Kim Richardson - Guitar

Today we filmed our blues videos and I think it went okay. Beforehand we practised the G pentatonic and learned the relative E minor scale so that we had more to experiment with in our solos. We also recapped on the G7 chords and the shuffle riff. I am comfortable with the riff now as it is easier to use my first. second and fourth fingers to play it. This is because you can stretch your first and second fingers than your third and fourth. We filmed our videos in pairs and I was with Kyle. We ran through the 12 bars a few times, taking turns to play the solo and the riff or chords and then filmed it. I think it went okay, I was just nervous.

Next week we have another video assessment so today's lesson was about preparing for it. We will have to show what we've learned about blues over the last half term so today we recapped over everything we've done so far. We began with scales in G minor. I confidently know the first position of G minor off by heart but I am unsure of the other positions on the neck so we spent the first 10 mins of the lesson figuring it out. I used a previous method we had learn to work it out - playing the fist five notes of the scale and then moving up two frets. I am familiar with other patterns that scales take so by using that (and also some trial and error) I was able to figure out another two positions of G minor! I will now be able to discuss this in my video assessment next week. Position 1 was the one I already knew and I learned 2 and 3 in the lesson. I can run up and all 3 positions confidently now. Positions 4 and 5 are what I will work on over the next week so that I can

Today we refreshed looking at keys and we discussed why you wouldn't have A# instead of Bb and now I understand the idea more clearly. I'm going to practise writing scales out at home and maybe even memorise them. Doing this will also help me learn the notes on the fretboard. For the bulk of the lesson we looked at arpeggios and practised playing some. I've never really been familiar with arpeggios but I learned that they are very common in most types of modern music. I was given some G7 arpeggios to practise and I found them quite confusing because 7ths sounds neither major or minor so I didn't feel like I was playing the right thing as they never sound resolved. They were also difficult because unlike pentatonic scales, there was no pattern or symmetry to them. For the last part of the lesson we went back and played a G major arpeggio over a blues in G however this time it was different because every time we play G7 we would solo in the arpeggio and then on the C7

Today we continued with our exploration of blues music. We began the lesson with theory and wrote down 12 bar blues structures for several different keys. I found this easy because I have learned that for blues songs, you commonly use the first, fourth and fifth chord in the key. Secondly we practised playing these structures in different ways; for example with power chords, open chords and barre chords. We even went as far to explore the chords in the CAGED system, which I am beginning to understand a bit more. As always, we practised soloing over these chords progression but today we kept everything the the key of G. To spice up our solos we alternated between the G minor pentatonic and the G blues scales; the only difference between them being the blues scale has extra notes. We were given a sheet with several different blues licks for us to try out and potentially use in our own solos. My favourite on was this: E ---6p3-------------- B ---------3----------- G ------------5^--