Rock & Roll 101

May 9th, 2022

This was Connor's last lesson for a while. We added a new song, Thunder by Imagine Dragons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtEvysh1654&ab_channel=7clouds

Have a great soccer season!

May 2nd, 2022

Great job tonight, Connor! What a lot of fun playing along with you on "Yes I Will" with first the guitar, then the bass, then the drums!

Keep working on playing with both hands, and keeping the speed the RIGHT SPEED that people sing it at. Don't play it as fast as you can, play it at the right speed.

April 25th, 2022

Connor is unwell today.

April 11th, 2022

Connor was ready to move on from Mario, but played through for me. We then added a new song from Sunday "Yes I Will."

April 4th, 2022

March 28th, 2022

Connor had been practicing the first note wrong, too low, so we fixed that, then worked on joining the first line to the second line without stopping.

I then wrote out more of the melody for him to learn, and we went over it a couple of times.

Finally I wrote out the left hand part for the first three notes.

March 21st, 2022

Connor was able to play along Gotta Feeling with me on the drums, and every time through got a bit more stable with his timing. Great job!

We then started working on Mario Bros., and got to the first line or two.

We also added the scale with both hands, going in opposite directions (up and down).

March 14th, 2022

Connor had a challenging week with practicing so we pulled way back and tried to just help play it along at a slow speed, paying attention to listening while playing so as to not speed up.

After we got up to 100 percent speed, I walked him through one bar at a time with both hands, until he had both hands for the whole song!

Great job Connor! Think about another song you'd like to try.

March 7th, 2022

Connor was back this week! We started fresh with some parts, because he said he hadn't been working on it much.

He remembered all the notes quite well, so we were able to talk about some other things, like sharps and flats (briefly), and then we started working on a song.

The Black Eyed Peas, I Gotta Feeling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipii7KbbJLY&ab_channel=PopularMusic

This has a two note section which plays over and over, so I wrote it out and showed him how to play it with two hands. I asked him to try to work on it with one hand this week, first the right then the left.

I also showed him the C scale (in the key of C), and how to use the "magic fingers" to tuck the thumb under and play all the way up from C to the higher C.

February 28th, 2022

Charlene and Martin forgot about tonight, so we'll try for next week

January 31st, 2022

No lessons tonight because family is ill.

December 21st, 2021

This was Connor's first lesson. We went over the piano key story, and the names of the keys. He went through and found all the As, Bs, Cs, etc.

We then played through Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

Work on these songs until we meet next, and try to commit them to memory.

Great job!