Feb 1st 10
23 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
Well, as you can see by the lack of posts in a while “real life” has yet again gotten in the way. Add to that an injured left wrist that makes it difficult and painful to play means I haven’t been playing and posting here as much as I would like.
But, I can’t blame everything on the real world and a bad wrist. Since this blog is about leaning the guitar, I should write about the good and the bad. The truth is, before life and limb got in the way I had grown frustrated with my guitar playing. In particular with my guitar lessons. And even further in particular with economy picking. As I posted about in a couple previous posts, my instructor Kit really wants me to break the economy picking habit and I seem to be having a problem doing it.
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Sep 25th 09
6 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
For this weeks lesson we continued with the “circle of notes” diagram that I wrote about in my last lesson. My instructor Kit likes to call this his “Dr. Seuss” lesson since at first glance it doesn’t quite make sense and I need to trust that it’s going somewhere. This week I learned that this was more than just a memorization exercise to learn the notes backwards and forwards from any given note as I wrote last week. This time, Kit added two new circles (shown below) with different “note spacing” between the notes.
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Sep 4th 09
2 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
I decided to try a new instructor. A friend of mine (who appears in my Jam Session post) is taking bass lessons from Kit Ruscoe who is also a guitar instructor. I’m not switching because I have a problem with my other instructor, Bruno Pelletier. I actually think he is a great instructor. I’m switching for a couple of reasons. First, since I’ve only seen one instructor, I’d like to get an idea of another instructors style and see if it’s a better fit for me. And second, even though Bruno is a great jazz guitarist and instructor, he’s not quite as up on the current rock/blues scene (he didn’t know who The Black Keys were). And as much as I would like to play jazz, playing blues and rock is what I’m after. Admittedly, at first I was specifically looking for a jazz guitarist as an instructor because I thought they would make better instructors when it comes to music and guitar theory. But Kit seems to have a good mix of theory (he’s actually classically trained) and rock expertise.
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Aug 28th 09
5 Comments | Posted in Dunlop, Gear, Guitar, Keeley, Lessons, MXR
A new feature I’m going to have here is a lesson recap every time I have a lesson with my instructor. These my vary from every week to every two weeks depending on my schedule. In these posts you’ll get to see what I’m learning in my lessons. For me, it will be a great re-cap and force me to get a grasp on what I just learned. My lessons are on Thursday, so I’ll make these posts of Friday.
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Aug 14th 09
25 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons, Reviews
First, I’ll say that I think the best way for me to learn guitar was to find a teacher I like and take one on one lessons. But that can cost a lot of money (I know, I’m doing it and at $50 per hour lesson, it ain’t cheep). So, I decided to take a look at online lessons as a supplement to my one on one lessons. That way I can cut back the number of times I meet with my instructor.
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