Okay guys, this is it. The last blog post.

     I can't believe it's been an entire semester since we started the 20 Time projects. The end of the year just kind of snuck up on us. I know in the beginning, I said I wanted to learn multiple songs, but with the scrunched time, I've really only focused on one ("House of the Rising Sun").

     That's okay though. Despite the fact that I didn't meet my initial goal, I wouldn't call the project a failure. I still learned the basics of playing the guitar, like how to strum, different chords or which notes corresponded to each string. That's still a lot farther than I was at the beginning of the project.

     Other than the time crunch, I think the part that gave me the most trouble was how different the guitar was from other instruments I was familiar with. When I played the flute, if I got the right fingers on the right keys, then the right sound came out. It was only a matter of getting your lips in the right shape and controlling your breath, but those both stayed pretty constant.

     With the guitar, you can put your fingers on the right frets, but still might not sound right, because of where on the frets they are, what angle your fingers are at, how much pressure you put on the string... It's just a bit more complicated. And, as you change the chord, you have to keep re-positioning your fingers.

     But all this trial and error merely lead me to the learning or practice strategy I used. Instead of taking on an entire song, I'd just do a little bit at a time. I would pick out one measure or a single chord transition and practice it over and over again, until I got it right. Then it was just a matter of stringing all the pieces together.

     The thing about this method is it can get pretty frustrating, just doing the same thing over again until you stop messing up, but I knew that the more I practiced, the easier it would get.

     I do plan on continuing to practice. This summer, with all the free time I'll have, I'm going to practice and by the time school starts, maybe I'll have reached my initial goal of knowing a few songs.

     However, I'm not planning on continuing this blog. So to anyone who's been following my progress, thank you! It's been a fun semester, I've learned so much and I'm glad I could share it with you.

Farewell,
Sarah


(Pocahontas doesn't really have to do with anything, I just thought she had a great goodbye gif :) )


Sources for images:
https://www.guitaritupforgirls.com/community/blog
http://www.camine.us/post/107974785309/practice-like-its-real
http://www.amazon.com/House-Rising-Sun-Animals/dp/B000006ZRA
http://giphy.com/gifs/disney-film-goodbye-p2CHUCfTRCJyg

Guys, it's time for a training montage

(I'm going to need a lot of motivation this week to get stuff DONE. And what's more motivational than epic training montages? Absolutely nothing. So please enjoy pictures from a bunch of movie training montages as you read this post. Oh, and here's a link to "Eye of the Tiger", you'll need that too. Sorry if there's an annoying ad)

Sooo...it's the 20th of May as I'm typing this. That means we only have two more 20 Time days left in the school year so basically only two more EVER. That also means it is officially time to start straight up panicking.


I have approximately two weeks to go before we have a TED talk style presentation in front of our peers and I'm planning on performing a song. I've focused on "House of the Rising Sun", the only problem is I still don't know this song!

(Karate Kid! LOL just kidding, everyone liked the original movie better!)


I mean, I know bits of the song. But I'm not playing it smoothly or up to tempo. I can get the notes if I concentrate and just do it measure by measure, but does anyone want to listen to that? I wouldn't!


(ahh, much better.)

The good thing is, there's lots of repetition in the song so the parts that I do know will come up later and it's not as if I need to learn new music for every part left in the song. I'm just doing the first verse and there's an entire line that shows up twice.



But even if I had the individual measures down, there's still the issue of stringing it all together into one song. One of the biggest problems I've had is being able to switch between chords quickly and fumbling to your fingers on the next chord is a huge interruption.



I think the best way to go is to keep practicing (when I have the time) and just try to focus. I'm not going to make any progress if I just let myself get frustrated and then complain about it. I'm only going to get better if I keep playing the song until I get it right


(Oooo, look! This one moves!)


