Rock & Roll 101

November 26th, 2024

This was Mike and Leah's last lesson. We started out with reviewing Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, and then talked about the blues scales on either side of the root note on the G string. I think of the scale on the lower side of the "home row" as:
|x| |x
|x| |x
x| | |x
x| | |x
|x| |x
|x| |x

The pattern can be described as 3,3,4,4,3,3. On the other side of the home row, it can be described as 4,4,3,3,3,4

It's been fun!

November 19th, 2024

Mike came along tonight, and we worked on a Led Zeppelin song, Babe I'm Gonna Leave You.

November 12th, 2024

Leah came alone today, and so it was a perfect opportunity to do some Taylor Swift. :D

We did two songs: 22 and All Too Well.

November 5th, 2024

Mike and Leah started learning Blackbird today. We went through the opening part, and the walk up - we'll save the walk down until next week... at least Leah wanted to wait.

At the end of the lesson I showed them how to play a scale on the 7th (in D) or the 9th (in E) so you can play the bass notes.

October 29th, 2024

Leah played through the intro to Dust in the Wind. Sounds great!
We covered a variety of topics, and went over another song, Adele, Someone Like You:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0

We talked about A major 7, and some things you can do with the D shape.

In the video that's attached to the song in the song list, there's a very simple version with chords that uses Capo 2 - a bit easier to play.

We briefly talked about the E minor pentatonic scale (using the home row... this would be position 4 on this chart:
https://beginnerguitarhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Majorpent-1024x640.png

At the end, Mike and I spoke briefly about the Doobie Brother's Black Water song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km4-eKvv3EM
This has a drop D tuning. I helped him find the bar chords to play through some of the song when the D is dropped.

October 22nd, 2024

October 15th, 2024

We started working on Dust in the Wind tonight, specifically the intro.

C, Cmaj7, Cadd9 C | Cmaj7 Cadd9 C CMaj7 | Cadd9 C CMaj7 Cadd9 | C CMaj7 Cadd9 C |

BTW: Here's a sheet I made of open guitar chords:
https://www.rockandroll101.ca/images/guitar-chords-chart.png

October 8th, 2024

Leah came alone again today. We talked about how to strum, strumming patterns by moving the hand on the beat, and using up strums as the upbeats, and down strums as the down beats, then accenting some or skipping some to make a pattern.

We talked also about sixteenth strumming, and how to mute the chord a bit by not pressing down as firmly so the strings don't ring... in this manner, some chords can come through strongly, while others come out percussively.

We then did some finger picking, using the thumb as the root plucker, and the pinkie as the rest. Then an arpeggio pattern can be played.

October 1st, 2024

We spent the lesson working through the theory of various chords and harmonies, like how to find major 7 and dominant 7 chords, and sus chords and minor/major chords.

We also talked about pitches on the neck, and finding 5ths and octaves quickly and easily using the "chess move" and "double chess move"

September 24th, 2024

We continued to work on Driver's License today. I wrote out more of the chords, and we talked some more about moving chords around the fretboard... such as sliding a D up two frets to play an E/D or sliding an E up two frets (along with your finger as a capo) to play an F#.

September 17th, 2024

We started off with some review of the chords from last week, and then we learned a new chord, D... along with a couple of different ways to play it (with different fingers). I quickly showed them a B minor 7 with the first finger on the A string, playing the second fret (with the rest of the fingers on a D shape). We talked briefly about minor 7ths being a relative minor of chords (like D and B minor, or A and F#m).

We also learned A and F#m for a song by Wild Rivers... I think it was "What Kind of Song"

September 10th, 2024

This was Leah's first time (nearly) with guitar. We went through the names of the parts of the guitar, like bridge, saddle, nut, fret bars, frets, neck, body, head, machine heads, and then learned E minor, G, A minor, and C.

We played through the chords with a simple down, down, down-up, down strumming pattern.