Tuesday, October 22, 2013

What Did You Miss This Week? (Week 331 #375)

Guitar Lessons!!!

Joe's away so Shoji turned harp class into guitar class! Well, just for one night of music education.

With guitars in everyone's hands, Shoji was able to demonstrate visually what is going on when one thinks about the major and minor pentatonic scales. There are lots of ways to learn and different people pick things up in different ways, so for visual learners, this was a brilliant move.

Shoji was able to demonstrate what constitutes an octave in a fresh way, and then moved to having people see and hear the two hugely important notes of most scales, the root and the fifth. It was a great hands-on night of scales, then plugging the scale knowledge into "acting the bass player" and outlining the chords of a few blues forms - 12 bar, 8 bar and 16 bar.

Nice work, Shoji!

Class Notes
  • Joe announced the prizes for his end of year contest. Get your CD in by end of December that shows what you are capable of and you could win! Third Prize, one high performance Marine Band Deluxe; Second Prize, two high performance Crossover harps; First Prize, three high performance Crossover harps!
  • Reminder that Joe will be away touring with Eric for the next three classes. Private classes with him are cancelled but group classes will continue as usual. Level Three classes will be taught by Zoe and Grant (be sure to bring a copy of your transcription for them to watch as you play); Level IV classes will be covered by Shoji and RickEy. Joe's gone October 21-November 11, but you shouldn't be! Get a fresh perspective on your playing from these other great teachers.
  • Jam! Grant and Al will be hanging out in B1 and hosting a casual open jam from 3:30pm to 5:30pm next Monday. This is a great chance for you to practice, ask questions and just have a good time. It is also a great opportunity for you to rehearse and work out arrangement questions for tunes you want to record for Joe's contest.
  • Grant will be teaching in Level IV next week, offering his thoughts on breaking into improvisation - you can leave your guitars at home!
- Grant Kessler, B1 Blues Crew