Lesson 42 Tuesday 29th October 2013

The start of the lesson we warmed up the fingers by playing the Animals song “House Of The Rising Sun”. I can see that this is a good tune to get me to play the chords clean as you pluck the individual strings and you can then know if you are holding them right or not.

As usual it took me a few goes to get it right even on chords that in practiced I had got fine. After a few false starts the notes did start to ring out with A and C sounding ok and even D sort of passable too. However I did get stuck on F which does not ring out but gives a depressing thud.

The F has been a bit of a problem form me mainly because finger one has to hold down strings 1 and two while fingers two holds string three and finger three holds down string four.

While doing this I think I am not putting enough pressure on finger one or I put loads on and the other two fingers are not straight so that they bend and mute out other strings. I have been practicing this one a lot and even though it is not there I think it has improved.

I run through the tune a few times. At the moment there is a big gap between each chord and the strumming of them is slow and deliberate. I have tried to speed it up and make it flow better but at the moment when I do that it sounds worse with loads of missed notes. My major problem is as ever movement from one chord to another which I feel is getting better slowly but surely.

We next looked at my progress on the riff in the Madness song “Our House”. 

Again this took several attempts to get part the first few plucks. I was resting my plucking hand on the bridge which did make things easier. My main problem appears to be that I want my eyes to be in both places. Either looking at where my left hand fingers are or what string I am plucking. My teacher thought it would be better if I just pluck downwards as I have a habit of just doing up plucks which I then have problems finding the next string. This did help as I could get past the first part.

For the final part of my lesson we looked at the song “Maggie May” by Rod Stuart.

We only really had time to look at the intro of the song.

The E chord is played a bit different.

What I did find is that I could play all of the chords without having to take finger 3 off. The rhythm for this took me a few moments to get too.

I had a few attempts and there was some notes ringing out. The main one I was not happy with was D. I went through the chord and could not understand why it had such a bad buzz to it. Upon looking at me doing it my teacher could see that I was not muting the top string with my thumb. As soon as I did this it made a big difference.

I feel that holding down chords is getting easier and sounding better. However I still need to practice the moving from one to another as I do have to sometimes have a big thinking space to remember where my fingers must go.

Lesson 41 Tuesday 15th October 2013

It’s been a few weeks or so since I have added an entry to this blog. I have not given up on learning playing the guitar it has been more a case of family business taking up my time. It seem to be a tradition in our family that as soon as my kids go back to school one by one they get some bug or another which causes chaos in our house. This means that after running around to sort things I am just too tired to type.

However I have been keeping up my lessons which are like a little bit of me time for the week. I also do exercise classes through the week but they are more to keep me fit and well and are more of a task than a pleasure. I have been practicing and now that I have an amp to use my kids are regularly asking me to put head phones on so that they cannot hear it, so I can only assume I am still not playing well.

I started off my lesson with the song “House Of The Rising Sun” by the Animals. We have been playing this because you pluck out all of strings on the chords which lets me know if I am playing the strings correctly.

The chords are Am where you pluck the 5^th string then strum strings 4, 3 and 2. Then pluck strings 1 then two and three. You then play C plucking and strumming the same strings. Then D but you pluck the 4^th string and strum strings 3, 2 and 1. Then pluck strings 1 then two and three. I then have to play a new chord to me which is an F plucking and strumming the same strings as the D. The F chord I am having difficulties doing correctly. It is almost like a tiny bridge chord and bridge chords are proving a problem to me. The last and final chord for this song that I have to play is E. For this one I pluck string 6 and strum 5, 4 and 3 and then pluck strings 1 then two and three. With each of these chords I have to make sure the last string struck which is string 3 has to be played open. This is then used to help me move my fingers to the next chord. Moving my fingers has proved a problem as my fingers do like to lock in place. Practicing this I am having to try doing it at a slower speed to try and get the technique correct. I have been playing this song for a few weeks now but I am nowhere near perfecting it.

I next had a practice of the bridge chords I have been struggling with.

Fmajor 7 is starting to sound better but is not all there.

Bm chord will ring out after coaxing my fingers in the right direction.

B chord also needs much work on it.

The final part of my lesson was to go through the lead riff from the Madness song “Our House”.

This is the part that is played about 2 minute 14 into this video.

I have been playing this a lot and I still have to take about seven goes before it starts to sound better. I also get a bit lost at times and start playing the first part when I want to be playing the second part. My teacher corrected the way I rest my plucking hand on the guitar. I have been plucking where the top pickups are which means I sort of hover my hand above the strings but rest my little finger on the base of the guitar. The teacher showed me that the better place was to rest the left side of my hand on the bridge of the guitar and this allows me to pluck the strings by just moving my wrist. This did make more sense and was easier to control. Did it make my playing any better, well not yet.