Rock & Roll 101

December 28th, 2020

December 21st, 2020

Jason cancelled tonight.

December 14th, 2020

December 7th, 2020

November 30th, 2020

Chris came with a song he'd figured out all on his own! He played Hallelujah through with the left hand chords too, and did much better, and felt more confident with it.

His hand jumped around a bit in the new song, and he realized it was a good time to learn inversions, so we worked through that for a while... he completely gets it now.

November 23rd, 2020

November 16th, 2020

Chris decided to work on last week's stuff for one more week, so we cancelled the lesson tonight.

November 9th, 2020

In today's lesson, we went over Hallelujah together, working out the block chords and melody - switching hands for chords from right to left so the right hand can do the melody.

We then talked about arpeggios, where the chord is broken up by fingers.

We reviewed things like inversions, and how to find the right inversion.

November 2nd, 2020

Chris remembered the things we were working on last week, and had been practicing them: the bass note being different sometimes in slash chords, the sus2 and sus4 chords, and also came up with his own discovered of the sus24 chord.

He remembered minors and majors, and had only made the mistake in the case of a B minor, in which the 5th note is an F#.

Today we talked about inversions, the case in which you turn a chord over, starting with a different note in the chord (at the bottom of the chord), but playing all the same notes just the same.

For example, playing a C normally is C, E, G - but inverting it you would play E, G, C for the first inversion and G, C, E for the second inversion.

This is the way we go about moving between two chords by switching as few fingers as possible. The chords E minor and C, for example, have only one note difference: in E minor, the B and in C the C.

October 26th, 2020

We went through the songs he has been working on, and then added some new features: slash chords, where the bass is on the right side of the chord like this:

G/A (the bass or left hand would play an A here)

And also numbered chords, like D2, D6, Dsus4, Dsus2.

We talked about minors and majors again. The minor has two empty keys (including the black keys) between the thumb and middle finger. The majors have three empty keys.

The sus4 removes the 3 note, and instead plays the one to the immediate right of the 3.

The sus2 also has no middle (3) note, and instead includes the 2nd note.

Don't worry about 7ths yet, as they're complicated a bit.

We added a new song, Here I Am to Worship.

October 19th, 2020

We started from scratch, first with locating notes, with C being to the left of the two black keys, and D being "in the doghouse".

We then talked about how chords are formed - and learning the C, F, and G major chords. When there are three empty keys between the thumb and middle finger, that's a major chord. When there are two empty notes between the thumb and middle finger, that's a minor chord. Minors sound sadder than majors.

We went through a couple of songs.

We talked about the left hand -using it to play the bass note of the chord.