Guitar Lesson – October 2nd, 2009
Unfortunately I had a photo shoot run long yesterday, so I pretty much missed most of my lesson (don’t you hate it when the real world interrupts your leisure time). It was a hectic day and showing up 40 minutes late to 45 minute lesson wasn’t what I was planning on. Luckily Kit had a little extra time before his next student and I got a whopping fifteen minutes in.
Since the lesson was an abbreviated one and because I left my lesson folder in my car (which would have pretty much taken up the fifteen minutes I did have to go back down and grab it) Kit deviated from our regularly scheduled lesson. Instead he showed me the Minor Circle Of Fifths and gave me an exercise to go along with it.
The Roman Numeral at the top is the position on the fretboard and the corresponding note on the Low E string is below it (the “o” is an open string). The distance between each note is a 5th. And, I know what you’re thinking… this isn’t a circle. With Kit, this doesn’t surprise me, but this is how it was presented to me:
The exercise I was given was to play the minor chord, then play the pentatonic scale at the current position. Repeat this around the Circle of Fifths (in the order shown above) and then chromatically (up the neck in the regular order of the notes). The first time through, play the scale up and down (Low E to High E) and then repeat the whole process playing the scale down and up (High E to Low E).
Here is the Pentatonic Scale:
Since the lesson was cut short we didn’t get into a lot of the technical details of what’s going on, so I’m sure I’ll get a more in depth look into the Circle Of Fifths and The Pentatonic Scalenext week and I’ll report back then. If anyone wants to give me a head start that would be great.
Another thing I was told to keep an eye on was bending strings out of position when grabbing a chord or playing notes. Apparently when I’m grabbing my bar chords I’m bending some of the strings out of position. The same goes for when playing scales and individual notes. I need to focus on only pressing as hard as necessary to get the notes to play.
Hopefully life won’t get in the way next week and I’ll make my lesson on time.
4 Responses to “Guitar Lesson – October 2nd, 2009”
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New Post: Guitar Lesson October 2nd, 2009 Minor Circle of Fifths & The Pentatonic Scale: http://su.pr/1IE8Sc
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NeverTooLateGuitar: Guitar Lesson – October 2nd, 2009 http://bit.ly/19EXTM Full http://bit.ly/18rkrI
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One of the best ways to learn guitar chords is to prepare yourself. Especially for those just starting out, your fingers may not necessarily be comfortable with stretching over the strings to create the right sound. It is important to take your time and not rush learning the more complicated chords. It can be difficult at first, so you may want to try to further break down the guitar chords to make them easier.
[…] economy picking. Upon seeing this my instructor Kit had me stop doing scales all together. In last weeks lesson he started me back on scales with the Pentatonic Scale. With the Pentatonic Scale, there are only […]