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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Sep 1st 09
8 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
I just got done practicing for the last hour or so. I was mostly practicing the Jazz progression in F I posted last week higher on the neck. I mentioned in that post, I wasn’t doing well with chord positions higher up the neck. It’s frustrating since I can play them fine lower on the neck. Actually, it’s not that I can’t play the cords higher on the neck, it’s that I don’t know the cord locations on the higher frets. Once I have the locations memorized for the particular chord progression, I can play them just fine. But at that point I’m just going through the motions for that progression and don’t REALLY know the chord locations.
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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 7th 09
7 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
The other day I posted about my first guitar lesson and touched on the CAGED system. I wanted to follow up that post with some more detail, mainly for my own learning process. If I write it down in my own words it helps me remember.
Above are the five major chord shapes an their scales. My instructor points out that for the most part you’re not going to use a lot of the shapes when playing bar chords. Since you can play any chord with any of the shapes, it doesn’t make sense to use the D shape to play a C chord when the A or E shape is so much easier. And after trying to play the D shape, I agree. Maybe once I get better I can venture into the more difficult shapes.
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Jul 23rd 09
5 Comments | Posted in Guitar, Lessons
Since I’m not specifically writing this blog to provide online guitar lessons, I’m only glossing over what I learned in my lesson. Right now this blog is more about what someone learning the guitar later in life is going through and tracking my progress. I’m still trying to figure out this blog, so who knows what will happen down the road.
On my first guitar lesson we spent most of the time going over basic things like the six strings and their notes (EADGBE). I know the strings, but frankly have a hard time remembering them without doing a mental “rundown” from low E.
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