his mom both are taking lessons together. We went through the names of the various parts of the guitar, and then learned three chords: E minor (Em), G, and A minor (Am).

We did the basic strum pattern of down down downup down... at first James struggled with it, but eventually got the idea.

This is going to be fun! I enjoyed teaching you two today!