megan b.

November 1st – 7th

I am so excited for this next leg of my guitar-learning plan.
I feel like I’ve hit the point where I’m truly feeling good about my abilities and really want to keep practicing outside of the scheduled practice sessions to get better. Having that foundation of music theory and basic G major chords to work from (although all still small in the grand scheme of music knowledge), has given me confidence to move forward in my learning and  has made me want to get better so that I can be able to play more songs.

At this point in my musicianship goal sheet, I am to be introducing the E chord, and then practicing my final song, “Hey Ya” by Outkast. This practice will happen over the next few weeks, right up until the end of the course.

New Chord

The E chord I’m adding to my mental music library is, thankfully, a nice, simple chord:

I was able to practice and get the hang of it pretty quickly and was feeling good about it after a few practice sessions!

Final Song

With the chord learned, I was able to move on to looking at the song I’d be learning for the final progress check-in – “Hey Ya” by Outkast. This song came out in 2003 and I still love it today. Outkast’s funky take on rap/hip-hop is a genre border-breaker, which is why I think some of their music, like this one, appeals to such a wide audience.
I’ve included a version of the song below, for you to have a listen so that you know what I’m working towards. It’s not the official video, as I’ve opted for for a cleaner version (well, the cleanest version I could find).

My first task, after learning the E chord, was to figure out a strumming pattern and the chord timing. I turned to Ultimate Guitar to help me out with this. I was familiar with this site, as my husband uses it a lot to find chords, and together we were able to pick out the best (and simplest) version of the song, which uses only the chords G C D & E.

Strumming Pattern & Chord Timing

For strumming pattern, I’ll be sticking with the one suggested on Ultimate Guitar. For the 4/4 bars, that’ll be:

And for the 2/4 bars, that looks like:

This song is put together as 3 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 2/4, 2 bars of 4/4, then repeated.

Next, I lined up the chords with the bars.  This is indicated on the website, but I found it tough to read while keeping the timing going in my head, so I wrote it out in a way that simplified it for me:

Challenges

With all the tools I need in place to play the song, I began practicing. The strumming pattern has been the trickiest for me to get a hang out so far. It’s a bit more complex than the one I used for my midterm song, and it took a lot of my brain power to keep counting in my head and have my hand match that! I’ve been practicing it almost everyday now and have already seen and felt so much improvement in this area – it’s beginning to feel a lot more natural  of a movement, and less foreign to me.

The second tricky bit I ran into was that pesky C chord. To play it on its own is fine, but for some reason it’s been such a toughie to transition to and from. Having that longer transition holds up the strumming pattern and makes everything sound a bit disjointed and clunky. I’ll definitely be practicing this during every session next week, because this will directly affect me being able to improve my strumming by keeping time instead of pausing part way through.

Weeks 3 + 4 – Transitions + Strumming

October 11th-24th (up to date on posting blogs now!)

I’ve been feeling pretty good about how my hand positioning is going, so I began putting all of the pieces I learned together by beginning to work on my midterm song, ‘Alouette’. I used the chords/music from MusicPlay to see what notes I needed (G and D7) and began playing around with those. I feel confident doing them on their own, but transitioning between the two is way trickier than I though it would be. After a couple practice sessions, it’s still sounding pretty slow and clumsy, but my notes are a bit cleaner sounding, where as they were pretty sloppy when I first started practicing that.

Along with transitioning between G and D7, I needed to introduce strumming patterns. This was something I forgot about when creating my plan, and that became very apparent when I got to this stage – I know the notes I need to play, but how do I play them? I had to enlist the help of my husband, as I felt pretty lost on how to proceed with it. For the song ‘Alouette’ we came up with:

I’m not sure if that the correct way to write that out, but it made the most sense to me at the time and has helped me remember it, so I’m sticking with it!

Incorporating the strum pattern has been fairly easy, but I tried once to stick to the pattern and include lyrics – that didn’t work so well! I still need to focus so hard on counting that it’s feeling too tough to bring in an extra element right now.

I’ll get a bit more practice in, then post my video for midterm!

WEEK 2 – Chord Notations

Notes from Oct 4th – 10th

This week was all about getting hands-on and learning how to play actual notes. As mentioned in my plan, my goal is to learn the chords G C D D7 Em Am within G Major.

To begin, I printed out a copy of  the guitar chord sheet from to keep with my guitar. That way I’ll always have it handy.
In terms of actually playing, I simply followed the directives on the chords sheet, placing the corresponding finger to the numbers listed on the strings. When I first started trying this out on Tuesday (Oct 6) , I managed to do one attempt oat each note and by the end of it, my fingers were so sore from pushing down on the strings! By my third practice session it was already becoming less delicate and I could feel my fingers toughening up to it.

As far as the sound of it goes, it was so-so at first; getting my fingers to not touch the strings around it was a bit of a challenge, but again, I can already hear and feel that improving a bit. My husband also gave me a pointer that if I place my fingers closer to the frets, it tends to produce a cleaner sound, which I’ve found helpful.

Although it’s still early, the most difficult part of this stage in learning so far is trying to memorize the notes. I’ve been working at it quite a bit and I feel like I always have to check with the page to see what finger positioning to do for each one.  I’m hoping to see some improvements with that in the coming weeks.

-Megan B.

Gah! Life has been busy and I hadn’t had a spare moment to transfer my music progress notes to a blog post, but now is the time. I’ll be uploading a new blog marking my past month’s progress every 2 days (or so) to get myself caught up.

So, without further ado…

Goals

This is my first time learning an instrument since a sad attempt at recorder  in grade 5, so needless to say, I have a lot of learning to do. I’m going to be tackling guitar, which I know is a bit of a toughy to get a hang of, but I’m motivated and I think the payoff of being able to play will be worth it.
By the midterm on October 30th, my goal is to be able to understand guitar notations of common chords within G Major and be playing these chords: G C D D7 Em Am
I will demonstrate this new knowledge and know-how by playing the song “Alouette” using the chords G/D7 in the 4/4 time signature.

Perceived hurdles

At this stage, being a complete beginner, my greatest measure of success will be being able to read the notes on the page or screen, then translate them to a finger position on guitar, all the while being mindful of the timing of the song.

Week 1 – Basic Music Theory

Notes from Sept 27th – Oct 3rd

This week I budgeted for time to begin understanding basic music theory. I have absolutely no prior knowledge in reading music or understanding what to do with the notes and symbols on sheet music, so there will be a lot of learning for me to do.

From what we’ve learned in class so far, I already feeling like I’m getting a better start that I’d planned for. This gave me a headstart in already being able to identify different note values (whole, half, quarter, and eighths), time signatures, and rests (I had no clue what those symbols were before!)
To build upon this, I began the process of learning the notes. I found a simple photo showing the notes with the acronym FACE and the mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit” to help remember the notes.

Then I looked up simple pieces of music and would try to identify the notes in the songs as a way to practice and get used to which notes are where.

It’s only been a week of practice, and I have yet to even touch the guitar other than making sure it’s in tune, but I’m feeling pretty confident about how much I’m understanding so far. Hopefully this feeling will translate into next week when I get playing.

-Megan B.