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