Rock & Roll 101

May 31st, 2016

May 24th, 2016

May 17th, 2016

May 10th, 2016

Nate and I had the hour tonight.

He said he hadn't put a lot of time into practicing, so we didn't continue with Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven - instead we looked at a couple of other songs.

The White Stripes, Ball and Bisquit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urEeUMqRhA4

The Racenteurs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt9sCgiIREs

Monster Truck, For the People:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8bVUT7wvqY

May 3rd, 2016

April 26th, 2016

April 19th, 2016

Nate came in Patti's spot again this week.

He was interested in doing some Big Sugar songs so we worked through three or four.

Turn the Lights On:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v2MCT6E7cg

Little Bit o All Right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKO4RBiADBo

Dear Mr. Fantasy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KcB4CAeOJ0

Diggin' a Hole:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U6aNnMqmgc

Boots or Hearts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1vXiK3y3SY

Everlast, What's It Like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCZ1YteCv5M

April 12th, 2016

April 5th, 2016

We went through Love Yourself a couple of times, and then Nate wanted to work on Sweet Home Alabama:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye5BuYf8q4o

I already knew the main riffs, but we figured out the fancier ones as well. We'll finish it up next week.

March 29th, 2016

March 22nd, 2016

Nate and I continued working on the song from last week, learning some of the other fancy licks the guitarist in the video was learning.

I forgot to write a note about this last week. The video is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twQWL2D76ag

We then started Justin Bieber's Love Yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMSIR210mRg

He loves Justin Bieber so much! ;)

March 15th, 2016

March 8th, 2016

Patti came in Nate's spot this week.

March 1st, 2016

Nate came with a song he wanted to learn, by Sponge, called Have You Seen Mary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ8_P3XB2qg

It's got slide guitar in a D tuning as well as regular tuning on another guitar, so we learned both parts.

We worked out the slide guitar solo as well.

February 23rd, 2016

Nate brought his electric and slide in (ha! electric slide) and we played through some solos with our guitars, me on rhythm and he on lead.

I gave him some tips -- ie, to let a single note be enough sometimes, to not be afraid of silence as as equal importance to lead as the note itself.

I recommended he put together a list (like Patti did) of songs that he would like to work through, either on the electric or the acoustic, as it might be a more effective way to learn.

February 16th, 2016

February 9th, 2016

Nate brought his slide into the lesson, with his guitar tuned to an open D. I got my "spark plug" slide out and tuned my guitar to D as well, and we played through some blues.

The scale pattern is slightly different for an open D tuning, so I showed him that, and we tried a few things.

I recommended he think of soloing the same way as we learned before-- using patterns to create themes, and revisiting them to give a solo a signature.

February 2nd, 2016

We started with going over the Fiddler's Green song, trying to figure out one of the melody lines-- we discovered that the guitar is actually tuned to an open E on the recording, so our way is much harder to play (but more purist imo).

We then continued with Eric Claption's song, and I showed him some things to do to make the bluesey guitar sound. We also looked at the slide.

He's going to bring his slide and electric next week to look at maybe some Stevie Ray Vaughan or other blues songs.

January 26th, 2016

Nathan and I went through Fiddler's Green a couple of times... he's doing really well on it.

We then added a new song by Eric Clapton, When You've Got a Good Friend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ7y199Z1-U

It's a 12 bar blues style, and I showed him a couple of different approaches including the open B and A chords higher on the neck using the E formation. I also showed him some fancier stuff to make it bluesy, like the walk down B7, the Aminor thing.

January 19th, 2016

Nathan wanted to learn a song by the Tragically Hip, called Fiddler's Green:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoXM95WyJjM

It has some neat parts on it that use hammer-ons etc., so I wrote out some tab for him through that. We went over it about three or four times.

January 18th, 2016

January 12th, 2016

January 11th, 2016

January 5th, 2016

Nathan took Patti's spot this week.

We went through a bunch of seventies songs including Stuck in the Middle with you, Ain't Now Sunshine, Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Fortunate Son, Nothing Else Matters, With or Without You, and we talked a bit about some ways to go to the next level. Working with a metronome, and recording yourself is a good way to develop a better time sense.

January 4th, 2016

December 29th, 2015

December 28th, 2015

December 22nd, 2015

Nate and Patti were away tonight.

December 15th, 2015

Nate wanted to learn a song by the Gorillaz called "Feel Good," so we charted that out with a drop-d tuning.

Cool song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJFu-S47loY

December 8th, 2015

We talked about and played blues for a while. He showed me a song he'd been messing with, "writing," and I suggested some chords to go with it. I then showed him how he could play the standard pentatonic scale on the octave spot, or four frets down from there -- one is effectively in "E", the other in "G," giving the second one a more bluesy feel. We then looked at Taking Care of Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Opn2XXcybo

December 1st, 2015

Nathan and I jammed a bit for a few minutes, then worked on last week's Christmas song, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." He'd been learning the scales of the song, and found some youtube videos of it, so we changed the key from E to G, and I wrote that out as well. I showed him a few little tricks, like the bass line, and how to pick the melody out while you're playing the chords.

November 17th, 2015

Nathan expressed an interest in learning how to pick up songs by ear, so we talked through the circle of fifths again, and then did three songs as 'samples.' Unfortunately, they weren't as cut-and-dried examples as one would wish, mainly because they were creative song-writing in action, but the main idea came through.

