IMPORTANT NOTE - Week 4, Friday 25th

Hi guys, I hope you have all been practicing "Forever" and enjoying your time in the MYT class. I just wanted to give you a heads up that we are thinking about not making this Friday our last Friday since a lot of the instructors will be out of town for Bible Teachers Training.

It is not official yet so keep practicing! :) The plan for this Friday is to practice together with the bass class. Also, we're thinking of splitting the class into 3 groups of 5 (or so). And then the following week for the last class, we'll have 3 songs to perform! The songs we're thinking about are Forever, Blessed Be Your Name and Give Us Clean Hands. All familiar songs so hopefully this news doesn't cause too much stress.

Alright, well I'll keep you posted and feel free to ask any questions about those 3 songs.

Week 4

One more class left! Great job. This week, let's focus on playing "Forever" by Chris Tomlin. The best way to break it down is to go through the chords until the changes become almost second nature. Then, practice the strum...and then add them together. Once that becomes easier, then you can even try singing along =) If you want to listen to a song, there are a bunch of different versions on Youtube.

Fingerpicking

Here's a video from James regarding finger-picking. It's quite instructional and will be useful for when you guys practice it.

Session #3 - 7/11/08

You guys are doing great...I can tell you're practicing! =) Hopefully by the end of our time together you'll be able to play some songs on your own for your personal worship. Here are some things to practice this upcoming week:

1) I gave you a few chord progressions in class today to practice specific chords within different keys. I'm going to write them below. Start w/ 4 downbeats and decrease until you can do each chord per downbeat. You can actually switch the order of the chords within the same key and they should sound relatively ok. That's another way to practice.

(key: G) G C D Em D G
(C) C F G Am C Dm G F C
(A) A D E A
(D) D G Em A D

2) Prax either Hosanna or Give Us Clean Hands. Start w/ practicing chord changes, then add in the all-downbeat strum, and then try to add in the praise strum w/ some singing! =)

3) BARRE chords! These are very difficult. Shoot for being able to play F#m and F. It will actually take more than a week to get this to sound good. Keep trying until you can get each string to sound clearly.

4) Practice through the chords of As the Deer. We will use this song to learn finger picking next week.

I know this is a lot of HW. Prioritize #4 because we will be using this song next week. I'm just giving you the others in case you have spare time and also to give you stuff to work on when the class ends.

Great! Btw, if you want to play a song and have not yet told me, please let me know!

Let Me Sing - Todd Fields

Hello Students,

Great job so far in guitar class! I can definitely see that you guys have been practicing hard! Just real quick, I handed out a song called "Let Me Sing" last week. It's a rocking song that is good to practice because it is quite simple to play and easy to memorize; it's basically the same 4-chord progression over and over again: G D Em C. You can strum with all downstrums (i.e. 1-2-3-4) or you can use the down-down-up--up-down-up strum. In the video, Todd Fields actually downstrums twice as fast as we've been downstrumming in class; for example, for the beat 1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and, he is strumming on all the "ands" as well as the main beats (i.e. in the song, 16 downstrums per chord). Alright, enjoy the video below and let me know if you have any questions!

Hosanna - Paul Baloche

Here is an instructional video put out by Paul Baloche that teaches you how to play the song. He plays some of the chords differently and adds in a chord or two. He also utilizes a right-hand technique called muting which we may or may not use later. But for your purposes, view it to get a sense of how the strum sounds and try to incorporate that when you practice this song.




See if you can figure out the strum. I MAY post the strum in a week or so =)

Assignments from 6/27/08

Hey everyone, good work this past class! You all picked it up a lot faster than I expected...you must have practiced =) I know I went over a LOT this past time (sorry for those first-timers) but I figure you guys can handle it...plus we have an extra week of practice. So, quick run down of things I'd like for you to practice:

1) Try to incorporate strumming into your playing. So, play through some of the songs that are in G like we did in class. First do all downbeats and then switch on the different chords. As you get comfortable with that, try doing different strum variations (you can try the praise strum). This will really help you learn your chords as well as get you to actually playing songs. If you can sing along as well...added bonus! =)

2) Learn some of the new chords. Learn A & E first - they are most important. Then work on the minors - Am & Dm. Lastly, try F major. That is a difficult chord to play because it requires using your pointy finger to press onto 2 strings. Play through Blessed Be Your Name while ignoring the F#m.

3) Review string names as well as the names of notes (eg. A B C D E F G) along with whether it's a half or whole step in between.

I think that's about it. Keep trying to get familiar w/ the chords. The more you use them, the more your finger will remember. Also, if you have not yet sent me your favorite song/a song you want to play, please do. As Kathy can attest, we actually listen to your suggestions =)