Also, if the training montage pictures were kind of biased toward Disney movies, that's because when I was looking up montages, I realized that most of them were sports movies that were made when the Soviet Union was still a going concern, so I had seen basically none of them, but for Disney movies I had seen basically all of them. So I just used a bunch of Disney ones. Also, Disney, what up with the training montages at sunrise? There are other times to train! Heaven knows I'm not getting up that early to practice guitar.

Until next post,
Sarah


Oh, and here are the sources for all these pictures:

·         http://screenrant.com/tag/the-karate-kid/

·         http://theathleticnerd.com/movies/10-flicks-movies-with-awesome-training-scenes

·         http://www.themarysue.com/best-training-montage-exercises/

·         https://desperateandunrehearsed.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/disney/

·         http://www.empireonline.com/features/awesome-movie-training-montages/p18

I "kneed" to practice more often

     So to be honest, I haven't actually practiced a whole lot since the fair. Since I haven't been doing as much and this post may not be as action-packed as I hoped, I've decided to supplement its shortcomings with pictures of people's knees that look like faces. Because why not.


Bonus points if you can come up with a celebrity that the knees resemble!
      Anyways, it's been super busy with AP testing, prom, dance rehearsals, then I had the actual dance recital, and after that I took an SAT during a earthquake...so yeah. There wasn't much time left for guitar.

     I mean, it was so long since I played, I actually had nails on my fingers! (You have to keep them super short in order to actually make it sound good. Especially when finger picking, like in "House of the Rising Sun", because if you have long nails, it just sounds like a guitar pick anyway and what's the point then?)


     Speaking of the 20 Time fair last week, I think it was a success! And by success, I mean I was not absolutely awkward when speaking to people (only a little bit awkward) and I also did not drop my instrument down a flight of stairs.

     Those were the two things I was most worried about, because I have, in fact, done both of those things in the past. (To clarify, I haven't dropped the guitar, but there was this one incident at a sixth grade band performance involving  a wooden gym floor and a surprisingly resilient flute ten feet above that floor. And then very fast and very loudly, there wasn't ten feet between them anymore. Don't judge me. I can feel your judgment through my computer screen right now.)

     This week's 20 Time day though, I was super focused and ready to attack that sheet music. I was so focused, you could almost hear "let's get down to business. To defeat. the HUNS!" playing in the background.

    










     I want to be able to play the entire song by the end of the project, so I just went measure by measure. I played one measure over and over again until I got it down, and then I would add the next measure on. Baby steps, guys!

Until next post,
Sarah

Sources for face knee photos:

·         http://hypervocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/knees1.jpg

·         http://images.instagram.com/media/2011/08/13/7f97890e5f99428d80abc024520a0697_7.jpg

·         http://www.fropky.com/xlmpdt/Rahul/2013/nov/01/Faces/knee-faces-0012.jpg

·         https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-1/p160x160/1395119_219669634861541_455226668_n.jpg?oh=d067021254d5175e3f169f26d7bd7a8d&oe=55CF6BFE&__gda__=1440543017_8a2acdab750b6591fee8023410752cb5

·         http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/my-friends-knees-look-like-sloths-240x180.jpg

·         http://static.hudo.com/images/posters/2110/image.jpg

One more baby step and a few conspiracy theories

     Hello! If this is the first time you been here to my little corner of the world wide web, welcome! If you've been here before, well, welcome back and thanks for sticking with me.


     To any newcomers (just in case, because I'm looking forward to meeting lots of people at the 20Time project fair tomorrow!), my name is Sarah, and I'm attempting to learn to play the guitar. I started almost two months ago, and I'm currently making very steady baby steps toward my goal of being able to play a song or two by the end of this thing.


     This week, I continued to decode my way through "House of the Rising Sun". It's making a little more sense, especially after I figured out what the heck the second line of music was doing down there.
Here's one of the lines I had in my last blog.



The first line was self explanatory. It's got like notes and stuff (that's definitely the technical term).  The second line got me scratching my head a little.


