Whiney Crying About Playing With the Pinky

Today we introduced F# on the fourth string and a couple of my boys declared that they weren't man enough to play with their pinky. I'll have to think about what I'm going to do about that one...

Schedule Changes

My classes are doing pretty well with cut time. I'm especially working on getting them to tap their foot and feel it as cut time rather than just playing it twice as fast.

In other news...I've had four new students added to one of my classes! We've been in school for 12 weeks, done six pages worth of beginner guitar instruction, finished rhythm and almost finished melody in our theory book and I don't really know what I'm going to do with these students who haven't been here for any of this.

I just named the blog Adventures in Classroom Guitar Instruction while trying to think of something catchy. But this may really be more adventure than I'd bargained for!

Question:
How do you teach students who are three months ahead and brand new students at the same time?

Learning Cut-Time

Well, we've had 9-weeks tests and watched West Side Story. So, I haven't updated much on the guitar. In our 30 Days to Music Theory Curriculum we're on Day 18 "Key Signatures" which means that we're about to have our second test on theory. We did rhythm first and now we're about to test on melody.

With guitar we're rockin' on with the first 3 strings (minus high G). The songs have more skips and we're playing songs like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Jingle Bells" in the key of G.

We're starting cut-time music in this band method that we're using. It's gotten me thinking about why there is so much cut time in band music. Sure, you find it in all kinds of music but in band you have a lot of it! I think it must be that it's just easier to read. Maybe it's easier than teaching so many eighth and sixteenth notes for beginning students. Maybe it's the march thing. I'll have to research that one.

Anyway, at this early stage, without eighth notes it's the only way to play songs like "Jingle Bells". It just doesn't sound the same if you play it with quarter notes.

I'm trying to get us to the point that we can play a couple of little Christmas ensemble pieces at the nursing home pretty soon.

One-String Yankee Doodle

This is what I'm using for some of my special ed students. I've also given them "Amazing Grace" recently. I actually write it out a little differently for them. I always right them out 4-8 bars per line. That way they can see the stucture. (The third line is the same as the first, etc.)

Chord Melody Enrichment

Earlier, I briefly mentioned that I'm doing some chord-melody with one of my students who is more advanced. He's in band, reads well and knows some chords. He's far enough ahead that he can sight-read what I've got planned for everyone else for at least 2 months.

So, what do you do? Well, one thing I'm doing with him is having him play the same pieces chord-melody style. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it's where you play the chords under the melody, making the melody note the highest note of the chord.

The guidelines I've given him are:

1. Strum the chord with the melody note being the highest note of the chord. For now, it's just once per measure.

2. Don't pick any note higher than the melody note.

3. Use the fourth finger to play the notes D and G on the first and second strings.

I don't usually write them out but here's a notated example:















Of course, you don't actually play the chords as quarter notes. I just notated it incorrectly. You hold the chord tones as long as you can or at least until the next chord if possible.

You eliminate unwanted chord tones and change fingering to have the melody 'on top' like so:

Steve's Jazz Guitar Journey

http://jazzguitarjourney.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_archive.html

This is a link to Steven Rosenberg's jazz guitar blog. It's a little off topic for this blog but Steve's a great writer and it's got a lot of cool links for jazz guitar study. This one's more for the hard-core student who already plays well.

Studying jazz helped improve my playing more than anything else I studied after the first few years. It's great if you need to get out of a rut, which is a common occurance for guitar players. Jazz is something that you could literally study and enjoy for the rest of your life.

Ensemble Music

I'm very pleased with the progress my students are making. We're now playing E and F on the first string, B-C-D on the second, and G-A on the third. All of my classes are at least to page 10 in the First Division Sax book. They've learned whole, half and quarter notes and rests, 3/4 and 4/4 time signatures, repeat signs, first and second endings and played some simple duets. We've just started ensemble music in one class.
We're using this Yamaha Band Ensemles book now that we know a few notes.

Yep, it's the Eb alto sax book because they transpose to the keys of C and G which are friendly to guitar players. You would need to know about ten more notes before getting started with a comparable guitar ensemble book.

A few of my inclusion students are working on "One-String Yankee Doodle". (5-5-7-9-5-9-7-0) and one of them can play some of the note-reading tunes if he writes the letter names on the page. By the way, he doesn't have the reading skills do it the 'normal' way but he's awesome when it comes to improvisation time! The students in this one class just have to play the blues at the end of each class. I've told them I'm going to get sunglasses for them to wear while we play the blues.

Smart Guy Reviews

Here's a site that reviewed a few of the many guitar methods available online. With so many sites for guitar methods out there, how could you possibly know which are any good?

He opens with the question "Have you been overwhelmed by all of the 'learn guitar' programs available on the web?" Right on! This is a pretty helpful look at a few. Be sure to read the user reviews page.

The top rated one looks pretty good. Expensive but cheaper than the price of a semester of lessons.