Lesson 47 Tuesday 3rd December 2013

I started my lesson with the Rod Stuart song “Maggie May” which is lucky really as this has been the only thing I have been practicing this week.

I started with the intro.

As usual I could not get the rhythm correct for the first four times. I seem to be adding in an extra or missing out a down stroke. My teacher could see the problem and corrected it quickly by playing through the intro. Once I could see and hear where I was going wrong I managed to get this corrected.

We then went onto look at the main verse of the song.

I have been practicing this a bit and remembering what chords come after which, so I was a bit frustrated and disappointed with myself when the first few times of playing it I was all over the place. I kept on missing strings or catching them on the strumming and not landing very well on the chords. The other problem my teacher noticed was that on the last up strum would be just a bit too close to the last down strum. This would then make a sort of springy country type sound to the end of the bar. I feel this is happening because I am trying to give myself some sort of subconscious signal that this is the end of the bar go to the next chord. I needed to get the up and downs to play at the same time in the rhythm. Once I was aware of what I was doing wrong the rhythm started to sound less springy.

I managed to get through the entire tune a few times. We then played it with the song and even though I had played some very bad chords as my fingers would not set correct I was in the correct timing as the song which was very encouraging.

My main problem is that my fingers are just not fast enough moving from one chord to another. For example moving from a G to a D finger two can sometimes be a strum behind finger one. Sometimes I would even forget to take finger four off until near the end of the bar.

So to combat the teacher has given me an exercise to look at. 

The idea is just strum once a chord goes through the transition on the next two strums and then be totally on the next chord. I had a go of this and because of my rubbish co-ordination I find this part (which is crucial I get right) very difficult. I am starting off very slow and I am hoping with loads of practice I can speed up and make this more fluid.

On a positive turn my bar chord in this song F#m once I am on it is sounding clean every eight out of ten times I do it which is better than not so long ago when I could not do this chord for love nor money. Moving from the chord Em to this chord though is proving much more of a challenge. Maybe the big pause while I change to that chord enhances the song. Maybe. Maybe.