Lesson 10 (01/16/2006)

Today, I began learing Stairway to Heaven. It's a rite of passage in the guitar world, I suppose. That was the main concentration of the lesson.

Andy also gave me several things to work on. He again stressed just sitting down and attempting to figure out melody lines. Also, he mentioned what he calls his Django exercise. Django only had two fingers. You use the index and middle fingers, frets 1 & 3, respectively. Play all the strings. Move to frets 2 & 4. Rinse repeat. Then try the same sequenece with the middle and ring fingers, then ring and pinky. Youch, those last two hurt a little.

He also talked about harmonizing the scale on two strings, like B and e. Play the root on one string and the third on the other. Do that for the entire scale down the strings.

Lost of exercises out of this lesson. I've got to just put in some time now. I can really feel myself getting better. I would never have tried Stairway a month or two ago. Now I really do know that I can get it, and without a lot of crying either.

Later,

Louis

Lesson 9 (01/09/2006)

Finally another lesson. The scheduled lesson for the second was cancelled because the shop was closed for inventory. So it's been about three weeks, it seems.

Starting off we played through "Wish You Were Here" all the way, I even did the solo with Andy playing the base riff once.

We then reviewed all the keys and which chords go with which keys, etc. I mentioned that I was learing "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who. Andy seemed happy about that. We talked about that, then went through "Baba O'Riley". I always seem to forget how much I enjoy The Who.

For next time, I am to work out melodies and put them in the G and C scale forms. Also, work on knowing where all the scale elements in each of those forms. For instance, be able to say, this this and this are all the 6ths in the G scale.

Later