November 10th, 2015

Forgot to take notes

November 3rd, 2015

Nathan and I continued with ad libbing with repeating patterns and added another scale form.

October 27th, 2015

We had no electricity, but we had candles and acoustic instruments, so a fun lesson ensued! We spent nearly the whole time talking about how to improvise melodies-- and even how to write song melodies. This is useful for solo parts, but also a really good thing to grasp and understand for general playing. The big idea is to use patterns to draw the listener's ear into the tune, but change them up enough to keep the listener 'surprised.' Too much surprise, and it is too much work to pay attention and hard to enjoy. Too little surprise, and it gets boring to listen to and one quickly tunes out or changes the song. We started with a really simple repeating pattern of A A A B, with each letter representing a two-bar phrase. The typical verse chorus, or bridge is made up of 8 bars. We expanded on this, trying different patterns such as A A B A, A B A B, etc... and different keys too.

October 20th, 2015

We reviewed the fret logic a bit, going over the two systems with 1 on the E string and 1 on the A string. We talked a bit about the Circle of Fifths: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Circle_of_fifths_deluxe_4.svg/2000px-Circle_of_fifths_deluxe_4.svg.png We added a new song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUJIziMe-4 This has a good challenging finger picking part, so I'm looking forward to working through it with you!

October 13th, 2015

Nathan and I went over some of the stuff we'd been working on before-- I showed him the major - minor - minor effect for chords playing in D, E, and A. We also learned the song "Angie" by the Rolling Stones. He'd like to learn some blues in the future.

October 6th, 2015

Nathan took a full hour, since today was his mom's birthday. We started with going over the things we talked about last week - it seems like everytime we review it Nathan has another 'aha!' moment, which is good. :) We worked on doing improvisation over a chord sequence: 1 5 4 2m, with him playing the chord on beat one and improvising on the other beats. After about 15 minutes he was getting quite good at this, though needs to really pay attention to time, that he stays on the beat. I played a drum beat from YouTube for us to play along with and it did help him stay in time. I recommend practicing along with different types of beats to improve in this area. I talked a bit about the relationship between a major chord and it's "6 minor," (the term for this Nathan is relative minor). With a D chord, adding a B to the bass makes it a B minor seventh, which is the relative minor of D. This is true for every major chord, so adding an A to a C chord's bass makes A minor 7 which is the relative minor to C. We then added a song, Renegades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tu4wWSbnIs I showed him the finger-picking part at the beginning, and we worked on the strum pattern which is a little challenging.

September 29th, 2015

Nathan came first this week. We started by talking about the scales, particularly why there are multiple positions of the same scale on the fretboard. We then worked through fret logic again, and I think came to a point where it made sense to Nathan. We did some chord position work, then I got him to work on playing leads and chords at the same time (well, alternating). Date: October 7, 2015 at 9:56:58 AM EDT Nathan took a full hour, since today was his mom's birthday. We started with going over the things we talked about last week - it seems like everytime we review it Nathan has another 'aha!' moment, which is good. :) We worked on doing improvisation over a chord sequence: 1 5 4 2m, with him playing the chord on beat one and improvising on the other beats. After about 15 minutes he was getting quite good at this, though needs to really pay attention to time, that he stays on the beat. I played a drum beat from YouTube for us to play along with and it did help him stay in time. I recommend practicing along with different types of beats to improve in this area. I talked a bit about the relationship between a major chord and it's "6 minor," (the term for this Nathan is relative minor). With a D chord, adding a B to the bass makes it a B minor seventh, which is the relative minor of D. This is true for every major chord, so adding an A to a C chord's bass makes A minor 7 which is the relative minor to C. We then added a song, Renegades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tu4wWSbnIs I showed him the finger-picking part at the beginning, and we worked on the strum pattern which is a little challenging.

September 22nd, 2015

Nathan wanted to work on the song, Brother Down by Sam Roberts, so we started with that one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcmjIZQ0i2U It's got a neat D minor 7 part which it comes back to-- the chords are kind of quick, and a bit hard to play. He said it might be a bit much for him right now. We went to some fret logic, and I explained (too quickly, I think!) the logic behind how the chords are related to each other. Every major scale has the chords in this order: Major, Minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished. The numbers for those chords are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So to put that together, the 1 is major, the 2 is minor, the 3 is minor, the 4 is major, the 5 is major, and the 6 is minor. Moving up the neck, we can play a fret, skip a fret, play a fret for 1, 2, and 3, then move up to the next string for 4, 5, and 6, to play the correct chords for any scale. We did some ad lib soloing with the chords and took turns.

September 15th, 2015

Nathan came already knowing quite a bit about guitar, so we focused a bit on the theory. I wrote out the numbered scale, and showed how it has three major and three minor chords (and one diminished, or double minor chord). I then talked a bit about the circle of fifths. This can seem a bit obscure at first, but will become more clear as we dig deeper into it. It's important because it helps one to understand the "why" of music, and give one confidence in picking up a song by ear and finding that song's chords. As the first song to work through, we took a look at "Ohio," by Neil Young: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68g76j9VBvM He and his mom brought along $50 for tonight's lesson-- they'll bring money for the rest of the month later.