Lesson 30 Tuesday 30th July 2013

As I had been practicing the rhythm for the Sixpence None The Richer song “Kiss Me” a lot this week, I decided to start by playing this.

Last week I had completely lost the rhythm so I had been practicing a bit to get it right. I think I have had some success as some people I know who for some mad reason wanted to hear how I was doing. When I played this rhythm they recognised it straight away so I thought I was on the correct path.

However on playing it my teacher correctly noticed that I had added in some extra ups at the end of the rhythm so to the non-trained ear it would be OK. 

My teacher told me that this was OK and it could be played that way, however I wanted to do it the right way. My thoughts are if I am given a rhythm I need to be able to get it right if I go with a its nearly there or sounds right I will get into bad habits.

After many starts and stops and building it up from the sections I did manage to get it right. The next step was to try the chorus.

This is the same rhythm but with a change of chords half way through each two bar rhythm. I have been trying to practice this but as ever my first few goes where a nightmare with me choosing the wrong D chord and ups where downs should be and visa versa. Once we broke the parts down and I slowed down the tempo I slowly got the hang of the first part. The second part I still struggle on.

The teacher did then show me the next final part to learn on this song. 

This part has a few different rhythms to it and chords. The teacher demonstrated how it goes. Watching how his fingers moved so quick and easy to the right strings and how to rhythm changed it looks so effortless but I know it will not look sound or feel that way. Just looking at what I have to do I can see I will sweat blood and (probably) swear to myself with this bit.

To finish my lesson we went through the rhythm of the Radiohead song “No Surprises”. As I had been focusing on the last rhythm so much it took me ages to get this right. In fact I kept drifting into the last song a few times.

After a while of perseverance and listening to how the teachers version goes I got sort of there.

One part of my playing I now have to focus on is the muting out of the sixth E string on some songs. At the moment I try and mute the sixth string but appear to move my hand in such a way that the first string sometimes gets muted too.

Plenty to look at and keep me out of mischief till my next lesson.