Hey All,
I just wanted to comment on this week’s lessons and Jam Sessions. My Saturday Jam Sessions continue to grow in popularity so be sure to reserve a spot with me if you want to attend. On the 21st of April I hosted two Jam Sessions. We kicked both off with some twelve bar blues with students taking turns playing rhythm and soloing. Everyone did great and we had a blast.
Another activity that students have been enjoying is an ear training game I’m calling, “Find a Pretty Note.” One student plays one pitch with quarter notes. The next student has to find a pitch by ear that sounds pretty with the first pitch. And then we keep going until we have built a nice sounding harmony. After we have a neat sounding chords students are encouraged to play around with rhythms and even other notes. We have strung together four chords in this fashion, creating very cool sounding musical pieces.
This week I was writing a piece of music to use as a teaching example for an online video. Many students have asked me to learn songs by the band Tool. What is unique about this group is that they employ music theory from eastern cultures as well as western culture. In traditional Indian music there can be many counts that we are unaccustomed to in the west. The trick is to count with groups of twos and threes. In this week’s Jam Sessions we looked at how to employ this musical device over a bar of eighth notes. Each student was asked to use counts of three and two to create simple melodies over a bar of eighth notes.
Being a little bit of an advanced idea I didn’t know how my students were going to fair with this concept. I am happy to report that everyone started slow but was soon able to master and excel at this new rhythmic idea. I have shown some of you the piece that I was working on and hope to have the youtube video up soon. Thanks for another great week of music!
rockstarguitarschool 