Rock & Roll 101

November 11th, 2016

November 4th, 2016

No lesson today, I guess. :)

October 28th, 2016

October 21st, 2016

October 13th, 2016

Today we went through the main songs we've been working on, as well as a couple of others with "Rose" themes.

October 7th, 2016

Wilma brought her big 120 button accordion with her this afternoon. A beautiful instrument, with a real warm tone!

We played through Hallelujah a few times, and then I wrote out some notes for her on Dance Me to the End of Love to see if that helps with coming up with the parts that the accordion plays. It did help, but she'd want to put it into notation to really work for her, so we may end up doing a simplified version of that for her next week.

October 5th, 2016

Wilma didn't come this evening.

September 28th, 2016

We continued with the two songs, and there was a marked improvement on tempo and timing. She said the drum backing tracks helped a lot. She also used a metronome.

We added a new song at the end of the lesson, by Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah."

September 21st, 2016

We went through the two songs a few times, and recorded Blue Eyes Crying - I sent it by email as an MP3.

There's a slight slowing down on some parts, and Wilma thought practicing with a metronome might help. I suggested she look for drum tracks on YouTube...

You can find the right tempo by using a tempo tapper, like this:

http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm

I just tapped Blue Eyes, and it seems to be about 67 BPM.

If you then look up a drum track on YouTube, you can find something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcR7QC0DuiM

September 14th, 2016

Wilma brought her music from last week, and we worked on both of them... it was quite fun to play through the songs together.

It's her desire to be able to play along with her friends whether they be on guitar, or whatever, and so we're going to continue to add to the reportoire.

September 7th, 2016

Wilma brought her accordion, and we talked about what she wanted to learn, and looked at some music together.

We settled on a song by Leonard Cohen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEVow6kr5nI

I wrote out the chords for her, and suggested she get really comfortable with the left hand, and then add little runs in between melody points, and so on -- to not "step on the toes" of the melody.