Rock & Roll 101

April 23rd, 2025

Caeden can't make lessons tonight.

April 16th, 2025

We started of playing The Final Countdown, and he repeated it for tubes, when I asked him if he was going to go on to the next. Caeden had forgotten about the second part we had started learning last week, so we reviewed that again. It's getting better, but there's still too much pausing between each chord. I'm not sure how to help him understand how to keep more even time. As it got faster, I tried to encourage him that it was improving. BTW,I hope he's enjoying these lessons. He's not very expressive, and sometimes I feel like he's not quite into it. ???? I'd love to hear your thoughts on how I'm doing in motivating and interesting him. He says he's still having fun, but maybe he's just staying that, lol!

April 9th, 2025

Caeden played through The Final Countdown for me, and I wrote out the second part of it, after the repeats.

He should pay special attention to the note lengths, and sharps.

April 2nd, 2025

Today we wrapped up Huntin' and Fishin', and started a new one, "The Final Countdown."

This has some new chords in it, and some newer concepts. It will take work, but it's only four bars which repeat four times, so I think it's doable this week so we can move on to the next part next week.

March 26th, 2025

We continued working through Hunting and Fishing and Loving Everyday. I'm not sure Caeden has really been practising, because he seems about the same level as last week.

The time was helpful though, and I think I noticed improvement in the 30 minutes here of practising through the song. I tried to play the bass along with him to help him see where the chords are supposed to change. I /think/ he's starting to get it.

March 19th, 2025

Caeden played through the first few lines of the Luke Bryan song, and then I wrote out the next four bars for him to learn.

March 12th, 2025

We spent the lesson just reviewing last week's music. He has trouble remembering from one second to the next (almost literally!) to use his middle finger on the chord for his left hand, and to hold some notes longer than others. Every time he changed the chord I had to remind him "middle finger!" If you are watching him while he practises, perhaps you can keep an eye on that and remind him each time? We have to get him out of that bad habit.

March 5th, 2025

Caeden played through Wasted On You for me a couple of times, and then we decided to try adding a new song.

We settled on Luke Bryan, Hunting, Fishing and Loving Everyday.

I just wrote out the first line of the verse, to break it into manageable chunks for him. We worked on it for the rest of the lesson.

Let me know if he'll be missing lessons next week over March break.

February 19th, 2025

Caeden is learning the first part really well! A bit of pausing here and there, but I'm happy with the progress he's made this week, just in 7 days!

He gets hung up on certain parts, and then is quiet for 30 seconds, I guess just thinking about where he is. It breaks with the rhythm of the song, and I'm not really sure how to help him get past that. I think just more practising at home?

Good job tonight, Caeden!

February 12th, 2025

I tried to encourage Caeden to memorize the parts he's learning. He's moving along pretty slowly, which for many students is a sign of not practising, or not using the practise time effectively.

Our first part of the lesson was me encouraging him to play the left hand without looking at it, to develop a sense of where is hand is on the keyboard. He got pretty good at that, albeit, playing it too quickly for the timing.

We then tried with me playing the right hand and him playing the left, and finally with him doing both again. It's going to be committed effort to try to play it without stopping all the time between chords.

February 5th, 2025

Tonight we added the next section to Wasted On You by Morgan Wallen. The first section isn't perfect (a bit of stopping and starting), but it's getting better! He should keep working on the whole song from the beginning to where we have stopped so far.

January 29th, 2025

Caeden didn't quite remember what we were working on last week, so we took another stab at learning it - I think he picked it up must faster this time, so there must have been some vestigial memory there.

I only retaught him the first line, to make what he has to remember and practise a bit more achievable for him. I'm not sure if he was practising, or maybe he was only practising the right hand, but if you can encourage him to spend 15 minutes on this every day, he'll find himself getting better quickly. :)

January 22nd, 2025

We added the melody for the right hand today on Wasted On You, and played it a few times. I recommended Caeden should play through it a couple times tonight so he doesn't forget what we worked on today.

