Rock & Roll 101

June 26th, 2013

Today Kevin and I wrapped up the recording by putting the horn part in. It would have been nice to do a harmony part on the horns, but just ran out of time.

It's been a fantastic year for Kevin. His vocals have come a LONG way, he's much more careful with tuning and accuracy, and he's improved in general musicianship as well. I love teaching Kevin, and hope he comes back in the fall!

Have a great summer, Kev!

June 19th, 2013

I didn't see Kevin today-- I think he may have had an exam?

Next week is our last week.

June 12th, 2013

We recorded the vocals today, and Kevin really nailed it. Your voice is getting so much better buddy... keeping it light is key-- don't forget for when you sing live.

June 5th, 2013

Kevin and I recorded the drum parts today. I wish I had better mics for drums, as it's a bit echo-y, but I think it will sound good when we're done.

He should bring his trumpet next week, or he can use mine.

Just horns and vocals left to do.

May 29th, 2013

Kevin brought his bass in today, and we recorded the bass part to his song. He really nailed it-- it sounded fantastic to me. I'm impressed with how far he has come on bass!

After that we decided to practice the drum part, and he didn't want to try recording it yet. I showed him some of the various technical aspects of the fills and so on, and he's getting along very well.

Next week, perhaps we'll do drums first, and then finish with the vocal parts.

May 22nd, 2013

May 15th, 2013

We finished up the piano recordings, so next week will be one of the other instruments, or vocals.

Kevin tells me he's been practicing the trumpet part for this song, which is good. He should spend some time with the bass and guitar on it as well to make the most of our time next week.

Kevin's a talented kid!

May 8th, 2013

Kevin recorded the piano part a couple of times and we listened back to it. He thinks he wants to try recording it again next week to work out some of the kinks.

May 1st, 2013

This week Kevin and I worked through the chords in the piano part of his song. We wrote out the music for the song and practiced it a few times.

He said he'd like to play drums, guitar, piano, bass, and trumpet on this piece.

I wrote out the trumpet part for him (melody only for now) and he took it with him to practice.

April 24th, 2013

Kevin's voice has really been getting better. He falls into the "heavy" sound quite easily, so will have to try to remember when he sings to keep it light and mobile.

We recorded along with Billy Joel (I stripped the vocals from the original recording and lowered it to Ab), and then listened back. We did this a few times and Kevin seems to really hear where he's getting "heavy" and knows how to improve it.

He should keep practicing with a lighter sound to make it second nature.

Overall I am very pleased with Kevin's progress with his vocals. He expressed a desire at the end of the lesson to learn to play this song on piano and bass.

April 17th, 2013

Only the Good Die Young - We transposed to Ab, and sang through a few times.

Kevin is going to use Audacity to transpose it so he can practice with it.

April 10th, 2013

We finally finished his Whistle for the choir song, and I have uploaded it to the web site. :)

Sounds good Kevin, a big improvement in your vocals compared to other years.

Next week, we continue with the next song Kevin wants to learn. Please have something picked out.

April 3rd, 2013

March 27th, 2013

Kevin and I worked on the vocals, fixing up a few bad notes here and there in his recording. Next week we should be finished.

March 20th, 2013

Today Kevin and I laid down the scratch track for Whistle for the Choir, he'll be back in 30 minutes to add the real guitar.

March 13th, 2013

March 6th, 2013

Kevin and I added a new date for two weeks from now, he'll come in for an hour.

We worked on tuning on the Choir, and I recommended again that he buy Do Re Me Vocals.

February 27th, 2013

February 20th, 2013

February 6th, 2013

Kevin came wanting to learn a new song today, Hedonistic Me by the Born Ruffians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2idNiygDox0

It was strange in that the chords and notes were almost dissonant at times.

We have basically wrapped it up already, so I asked him to come with a new song to learn next week.

January 30th, 2013

We tried to add the Extreme song, "More than Words," but Kevin didn't really like it, so he's going to look through some James Taylor songs, or others this week to find something to learn for next week.

I encourage him to try to learn the first bit on his own.

