Eliana
Recommended practice time: 15 minutes daily
What to practice: Continue with Sunshine of Your Love, and the Pentatonic exercises, and take a look at the A Minor Scale as well
How to practice effectively: Take it slow and focus on letting all the notes ring out to their fullest, and try playing along to both a metronome and to recordings of Sunshine of Your Love, and some backing tracks for improvising.
We missed you this week, I hope everything is well and to see you next time!
Aarna
Recommended practice time: 10 minutes daily
What to practice: Crazy on You by Heart, Sunshine of Your Love by Cream, and the F Major scale (all found here)
How to practice effectively: Play at a steady pace where you can play through the entire songs without making many mistakes or having to stop – speed will come with time. Remember to keep your fingers assigned to the frets like we spoke about, and for the scale try starting from the top and working your way down, and back up, with a focus on having the down direction as clean as the up!
Good work this week, get your practice in and you’ll be good to go.
Aarnav
Recommended practice time: 5-10 minutes daily
What to practice: Superstition by Stevie Wonder, F Major Scale (all found here)
How to practice effectively: For Superstition I want you to play it a handful of times getting it under your fingers and in your memory, and then listen to the song to play along (slowing down as much as needed on youtube). You have it pretty well there, but playing with a recording will help solidify the part. While playing the scale I want you to keep your fingers assigned to a fret and to try to keep the note lengths as even as possible as you play up and down.
Good stuff Aarnav! Can’t wait to work towards some U2 tunes!
Simon
Recommended practice time: 10 minutes daily
What to practice: Guns & Roses – Sweet Child of Mine (rhythm and lead), A minor Scale. (found here)
How to practice effectively: While playing the lead part, slow it down and experiment alternate picking (down, up, down, up) rather than just straight down picking. It will make the parts where you have to skip strings significantly easier, and is a technique that is generally very helpful for guitar playing. On the rhythm side, for now just get comfortable switching from chord to chord while holding them for the right amount of time (look at the music for this). Once you get comfortable with that start to add in the embellishments used with the added pinky, or taking off your ring finger, etc… The end goal will be able to see these available options for these chords and use them in other songs when they come up, but, one step at a time! Keep up with the A minor scale for now and remember to slide your thumb back while playing on the low E A D strings – it’s okay to let it creep up beyond that though.
Solid playing Simon, i’m excited to see you advance with some of these songs!