Lesson

So far in my lessons with Jay I have been locating the notes C and F on the fret board and committing them to memory while ‘popping’ the note C. This exercise has greatly helped me to get to know the guitar neck and has made me aware of the possible positions that I could use once I know which note I want to play. I practice finding notes and popping them three times a day for about 10-15 minutes each time.

When explaining the concept of popping, Jay told me that I do not want to push my right hand to the next note, but rather feel my hand being pulled to the note by seeing the note in my mind’s eye and then allowing my right hand to be pulled to the next note.

I am also working on improvising with the major scales and soloing on one string at a time. I will break down the way I view what I am playing according to the four ways of knowing, one way at a time. I have been spending more time with letter and number because those are the areas, which I need the most work on. After I jam over a chord progression for a while using each one of the four ways, I try to use all four in soloing to incorporate what I have learned into my playing and to practice knowing what you are playing in all four ways simultaneously.

I also learned that the term ‘perfect pitch’ refers to those people who have the ability to decipher between A 440 and A 441, which is more of a curse than a blessing. This is because having perfect pitch is like looking at an impressionistic painting and only being able to see each individual dot or brush stroke instead of seeing the whole picture. In contrast, relevant pitch is where you can hear a note / chord and think of a note related by hearing it in your head and knowing the relationship.

Congratulations to Jay for being voted best guitar teacher in Toledo by the City Paper.

Geoff