Lesson 49 Tuesday 17th December 2013

This was my last lesson of the year as my teacher was having Christmas off work the same as I was going to.

We started off the lesson looking at how I was doing with the Intro on Oasis "Wonderwall".

I had been doing this part for a while and I did not feel like I was getting it right. After my teacher went through the chords a few times I had several attempts at the correct rhythm before I got it. The good thing was that I was not doing the bouncing rhythm bit so in a way an improvement.

As it was Christmas the teacher thought it was time I knew what the chords where for the intro.

It starts off with a new chord Em7 

Then changes on the up stroke after the fourth down stroke to G with the down stroke just before the G only having fingers three and four kept down.

After the G there is another down stroke played with just fingers three and four down and the chord Dsus4 starts on an up stroke.

Then another down stroke which has only the fingers three and four down followed by the upstroke in the chord A7sus4.

Then the last down and up stroke have just the fingers three and four down.

This intro is proving very difficult as the changes happen on up strokes instead of down strokes. I would either concentrate too much and panic and mess up or come in too late.

I spent a long time trying to build up the intro by starting with the first part and then see how far I could get. We then spent a bit of time just getting used to the changes as a big problem of mine is that not all the fingers land at the same time so that the first part of the chord would be half right.

We went through the intro many times and at a slower pace to help me get the correct rhythm. This worked but did take many attempts and I am not feeling it at the moment.

With two weeks now off I have plenty of time to try and polish this off and start the new year well.

Lesson 34 Tuesday 3rd September 2013

For this lesson I took my new Amp and Footcontroller to show the teacher and learn a bit on how to use it.

I was shown about the different sounds. We had it in clean and and crunch and the two different types of overdrive. The amp seams to give out a good sound even though it is not that big. We added the Footcontroller and tuned the guitar with the tuner on the footcontroller. Tuning on the Footcontroller was easy with the name of the string being struck shown and a light on the left or right depending on if it was too low or high and a light in the middle when it is tuned. You can also save in sounds into the footcontroller which I will have a practice at doing






I started off practising the Oasis Riff in the song "I'm Outta Time".

This is getting better but I have developed a habit when I strike another string which sounds out when I am doing the first bend. I have to practice more to get rid of this habit of pulling the other strings.

I next had a look at how I was doing with the Wet Wet Wet version of "Love Is All Around". I started off with the difficult capo 1 version with the bar chord.

Moving from A to Bm is still proving to be a problem. On the brighter side though I have managed to get the bridge chord sounding nearly right.

I then went onto the capo 3 version.

This one is starting to get there a bit but I have to remember that a lot of the chords I need to mute the top string with my thumb. The chords on them selves seam to be getting a lot cleaner. However moving from one to another my fingers need to hit the strings a lot more sure than they do now.