28th Feb

28th Feb – In todays music lesson  we started our next improvisation section which was improvisng over a piece of reggae music and chose Bob Marley's "learned Could You Be Loved."
We went away individually for the lesson and we began to learn our individual parts to practice for next week. My part was was the rhythm guitar parts that consisted of a lot of chordal playing. However what made this interesting is that in this style go music when a chord is being played it is often a barre chord, however only the top 4 strings are played and the chords are played very staccato. Also the chords are played on the off beat which took some time getting used too.This was a complete new style for me to learn. At first it was a challenge as I had to make sure I was playing the chords very sharply and getting the timing right took lots of practise as I was often tempting to play on the back beat but I had to make sure I was always on the off beat. The chord progression for the verse is simply B minor for two bars and then E minor for two bars. The pre chorus is G, F#m, Em,Em,G,F#m, then A, leading onto the chorus: D, Bm, G, then D.

I have set myself the target of practising my strumming attack over the next week so that I can achieve a very staccato sound when playing the chords of the song. I was practise this my by experimenting with the way I release the strings after I have strummed them and also by seeing if up or down strokes work better than one another.