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Tony Almeida
Past Notes
August 24th, 2021
This was Tony's last lesson for a while.
We spent an hour and talked about scales, finding "1" and the rest of the scale in terms of numbers. I wrote out the melody of the Piano Man song (the chorus), and talked about how to play it in D by using the opens strings D and A, to make the 1 and 5 chords.
August 17th, 2021
Tony didn't come this week... must have forgotten.
August 10th, 2021
We started with review, and talked about major to minor and major to sus chords. We then talked about roots of each chord, and which string the root is on for each chord.
We then talked about fifths, the other note the bass guitars use in country and folk, and where they are in various chords.
We talked about hammer-ons for various chords like G and C, and how to use them while playing chords with the bass 1 and 5 notes to make a nice sounding finger picking country style.
July 27th, 2021
Today was the first lesson with Tony.
We started out with him showing me some of the things he knew, playing some songs for me, and showing me the open chords he'd already learned.
We talked about his hopes for what he wanted to know and learn. He'd like to be able to play piano songs on a guitar, things like Elton John, etc. He'd also like to learn some theory.
We started out with talking about suspended chords: "sus" chords. These are like the "Amen" notes in church hymns. They are played by raising the third note of a triad by one fret (otherwise known as a half-step). Likewise, lowering the third by one half-step (or fret), turns a major chord into a minor chord.
We talked about how to find the third note of a triad by locating the root note (the named note of a chord), and singing up Doh Re Me, to find "Me." That's the third note. Locating it on one of the six strings while playing the chord will give you a hint of how to find the minor or sus chords for that played chord.
We then moved on to some fret logic - understanding how to find and play chords on the neck which are within a family of chords that go with a key. Using the circle of fifths, we can find the three major chords and three minor chords that are in the family of a given key signature. They are in order, major minor minor, major major minor. Using the right finger shape on the neck (either E or Em on the E string and A or Am on the A string) you can work your way through those six chords.
We talked about some other stuff, including the pentatonic scale from the "home row," but that was the essence of the lesson.
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