January 15th, 2025

Caeden used the lesson to practise the thing we learned last week. He has a few bad habits that I tried to get him to work on:

1. He's not using his middle finger and thumb to play the chords
2. His thumb is flying away, far from the keyboard, instead of staying close to the keys at all times
3. He's not holding the chords for equal timing. The first two chords are on the beats but the remaining chords he should hold each for two beats total.

I'm not sure he really understood, because he'd go back to the bad habits shortly after explaining to him, but I just kept reminding him to play it the right length and to keep his fingers in the right position.

January 8th, 2025

Caeden played through Star Wars with both hands today, and did quite well. The end of it was a little slow, but the beginning and middle was great. He said he was ready to learn something else, so I tried to pick his brain on what kind of songs he liked, and what we could learn. We settled on Morgan Wallen, Wasted On You.

I wrote out the chords for him for the intro and verse of the song. We decided together to learn the left hand first, and then later add the melody for the right hand once he's comfortable with the left.

December 18th, 2024

December 11th, 2024

We continued working through Star Wars today. Caeden is still making progress, though it didn't seem quite as much this week as last week.

We worked on fingering for the ending of the second part, so that he remembers when to tuck the thumb and to use all the fingers of his left hand.

December 4th, 2024

Caeden did very well on Star Wars today! I could really see improvement, so maybe something just clicked for him, or maybe he's been practising more, but it's great.
We added the left hand to Star Wars, and went through it a few times. He needs to remember to hold the left hand notes while he's playing the right hand (not just to play them and let go).

November 27th, 2024

He did well on Star Wars on the first time through, but was back to one finger playing, so I had him play through it a couple of times using more fingers.
He then played Happy Birthday a few times. He's got both hands coming along really good, but misses the left hand on the last line near the end. I let him practise that a bit to get it down better.
He then played through Mary Had a Little Lamb a few times, and practised it some more. We decided against adding any new songs until he's got these three down a bit better.

November 20th, 2024

Caeden said he hadn't practised this week, so we spent the lesson time working through Star Wars, really focusing on the second part. I encouraged him to break it into little manageable pieces, and then string them all together at the end. By the end of the lesson it sounded better.
He's still playing some parts with a single finger, which makes it sound choppy. I asked him to try to use all of his fingers so smooth out the flow.

November 13th, 2024

Caeden played through his songs for me today, and I heard definite improvement. I wrote out the next part of Star Wars for him to work on.

I asked him to continue with Happy Birthday and Mary Had a Little Lamb until he's more smooth and confident with them, and not stopping in the middle.

November 6th, 2024

Caeden said he didn't practise because of hockey. I had him play through happy birthday a number of times as a practice time in lessons. Everytime he did, he improved, so I am certain that he has the potential if he can carve out more time for it.

At the end of the lesson we went over Star Wars a couple of times too.

October 30th, 2024

Caeden said he had forgotten to practise Mary Had a Little Lamb with both hands, and had just worked on Happy Birthday.
He played it through me, and is doing well. It was a little disjointed / broken up... partly because he is using one finger in places. I reminded him that to get a nice flow between notes, we want to use more fingers.

We then reviewed Mary Had a Little Lamb with two hands, then two hands on Happy Birthday.

Finally, I wrote out the beginning of Star Wars, and he played through that three times.

I asked him to work on all of his songs this week.

October 23rd, 2024

Caeden was sick this week so wasn't able to practise very much, but we went over the things learned last week, include Happy Birthday and Mary Had a Little Lamb.

We added left hand notes (not chords) to the left hand for the latter, and spent the most of the lesson trying to memorize Happy Birthday.

We'll add chords to it for next week, and maybe a new song like Star Wars.

October 16th, 2024

This was Caeden's first week. We reviewed the names of the keys on the piano, and then learned Mary Had a Little Lamb. After that, we spent some time on Happy Birthday.

He was playing the songs quite slowly, so I asked him to try to get them up closer to the speed someone would sing them.

I also asked him to get mom or dad to help him drill the key-names on the piano (like, show me all the Ds, show me all the Gs, etc).