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ACOUSTIC GUITAR LESSONS
For Beginners. In your own
home or mine
Age 16 upwards
What does it cost?
Please read this
About your own guitar
james.powells@sky.com |
ALL
YOU NEED IS THE DESIRE
This introduction sets out a
programme which will get you started and I can guide you onwards in
whichever direction you wish to go whether it be Country, Folk,
Blues, Bluegrass,Pop, Rock, Classical.
The first thing I do with any potential student is to ask “IS THIS
IMPORTANT TO YOU ?”.
If you don’t answer a definite YES then I don’t take you on as it
may mean you have four lessons and give up, which means £60 wasted
for you and not much satisfaction for me either, which I don’t want
or need.
I think you need to spend at least half an hour per day for 5
days out of seven to give yourself any chance of learning. If you do
this for three months or so I believe you will be well on your way
to accomplishing your ambitions.
The idea is that we spend an hour together, you then practice
exercises before the next lesson when we get together, go briefly
over what you’ve practised and move on to the next stage.
I
will briefly explain and demonstrate the various Rhythms : Pop,
Rock, Country, Swing, Latin, Waltz, etc etc and whilst you will
probably be concentrating on the chords you are fingering, I will be
very much aware of your right handing in terms of Rhythm/timing. If
the rhythm is wrong , it’s wrong for the whole song so it’s much
more important than the lead. If you play a duff note or two it’s
not a big issue for musicians playing with you but if your rhythm is
not right, then it is a big issue.
I would anticipate that after 6 lessons you should feel comfortable
with the most common chord shapes for major and minor chords and be
able to play rhythm accompaniment to basic three or four chord
songs but it’s all up to you to put in time between lessons and
you’ll soon see the rewards.
I will keep the lessons at your pace and some will be quicker than
others.
I have played in public for 40 years and have covered country, folk,
bluegrass, pop, blues etc etc.
My experience will enable me to get you started on acoustic guitar
to learn the basics and I believe this to be the best way whether
you want to play electric or acoustic.
STAGE 1
Part 1- This assumes you are a complete beginner and will include an
extra half hour (at no extra cost) to give you an introduction to
the guitar itself and cover such things as: Neck, fretboard,
frets, tuning, machine heads, how to hold the guitar, and plectrum,
tone, volume, action/playability, flatpicking, strumming, Capo, bar
chords. I will also give a brief insight into fingerpicking.
Part 2—Getting Started. This will concentrate on tuning your guitar
and learning three basic chords: G, C D .
This will enable us to play rhythm guitar to songs or tunes in
the key of G.
We will finish this lesson with the chords and number of beats
written down above the words of a well known song which will be the
exercise for you to practice for the next lesson. The song will be
very very straightforward.
STAGE 2
We go over the G, C and D chords and move on to another three
chords A, E, F .
This will now enable us to play rhythm guitar accompaniment to
songs in the key of:
G -----Chords G C and D
D -----Chords D G and A
A -----Chords A D and E
C -----Chords C F and G
We will finish this lesson with a song in the KEY of C using
chords C,F,G. This will be the practice for next lesson.
STAGE 3
This will cover the relevance of the 7th Chords:
G7th compared to G
D7th compared to D
A7th compared to A etc
etc
We will practice playing 7th chords
We will finish the lesson by playing a song or two which includes a
7th chord and this will be the practice for next lesson.
STAGE 4
Minor Chords. This will cover the relevance of minor chords
and their place in a piece of music.
You will learn the E minor chord (Em) the Am and the Dm.
We will finish the lesson with a simple song which includes Major
and Minor Chords for practice before next lesson.
STAGE 5
BAR
CHORDS: Bar chords are used extensively in guitar music and enable
you to play the rhythm accompaniment to a song in any key by
learning just a few basic shapes and moving your left hand up and
down the fretboard. All will explained slowly.
We will end the lesson by playing a basic song using bar chords.
These will require good practice before the next lesson.
STAGE 6 onwards
We will look at some printed sheet music and discuss the way to
interpret how to play a particular song you may wish to play if the
sheet music seems too complicated. Sheet music will normally show
the chords and you can take this information from the sheet music
without having to read the music notes.
We will also discuss other common chords not already covered as you
will come across them in sheet music. E.g. Minor 7th
chords, Diminished Chords, Augmented chords etc. In many cases
they are written in the sheet music but not 100% necessary to play
and very often not played until you reach that level.
I can supply literature with all chord shapes for you to practice,
depending on which route you want to take.
After that our lessons can continue along the route you want to
take with different rhythms, tempos, styles, genres etc etc to make
you confident that you can play rhythm properly. I don’t play lead
guitar although I do play lead mandolin.
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