4 May - Week 6 of Class

4 May 2010

Ok, today I downloaded a recording that Betsy from our class made of the one class that I missed. I’ve listened to it twice so far. This is neat, and I wish all of the classes had been recorded. Being able to step through the classes again and rewind and re-listen to parts you may not have gotten are fantastic as a learning tool.

Class tonight was almost empty, there were about 6 of us, and as has been the standard for Tuesday nights this past month, it was pouring out. Danno made mention of the instruments sounding off because of the humidity.

Tonight we reviewed material from the previous couple of classes, especially the material from the week that I had missed. But thanks to listening to Betsy’s recording, I was not as far behind as I thought I was going to be. After that, we started working of 4 chord, chord progressions from the 50’s rock era. G, Em, C, D7 (1,6,4,5 progression). We also worked on minimizing finger movement when changing chords with proper planning, like adding the little finger to convert a G into an Em, and using the ring finger for the C so the index finger can be added to convert to a D7 when needed.

Ah, we spent a few minutes on the triplet tonight. Danno uses the 4 fingers for the first part of the strum, followed by the thumb, where I had been working on it just using the index finger for the first part. This is going to take some work, Danno is amazing.

I also made up a practicing tool for my chords. I took a box that used to hold staples, taped it shut, and drew in the frets (it is long enough to have the first 5), and I drew in the strings in the correct positions. So I have a small item that fits in my pocket, but can mimic the top 3rd of the fret board. This allows me to practice moving my fingers in and out of chord positions (a weakness I still have as I am very slow at changing chords). It seems to me that the back of a cell phone could be used the same way (just draw the fret marks and strings on a label and stick it on the back of the phone), but as I don’t use a cell phone this is not an option for me.

- I realized that a business card, although a little wider than the fret board makes an excellent tool and the first 5 frets will fit upon it.