Theories I had about that puzzling second line:

1)  This is actually where half of the music is written, printed with invisible ink that you can only read when you are wearing cool, musician-y, Blues Brothers sunglasses.

 

2)  There's some poor guy trapped in a sheet music factory and he left a secret message in the second line, in hopes that a musician would find it while playing "House of the Rising Sun" and come to his rescue.

3)  The second line does not exist and I am hallucinating because I did not drink any coffee today.

4)  You see how the numbers form a pyramid on each measure? Illuminati. ( Because what kind of conspiracy theory list doesn't include those guys? Not a list I want to read, that's for sure).

 

 

5)  This is some sort of message from extraterrestrial life forms. I'm not saying aliens wrote the second line, but aliens wrote the second line.

6)  That guess I had last post about the fingers on the frets.


     Yeah, turns out I was right the first time. I'm pretty sure it just tells you which string to strum to make the note if the normal string's sound will be altered by the strings and frets you have your fingers of your other hand on. The line the number is on tells you which string, and the number tells you which fret, if any, you need to have your finger on.

     Not the most dramatic of my theories, but I am really glad I figured this out. It was kind of a break-through moment and a confidence booster. This is going to make things go a little smoother, so I can keep on improving and maybe take a bigger step than just a baby one?

Bye for now!

- Sarah

 

P.S. If you direct your attention to the right hand side of the screen, you can see a gadget I just added on that shows a picture of a cute puppy everyday! I mean, it doesn't really have anything to do with music or guitars, but it's adorable, so I put it there. Because why not. So, please, enjoy the daily adorableness!

 

Sources for images: http://thebluesmobile.com/tag/blues-brothers/ and https://vesselanaw.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/one-dollar-pyramidcrop.jpg

Fun with charts and the mysterious second line

     Okay guys, I have a confession This week, I cheated on Keith and his carefully planned DVD lessons. Instead of using a DVD this week, I learned a song from that website I mentioned earlier, guitarnoise.com.

     Well, I started learning a song. I'm not done with it yet, and I'm certainly not ready to really perform anything, but I can recognize the tune from what I've figured out so far, so I'm happy with it.

     It's "House of the Rising Sun", which, according to Wikipedia, started as a folk song and was most successfully recorded by The Animals in 1964. Although it is included in Keith's lessons, this song doesn't come until the 25th lesson, and I really wanted to play some blues music and I just got kind of impatient.

     Also, I wanted some practice with reading actual music. Keith's method so far is great, which consists of him telling us and showing us how the song is played by demonstrating, but I would really like to be able to pick up sheet music and be able to figure out what all the notes mean.

     The lesson I found online started out with introducing the chords that would be needed. (I was super excited when I found out I already knew one.)


     Then it explained how finger picking works, which just means you use your finger tips instead of a guitar pick for the stings, except my nails were too long and it just ended up sounding like I had five guitar picks on the ends of my fingers.

     After cutting my nails, I started to unravel the arpeggios. They're notes played in a descending or ascending succession. They're kind of like chords that have been taken apart, so you play each string individually while holding down the chord on the frets.

Here's the first arpeggio:


     The letters in the middle indicate which finger to use to strum that note. Then I used this chart to help me figure out which strings corresponded to the notes.


     It's a cool looking chart. It seemed a little daunting at first, but I think I've figured it out...pretty much. The only thing is, I'm still not super clear on what the second line is, with the T, A, and B and the numbers. Does that have something to do with where your fingers are holding down the chord on the frets? If anybody reading this happens to have a clue about this mysterious second line, I would love to hear more about it in comments! If not, I'll do a little bit more research and figure it out eventually!

Until the next post,
-Sarah

Oh, and I got the images from http://www.dontfret.com/how_to_use_it.html and http://www.guitarnoise.com/lessons/house-of-the-rising-sun/

If you want to check out the online lesson I used, follow this link http://www.guitarnoise.com/lessons/house-of-the-rising-sun/

Where'd you go, Keith?

