Teagan's Blog

The question I chose to explore for the term:

How can I, as an already skilled ukulele player, transfer some knowledge of note reading, music theory, and basic songs to the guitar?

My end of term goals:

Learn at least 3 simple songs with 3 or 4 chords that I can sing and play. As the term goes on I hope to take on pieces of increasing difficulty. Maybe even trying to do some songs with both piccing and strumming. I hope to reach a confidence level where I would feel comfortable performing these pieces in front of an audience/ recording myself on GarageBand.

I feel that I have met this goal. Since the midterm period, I have learned, practiced, recorded and played a bunch of songs on the guitar. This includes:

• Don’t Worry Be Happy
• Edelweiss
• Love Story
• Here Comes the Sun
• For my final submission, Here Comes the Sun, I was able to incorporate both picking and strumming, record it on GarageBand, and then edit it on IMovie. This is something that I feel very proud of. I also feel like it demonstrates my full capability on guitar at this point in time.

My Music Growth Plan (for reference): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1liBW5zRAgTxgbFCiLuMRGhEHp4hLvfntsdH52QrzdTY/edit?usp=sharing

Throughout the term, I have scaffolded the tasks I set out for myself. I started by learning about the guitar as an instrument (where it came from, names of the open strings). Then, I learned how to play some simple scales, explored picking some songs (like Happy Birthday), and some chords. After I felt confident in this, I proceeded to learn some songs. As the term went on, I took on more challenging pieces.

Overall, I am very proud of how far I have grown as a musician. Learning guitar has been something that I have wanted to do for a very long time, but never got around to. Having a better, and more generalized understanding of music and musical instruments can help me, as a teacher, to integrate music into my classroom. As well, there may be some opportunities for playing guitar both in, and out of a school environment.

As I move forward into next term, I will definitely continue to play and practice guitar. This experience was very enjoyable for me, and it is something that I hope to continue. I think that I will try to still work on being more “musical” in my playing, rather than just playing the notes/ chords.

This song ended up being a LOT of work taking into account both playing and editing! I ended up having to play and record different sections of the song separately. This is because it was almost impossible for me to successfully play the song through without mistakes. However, by piecing small chunks together, I made it sound like one take….. (thank you high school film editing class….). I recorded this on GarageBand. I think there were about 5 audio tracks that I edited and spliced together.

Then, I exported this file to IMovie when I was happy with it. From there, I filmed myself playing the song while listening to the track I had just made. I added this as a track to IMovie, cut the sound from the video, and aligned it to my sound recording. This took a bit of effort! HAHA! Finally, I edited this together and added an introduction slide, title, and image.

FYI: Since the video and audio were not taken at the same time, the video might not be perfectly aligned with the music track (but I promise everything you see and hear is me:))

I played the song with a capo in the third fret. I chose to play it here because it suited by voice best. Ultimate Guitar website suggested that I play it in the fifth fret, but that was too high (or low) for my voice. I think the third fret worked really well. I did not play this song with a metronome. I did try at first; however, I found it really difficult because I ended up playing some of the more difficult sections slower. This song features numerous of my “challenge chords” like F, C, and E7. It also includes several picking sections. I posted a break down of these “challenge sections” in a blog post last week. Like I mentioned before, I adapted this song from various resources (Ultimate Guitar, ukulele sheet music, etc. ) and make it my own. Overall, I am very happy with my results.

This week I started working on some of the parts of “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles. This song has lots of various different components from picking to strumming and singing. For this reason, I have split up the “doing” of the song over two weeks.

This video features 3 of the tricky sections that are featured in Here Comes the Sun:

1. The chorus? This part uses quick chord changes, and uses some picking as well. I figured out the picking part by ear.
2. The bridge picking part. This picking piece gets played right after the verse and before the chorus. I also figured this out by ear.
3. The intro picking. This gets played at the beginning of the song before anything else. I learned this from one of the guitar tabs featured on https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-beatles/here-comes-the-sun-chords-1726934

As you can see, I like to figure out new things, and adapt, so that it works for me. I always like to play around with different picking and strumming patterns and find something I like. My old ukulele teacher would call this “noodling” (since I would always do it when she was talking….haha oops). Most of the strumming patterns and chords I am getting from Ultimate Guitar, while most the picking I have just figured out. I am also not utilizing everything on Ultimate Guitar. Since I am still very beginner, I am changing the arrangement and making it fit for me and my needs. I also have ukulele sheet music for Here Comes the Sun. This has also been of value to me.

I am a bit concerned that this song is too difficult for me at the moment; however, I will make it work. For the final product, I might have to record different pieces of the song separately, and then edit it together. This would allow me to play several “imperfect” takes, but still use pieces of them. This is a song that I really enjoy listening to, singing, and playing, so I look forward to embracing the challenge in the last remaining weeks.

Featured Image by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

This week I channelled my inner Taylor Swift and tackled her classic, “Love Story”;) This is a song that I really like listening to, and thought it would be interesting to learn on guitar. This is also the first song that I have learned to play that I did not already know how to play on ukulele (if that makes sense). The chords were definitely more of a challenge, and took quite a bit of practice (you can hear that the chords and chord changes sound a bit more sloppy:/). It also includes a F chord, a tricky chord that I have been working on for the last couple weeks. I played along to this song with a metronome of 110. I think this was an appropriate tempo for this song. I also opted to skip the key change at the end of the songs because I do not know a Bm chord yet:/

This week I also learned and practiced a mash-up that I arranged a while back. It is a mix of the two songs, “Hey Soul Sister” by Train and “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. These two songs follow the same chord progression so it was super easy to tie the two together. Over the last week when I played around with this song I used a C, G, Am, F chord progression. Normally when I play this song on ukulele I use a D, A, Bm, G chord progression; however, I am still working on my Bm chord on guitar:). For this reason, I played the song on guitar with a capo on the second fret so that the song was in the same key as I am used to playing it. Unfortunately, I did not record this song.

Looking back at some of my guitar progress so far, I can definitely notice improvement. It is evident that my chords and abilities on the guitar are much better than a few weeks ago. I have also made sure to chose songs of increasing difficulty each week which has helped to keep me challenged and engaged with what I am learning.

In the final 2 weeks of my music growth, I would like to learn how to play Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. This song incorporates both picking and strumming. It will definitely be a challenge and test my guitar skills, but I look forward to trying my best!

This week I chose to practice and perform Edelweiss. This has always been a song that I thought was so beautiful. Although it is a slow, ballad type song, it contains much quicker chord changes (as you can see my fingers are moving around super quickly). I played this song with a capo on the first fret. This allowed the song to be in the original key it was performed in. I did NOT play with a metronome this week for two reasons. First of all, it is a fairly short song and I feel like depending on how you want the song to feel, you can speed up and slow down at specific parts. Second of all, sometimes the metronome syncs me out. As soon as I hear the annoying clicking in my ear I get a little bit paranoid that I will be overtime and I become overly cautious about my speed (which can make my playing and singing more sloppy). I will hopefully use it again next week though:)

I think this piece was a bit more of a challenge for me (although still not too difficult). The other two pieces I have played for you so far I basically sight read and sang through (meaning it basically was a one-take situation). This song took a couple more tries to nail down. Personally, I think that my previous music abilities have allowed me to pick up chords and chord changes pretty easy. The only thing that I have found to be a little bit challenging so far is the F chord:/ Next week, I hope to incorporate and play a song that uses an F chord. This will give me a bit more practice with this chord so that I can use it smoothly in songs.

Here is the ultimate guitar chords I used: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/misc-musicals/the-sound-of-music-edelweiss-chords-2091795

Featured Image by Bruno on Unsplash