Rock & Roll 101

April 14th, 2025

Caleb is missing because he has basketball lessons today.

April 7th, 2025

Caleb really nailed the first part of Dance Monkey this week, so we figured out the next section.

We continued to try to learn it by ear like we did the first part, and then Caleb tried to figure out where it went in the eighth note time -- there are some quarters and some sixteenths, making it a tad tricky, but by the end of the lesson he nearly had it!

March 31st, 2025

Caleb worked on the melody of Dance Monkey today - repeating the verse over and over trying to get the syncopation of the left hand to be in the right place with the melody of the right hand... tricky!

He did Seth's half-hour today too.

March 24th, 2025

Caleb decided to move on from the Heist - it's a bit challenging putting both hands together, and he's just starting out.

We added Dance Monkey and working on both hands with the right hand following the sixteenth up-beat at the end each bar, but the right hand on the dotted eighth pattern,

March 17th, 2025

Caleb played through the Final Countdown for me, and did very well on it!
He said he was ready to try another song, so we tried to learn a new one, called The Heist by Vulfpeck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLwansBIAmU

This has pretty interesting and complex right hand and left hands, but it will be a challenge to put them together. It might be worth writing it out as sheet music, so we can really see where the notes lay on top of each other.

March 10th, 2025

March 3rd, 2025

Caleb continued with the piano today. We reviewed the chords and the melody, and putting hands together. I introduced him to inversions, and how they can be used to make chord playing simpler, without jumping the hand all around.

I reminded him how to play sus chords (skip 4,1)

I wrote out the next part of the song, and we worked through that until the end of the lesson.

February 24th, 2025

Caleb wanted to make the switch to piano tonight, so we did The Final Countdown - the main theme part... I wrote out the chords and melody and explained to him how to find major scales with the whole tone and half tone trick, and also how to tell the difference between major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PRQmLXC6TA

February 10th, 2025

Today in Caleb's lesson we went through Circles on the drums (sorry for sending a Taylor Swift link last week), and then added Moana, How Far I'll Go.

February 3rd, 2025

Went over the sight reading drum pages for beginner, and then at the end of the lesson took a quick look at "Circles" by Post Malone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P69ooyukIKs

January 27th, 2025

Seth was sick today, so Caleb took his slot.
We did half the time with theory on the guitar, and half on the drums. We talked again about moving major and minor chords up the neck, and I demonstrated this for the D chord and the A chord (using the D and A string).

After that, on drums, we went through the kit sight reading exercise at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ssC7VfkQWE

At home, if he practises this, he should try to get to 100% speed playing along.

January 20th, 2025

We continued with some theory, talking through the last shape to learn in the scales, position 1. We then talked about song writing, and some strategies, such as writing lyrics first, and then making them fit to a melody, using a poetry book, or asking Chat GPT to write lyrics for you.

Also, the dice method for coming up with a melody can work.

We talked about finding melodies for chords and how you might approach that.

We talked about the circle of fifths- he was confused about the role of the sharp or the flat in the key signature, so I explained that using the major scale (whole step, whole step, half step, whole, whole, whole, half).

January 13th, 2025

We continued working on scales, adding the next shape down the neck (there's only one left now!)

We then talked through the circle of fifths (here's a link)
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0993/3800/files/Circle_Of_Fifths.png?v=1623415457

We used this to talk about how to play chords with each note of the pentatonic scale.

January 6th, 2025

Caleb wasn't feeling well today. I spoke with Holly for quite a while about various topics on education and prayer and my daughter Rose's health issues.

December 30th, 2024

Caleb and Seth aren't coming today.

December 23rd, 2024

We worked some more on scales, starting to look at the 3rd position pentatonic scale. It shares the top fret notes with the fourth positions bottom fret notes.

We also looked at the open G scale, using the open strings at the bottom of the neck.

December 16th, 2024

Caleb is done his song now, so we decided to return to learning the neck. Here's the Major Pentatonic scale shapes again:
https://beginnerguitarhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Majorpent-1024x640.png

We talked about the relationship between the major and relative minor chords and how to find the key of the scale again. It's complicated, and I'm not sure I'm communicating it super clearly, but I think Caleb is slowly getting it. In the diagram above, the keys of the major scales are a different colour (blue).

UPDATE: I forgot to add that we looked at the solo for Comfortably Numb, and I showed him YouTube guitar tab videos such as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8bcsMif73M

December 9th, 2024

December 2nd, 2024

Caleb re-recorded the electric guitar part, and since Seth hadn't been working on the chorus of his song, Caleb learned and recorded the keyboard part for the chorus. I'll try to upload it to youTube and send you a link soon.

November 25th, 2024

We record Ryan playing bass on Caleb's song, then tried to play the last E minor chord at the end of the song as well. The sound was quite different because of the possibly different mic placement, amp settings, or guitar settings. I suggested we record the whole chord part again next week to fix that problem.

November 18th, 2024

We recorded the guitar solo in Caleb's lesson, and a quick bass track (we were running out of time). At the end of the lesson I showed him how to play fifths and octaves on the bass, but we didn't have time to work through that to record.

