Kim Richardson - Guitar

Today's lesson was about combining chords and scales in one song. We looked at Bold As Love by Jimi Hendrix because it incorporated simple barre chords and pentatonic scales that we all knew. A new technique we learned was using our thumbs to hold notes on the bottom E string. It was difficult as I'm not used to it but I have seem this technique in songs before so it wasn't completely new to me. I think I will use this technique more often so that I'm not always using barre shapes. Another advantage to this technique is that you don't play the A string which makes the chord sound less bulky and subsequently a bit nicer. The rest of the song involved a lot of hammer ons while holding other notes which was knew to me; I think I should practise this more and it seems to be a recurring technique in Hendrix songs and I'd like to be able to play more of his stuff. As part of my home practise this week I am looking at From Eden by Hozier because it is the next song

Our lesson today was about sight reading which we haven't covered much this year. We talked about reading rhythms such as semibreves, minims and crotchets and how they fit within a bar. I already knew about this because of my music GCSE and my time learning guitar with Yamaha. The song of choice was Cold Sweats by James Brown and it was simple. I picked it up quite quickly as this was a skill we used every week at Yamaha - we'd start a new song and learn it with help from the tab and as we became secure in playing it we would cover up the tab and read from the notation. Doing it this way helped me to learn the notes on the fretboard a lot so I would like to continue practising it. It will help me achieve my goal of knowing all the notes on the fretboard and will also make me more versatile as a musician because if I work a session guitarist in the future, I will be able to quickly work out something I've been given to play. Overall I found the lesson helpful but as I comple

Today we put everything we learnt in blues in to practice. All the guitarists, bassists and drummers were in the same room so we could play blues together and see how it all fits together in a real jam session. I started off by playing a rhythm section in C; so the chords were C, F and G. I found it easier to keep track of the 12 bar structure because we had a drummer. It was also easier to stay in time and keep the strumming pattern steady. It was nice to hear a piano playing blues too; I liked how we were really playing a blues song for once rather than improvising without any backing. We went around the structure 4 times before swapping over - I played a solo part. Soloing was a bit more difficult with a band because you had to leave a lot of space as so much of it was already filled up by the bass and keyboard. I had to use shorter licks and more repetition as to not over complicate the song. We discussed that blues is really about having your own way of playing it; for example e