Lesson 51 Tuesday 14th January 2014

I had spent a lot of my practice this week trying to crack the intro from the Oasis tune “Wonderwall”.

I would play it in sections and try and build up the rhythm bit by bit. I had even gone through all of the excersises for the changes which isolated I could do no problem. However put it all together it would sound a mess. My eldest son even commented that what I was trying to practice did not sound nothing like the song. But I will not despair the reward when this does work will be so much more due to my blood sweat and tears.

I started off showing how great (bad) I was at the intro. After a few false starts and messing up a bit my teacher suggested that I slow the rhythm down. By slowing down the rhythm I was able to think a bit and I could get the first line of the rhythm part correct but not the second. So we focused on the second. After a while I could get the second part going no problem.

We then had to put both parts together. After a few wrong bits I was able to play the tune all the way through and it did not sound too bad. I had to have a few other goes just to be sure that this was not a fluke. The intro is not totally in my head yet but is sounding better and I now have a technique to finally get it.

As that was very taxing we decided to look at some of the other tunes I have been doing.

We looked at the Radiohead Song “No Surprises” the capo 15 version.

 This is the part that most people would recognise. It took me a few minutes to remember the sequence but I was pleased that it came back so well.

We then had a go at the riff in the Oasis song “I’m Outta Time”.

 I do like this riff and even though it is not perect it does sound all right and got better the amount of times I did it.

We also had a little play of the rhythm for this song which I quiet like playing but had forgotten parts of.

We then looked at the riff in the Cream song “Sunshine Of your Love”.

How we had played it before was not totally correct as an acoustic cannot make it sound right. As I had an electric guitar now I liked the idea of trying the real version.

I cannot remember all the details but it would start on the third string, go up one string for the three notes played in a row, then up to the sixth string. Then down to the fifth string again and finally back to the six string on the same fret. I had a go of this a few times and on my electric it sounded close to what it should be which was good.