November 4th, 2024

In Caleb's lesson we recorded his guitar parts. He wants to rework the solo, and there might be some other parts he wants to redo as well.

October 28th, 2024

Caleb and I worked through the song he's written, and then started recording it on my software. We're going to dedicate next week to recording it for real.

October 21st, 2024

Caleb used the dice system to come up with some patterns to use for his next melody. He was playing it at a different speed than the first part, so we loaded up a drum beat to play along with - first the original pattern, then the new one.

Here's the drum beat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_Kd7QspMM

I suggested he work on a bridge for next week.

We then wrote out chords, and he decided which chords he wanted to use for each part.

We will record it when he's got it all ready.

October 7th, 2024

Caleb has been having trouble with the melody of his song, so I suggested he just use dice to try to pick some notes, and make a random melody. He's going to work on that this week.

After that we reviewed the minor seven chords, which I think he's getting quicker on. We also talked through some bar chords briefly. He could learn a bit on finding chords on the neck using the E minor and major, A minor and Major shapes. Maybe a future lesson.

We then talked about major sevenths again, which he'd kind of forgotten, and went through a few before running out of time.

September 30th, 2024

We reviewed the sevenths, and talked about the difference between chords that are major with sevenths, and chords that are major with major sevenths. It is a bit confusing. We also have minor chords with sevenths, and likewise chords that have minor sevenths.

We went through all of them, and I asked him to try to spend more time committing them to memory, instead of trying to figure them out when they're needed.

After that we returned to the melody building. He didn't have a new section started, so we spent some time in the lesson doing it. I asked him to focus on that this week as well.

September 23rd, 2024

Caleb went first today, and we started by reviewing all the major seventh chords, and then talking through minor 7ths, and how to find them.

We then talked through sus chords, and found Asus, Csus, Dsus, ...

After that he showed me his melody which he has been working on. I suggested he try to flesh that out with a chorus melody to make a song.

September 16th, 2024

We reviewed the 7ths again from last week. I'd asked him to learn them before next lesson, but he hadn't so we figured them out again for major chords only.

Then we looked at his ABAC melody pattern, which he did at half length (1 bar for each letter - ABACABAC). I suggested he make a new part to use as the chorus.

September 9th, 2024

We started with reviewing the theory for finding chords on the fretboard.
We moved on to talk about open chords that he knows. He's got the major and minor chords down fairly well, but not so much all the sevenths, sus, add 9, etc.
We talked about the theory for 7th chords (dominant), and I asked him for home work to learn all the sevenths using that theory (down two halfsteps from the chord name, add that note to the chord).

We then talked about soloing. He wanted to learn Michael Jackson's Beat It solo, which is beyond my ability to teach. Here's looper.tube which slows music down:
https://www.looper.tube/?v=fhHtXa0MOWw&s=3.4&e=11.8&spd=0.45

We then talked about theory of melody and I used Mary Had a Little Lamb as an example ABAC melody form. I suggested he play around with that to make his own melodies.

June 24th, 2024

We reviewed the seventh chords, and tried to play through them. Caleb hadn't worked on them, so it was a bit of relearning today.

We also reviewed the major/minor chord order in a major scale, and the order of whole steps and half steps in a major scale.

We also looked at the pentatonic scale, adding the next position down the neck (I'd asked him to do this before, but he'd been busy with his other music teacher / lesson for recital).

June 17th, 2024

I cancelled today.

June 10th, 2024

Caleb is so eager and enthusiastic and mature. I enjoy teaching him, and walking him through the concepts of theory. He's quick to pick things up!

We covered numbered systems in scales and chords, talking about how major chords have the 1, 3, and 5 note in them, and what add 9 means, or 6 (ie, C6).

We reviewed that 7ths are actually flat sevenths, and played through the 7th chords on the open fret, both minor and major.

June 3rd, 2024

Caleb and I reviewed the scales, and also added some additional open chords (D minor, B minor, and A7, B7, C7, D7, E7, F7, G7)/

Here's the major pentatonic scale shapes to learn.
https://beginnerguitarhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Majorpent-1024x640.png
He's already learned (Through Matt), the 5th position, and I'm showing him the 4th position. I asked him to learn to play them back to back on the neck.

May 27th, 2024

Caleb came with his electric guitar, and we reviewed some of the basic parts of the instrument. (I confirmed the saddle is the portion that comes in contact with the strings, I had them backwards, so thanks!)

We reviewed a few chords, and he was able to play many of the common chords, however no sus chords, 7ths, etc.

We then talked about power chords, and how to move shapes around the neck, making your finger into a moveable capo.

I briefly described major chord order, as major, minor minor, major major, minor, diminished, and demonstrated how this can be played using bar chords up the neck.

May 13th, 2024

This was Caleb's first week, but hurt his hand so his brothers (Seth and Levi) came in his place. I taught Levi the names of the drums, and we learned the quarter-note beat (boom-chuck). Seth was paying attention, and remembered some of them as well.