     Hello! This week, I continued practicing "Sweet Home Alabama". Once you make it past the intro, the rest is pretty simple. On the DVDs I've been using, once Keith has explained the notes and basics of the song, the video goes to another musician, who actually plays the song with you. Not only does it help to see how the song is actually performed, it's also nice because these musicians probably are still starting their careers and this is a good opportunity for some more exposure and publicity for their music. However, when I first played along with someone else, I didn't see these positive aspects.

Thoughts I had when Keith practically abandoned me:

• Oh, okay we're going to play the song now. It's, like, two notes. This should be okay. I got this.
• Wait where did Keith go?
• Who is this guy? Who are you and what have you done with Keith???
• Doing the into now. C major, alright, first finger on first fret on string number, wait watcha doing Not Keith?
• Why is this so fast?
• The intro is already done. Seriously, how was that eight measures?
• Huh, you may not be Keith, but you're a pretty good singer.
• I'm not even sure where we are now...
• Can we just pick one note, maybe? Just one? I'm okay if I can just leave my fingers where they are on the strings.
• Then we switch back and forth and my fingers are just UGH, and they get super confused and trip over each other.
• Aw jeez, that was not the right note. 
• Alright Not Keith, you keep on playing, I'm going to observe. And practice more. Like, a lot more.

So, what I took away from seeing a song actually performed with normal speed was 1) PRACTICE because the time it took me to switch between chords was long and pathetic, and 2) the rhythm and tempo can completely change the song. When Keith went through the song earlier, I could hear it, but it doesn't really become the full on song until you add in the rhythm and changes in volume (which I think are called dynamics?). I'll be working on this, as well as transitioning between chords. 

Bye!

-Sarah

Where the skies are so blue

     Hello again!
     First off, I apologize for that photo that just doesn't want to cooperate and show up on the page. I didn't mean for it to be that mysterious. I will figure out this technology thing eventually, but for now, I will just tell you that it was just a photo of a box shaped like a trapezoid so it could hold a guitar. Nothing too exciting.
     Anyways, I have continued to make baby steps! The first Keith Urban DVD lesson used the two chords I learned  last week for the song, "Live to Love Another Day", by Keith himself.
     I'm going to be honest, this wasn't one of my favorites, because 1) I'm not familiar with this song (sorry Keith), and 2) it just had the two chords and even thought that was the extent of my skills at the time and it's still a good song, two chords was...not boring, but just...let's just say less engaging than desired.
     Although I wasn't overjoyed with the song, it was a very good one to start with. It was simple, but still good practice and it still made me feel like I was making music. I can't expect to pick up a guitar on day one and just magically start rocking out. Rome took a while to get built, people! And I'm pretty sure it'll take even longer for me to learn how to work this guitar thing. Just got to keep reminding myself: Baby. Steps.
     The next song, however, I did enjoy playing. I've heard it before, because it's "Sweet Home Alabama" for crying out loud and even people that aren't really into country (such as myself, I admit) have heard it. If you haven't, I beg of you, leave the rock you are currently living under and please go google it; it's a fun song.
     The other thing I liked about this song was that it was much more interesting and it was more complex than just a sad little pair of chords, without being so complicated that it made my head spin. When I finally figured out its famous introduction riff, I really felt like I accomplished something and made actual music.
     Keith was actually talking about this at the start of the lessons. He said that there's a moment for every musician when all the notes come together and you play a real song and something clicks. That's why the curriculum of the DVDs is focused on working on a song each time rather that doing boring old music theory and arpeggios  (not that those aren't just as important!) According Keith, that's when most people quit, so he's arranged the lessons to be quitter-proof, or at least quitter-resistant.
     So that was this week's baby step: finding my moment. I'm not an expert at the song yet. I'm still working out the chords and strings to pick (did I mention I've graduated from just strumming to picking strings as well? Yay!) The hardest thing for me at the moment is transitioning between chords, but I think I'll make that next week's baby step.