Lesson Twenty One Tuesday 28th May 2013

I had been practising obsessively the song “Half the World Away” by Oasis again so the first part of the lesson I would show how far I had got.

The first time through the teacher sang the song while I played. He had to pause a few times while I got my fingers in the right place mainly in the chorus. I had tried to practise the changes in chords in the chorus. I had been trying to focus on the problem chords of D7 to G and C to E. I have been just trying to move from one to the other slowly at first then speed up when I think I have got it. This has made the pause on these parts slightly less than they were but not seamless. There is a few other chord changes I need to look at too but I thought it best to focus on some and get them correct first. After a few goes of this we had to see if I was in the correct time as I do have a habit of speeding up too much, so I played the song along with the tune itself. I would start off OK but then speed up mainly in the chorus parts that I am most anxious about. The problem would be that I would not really hear the song as I would be so focused on what I was doing.

We went back to the drawing board and the teacher decided on playing the base guitar with the correct timing on it. This I found a lot easier to keep in time with and also get back to the correct bit when my fingers or plectrum would get caught in the strings. We played this way a few times and the teacher thought that it was the best one so far and when I relaxed and just went with it, I played a lot better.

The next part of the lesson was going through the lead part of the Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here”.

I have been practising this part but I keep on forgetting the correct strings or fingers to use without looking at my sheet. This means there is a massive pause between each note. We practised putting the parts into sections and getting a bit of flow. This worked in parts. When I mean parts I mean if you filmed me doing them and skilfully edited them all together it may sound like the tune.

At the end of my lesson my fingers sure did feel like they have had a workout.