January 23rd, 2013

We went through Yesterday a few times, concentrating on the chorus, and then when that was finished, looked at some Simon and Garfunkel songs, without success.

Finally Kevin settled on a Jim Croce tune to learn next week.

January 16th, 2013

Kevin wrapped up Dust in The Wind. We started out learning the violin solo on guitar, but he decided he didn't want to learn that.

So we added Yesterday by the Beatles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNnaxGFO18o

He is really nailing it already. What a talented young man!! I love teaching him.

January 9th, 2013

Tonight Kevin and I continued working on Dust in the Wind. He's getting very close to having it done, and he sounds great.

January 2nd, 2013

December 19th, 2012

Today we started working on Kansas' Dust in the Wind song.

Kevin is a natural!

December 12th, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcL---4xQYA

Today we learned Stairway to Heaven (Kevin knew some of it already.)

The chords in the after part are:

/a /b C / / / | D / / / | F^7 / / / | Am / / /b| C / / / | G / / / | Dsus D D / | / / / / |

December 5th, 2012

November 28th, 2012

Kevin has practised a lot this week and it really shows with Blackbird... he's got most of it down, and now that I've taught him the last couple of parts, I expect it will be perfect by next week.

Good job Kevin!

November 21st, 2012

Kevin really picked up the Little Black Submarines quickly, so we decided to work on another song today, and he wanted to learn Blackbird by the Beatles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzuvbgKpzQE

I showed him the main parts, and he's got the basic idea, just needs to refine his playing of it. He'll be focusing on that over the next week and then we'll put it all together.

If he gets the various parts smooth, then he should try playing along with the actual song.

November 14th, 2012

Kevin and I finished the recording of his song today, (he redid some bass parts).

He has decided to learn "The Black Keys" song, Little Black Submarines:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=490s689kvpo

He wants to learn guitar on it, so I showed him the first four chords and the pattern, and the fingerpicking style to use for it.

November 7th, 2012

Yesterday Kevin and I added some piano and some bass to his recording-- I think it sounds quite nice, and we should wrap it up this week.

This week for practice, I would like him to:
1. Go over the bass part of the song so he's ready to fix his mistakes next week
2. Pick another song to learn and work on because it should only take us 10 minutes to record the bass fixes

Thanks Kevin!

October 24th, 2012

October 17th, 2012

October 10th, 2012

We started recording Kevin's parts today, with a scratch track of Uke and Vocals, and then a finer Uke track.

Next week we'll continue with the vocal track.

Kevin should continue to work on singing in tune, especially not dropping off notes or swooping into them at the beginnings and ends.

October 3rd, 2012

Whups, we missed writing the note for last week. Last week Kevin and I sang with the tuner, and I asked him to work with the tuner more, watching that he keeps his notes as close the centre as possible.

This week we did warms ups, as usual, and then focused on singing sixths. I asked him to practice singing sixths, and to think of them as thirds of the tonic where the first note is a fifth, if that helps.

After working through the sixths, we played with the tuner some more, and I asked him to sing down the F scale, and then up the C scale, trying to keep as close to center on each note as he can.

Then we played the song, New York's Not My Home, and worked on vocals, especially not dropping off notes (out of tune) and not swooping into notes.

Then we got the UKE, and wrote out chords for recording the song next week.

September 26th, 2012

September 19th, 2012

Today Kevin's voice was sore, so he brought in the Uke, and we learned the chord parts to it, including a couple of lead parts for in between verses.

September 12th, 2012

I forgot to take notes after Kevin's first lesson.

He has expressed an interest in just focusing on vocals, so we warmed up, then spent some time working on his pitch accuracy. I went over the scales much more slowly, really encouraging him to listen at each phase of the scale, and correct his note as needed.

After doing this for a few vowel sequences, I noticed an improvement when we did the scale at a higher speed. We spent 15 minutes on this.

For the remainder of the time, we listened and sang through a Jim Croce song he likes, called New York's Not My Home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4i7frhNUs

We stopped here and there to correct pitch, and work on accuracy. I sensed that Kevin gets it. Continued focus on this aspect will improve his voice.