Lesson Twenty Two Tuesday 4th June 2013

I started off my lesson going through the picking exercise I have been practicing on the Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here”.

I have been trying to get to grips with this very small section of the song and it is a very handy exercise to do on my guitar at home when it is late as it is not very loud which I am sure my kids and certainly the local dogs appreciate.

My problem with this is that I am not very precise on the strings and I feel that I am probably plucking them with too much force which results in me striking all sorts of strings at the same time. My first time doing this exercise in the lesson went pretty much the way it has been in practice. I would start plucking every note and there would be a very long pause between each note. As I get more comfortable on what I am doing the pause will get smaller but sometimes in my haste the wrong string would be struck. Getting my hands coordinated is going to take time as I am very clumsy in real life and patting my head while rubbing my stomach is a skill I am not naturally gifted with. After a while I did get a bit of the tune and cutting the part I have to do down into sections (four on this one) did help me. I will need to practice this more and finally connect all the sections together. The other part I have to work on is the direction that I pluck the strings. There is a logical direction to pluck the string so that you are ready for the next part. At the moment if I pluck in the correct direction is more luck than anything, in fact I am very fortunate if I just hit the one string at time. I found out too that what I thought of as slide down note is in fact slide up as sliding towards the sound box of the guitar is up and away is down which I naturally assumed was the other way round.

We then decided to have a little relax time by going through how I am doing on the Oasis song “Half The World Away”. 

Apart from the massive pauses in the chorus and the bar chord that I still have not perfected which I know will only come with practice my problem has been going too fast. The first try round again I started to speed off. To combat this the teacher put on the song so that I could get the correct speed. With the song playing and the teacher adding in a beat to go with I sort of got in time and when I did lose it (in the chorus) I was able to pull myself back into the song. Once I have done this song a few times I relax and don’t get so worried about what I am doing. When I do this I flow so much better and I enjoy playing the song. It’s like what that famous philosopher Bruce Lee once said “Don’t think just do” or something like that anyway.

We then went onto start the next song to practice which is Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” which is a favourite song of mine and I apologies in advance to Thom Yorke and co for murdering your great song. 

The first part I need to learn all involve the A Chord in one way or another. I have got to move from Am

to Asus4

to Am to Asus2

while plucking individual strings so this is a good song for the plucking and keeping the correct chord.

Going through this the idea seems easy with chord Am to start then add finger four to the second string to make chord Asus4 then off again to Am then take off finger one to make Asus2. There is a pattern to it and it makes sense. However add in the plucking strings and thinking too hard its like riding a unicycle and juggling to me.

The teacher then discussed with me what other song I would like to learn that would take over from “Half the World Away”. I was not sure as I am pretty easy going on what ever song but can appreciate if you know the song it makes it easier to know when your going wrong or for me at the moment when I am going right.

The teacher was trying to think of songs that would be OK and was just playing different things to his self. Most of it did not make much sense but I thought I recognise one tune. It sounded like the start to “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None The Richer. It was not deliberate but he thought that maybe a good song to look at and I am happy to have a go of that one as I know the song.

Lesson Twenty One Tuesday 28th May 2013

I had been practising obsessively the song “Half the World Away” by Oasis again so the first part of the lesson I would show how far I had got.

The first time through the teacher sang the song while I played. He had to pause a few times while I got my fingers in the right place mainly in the chorus. I had tried to practise the changes in chords in the chorus. I had been trying to focus on the problem chords of D7 to G and C to E. I have been just trying to move from one to the other slowly at first then speed up when I think I have got it. This has made the pause on these parts slightly less than they were but not seamless. There is a few other chord changes I need to look at too but I thought it best to focus on some and get them correct first. After a few goes of this we had to see if I was in the correct time as I do have a habit of speeding up too much, so I played the song along with the tune itself. I would start off OK but then speed up mainly in the chorus parts that I am most anxious about. The problem would be that I would not really hear the song as I would be so focused on what I was doing.

We went back to the drawing board and the teacher decided on playing the base guitar with the correct timing on it. This I found a lot easier to keep in time with and also get back to the correct bit when my fingers or plectrum would get caught in the strings. We played this way a few times and the teacher thought that it was the best one so far and when I relaxed and just went with it, I played a lot better.

The next part of the lesson was going through the lead part of the Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here”.

I have been practising this part but I keep on forgetting the correct strings or fingers to use without looking at my sheet. This means there is a massive pause between each note. We practised putting the parts into sections and getting a bit of flow. This worked in parts. When I mean parts I mean if you filmed me doing them and skilfully edited them all together it may sound like the tune.

At the end of my lesson my fingers sure did feel like they have had a workout.

Lesson Twenty Tuesday 21st May 2013

I had been practising mostly the Oasis son "Half the World Away" and pretty much nothing else. My Mrs has told me that she thinks it is sounding better but I still feel there is plenty of work on it.

So I started off my lesson with this song.

The intro to this song still sounds a bit dodgy with the Fmaj7 not sounding very crisp at all. The first verse went through OK and then the chorus come and this is the part I am still struggling on.

The changes to Am and the change from D7 to G and then G7 still have big pauses and I know I have to practise this more and more to get rid of this part. The worse part seems to be the change from D7 to G which I suppose is because all your fingers go in a completely new shape and some of the fingers have to travel a fair bit.

Once I had gone through it once the teacher gave me some encouraging tips and explained that I was playing it too fast. This has been a constant problem and I can only compare it to when I was learning to drive where I had a lead foot and would speed along too fast. I can only assume its a nervous reaction and I need to relax and not be so tense and enjoy it but notes (there are loads of them) and all.

We played the song so I could get the correct speed and I had another go. The speed was OK at first but at one point (in the chorus) I lost my way with my fingers getting caught all in the strings, I then tried to catch up and actually sped past as I was not listening to the song but just obsessing with what I was doing.

We did this excises many times and slowly but surly my speed did come down. This did improve my chords (well some of them) too.

I need to practise the chorus a lot but I am considering recording my progress on this song and putting it on You Tube to show how bad I am. Maybe I could get some pointers on where I need to improve.



The second part of the lesson we looked at the Pink Floyd song "Wish You Were Here" and the lead part. This is so I can learn some new techniques not just rhythm.

My teacher kindly put on the fingers that I would have to use. The 2/4 is what I was told is a Slide up. The idea of the slide up is you strike the first note and slide down to the next position and if done right you should hear this note too. I practised this part a few times but the pause between each not while I found the right one was so long you could not call it a tune.

A great lesson and the hour seems to go so quick.