This week we were told that Gateshead College will now be closed and our course will be completely done from home to help tackle the spread of COVID-19. On Monday I recieved an email from my sage tutor with work to complete as a substitute for our practical lessons. My first task was to play the A minor pentatonic in every postition. Learning these positions greatly helped me improve my creativity when improvising as I begin to move between the different shapes allowing me fluid movement along the fretboard and new shapes which change the way you think of playing.
My second task was to read an article about the acoustic guitar and guitar ergonomics (The Acoustic Guitar, 2020) and show my views om what I learned from this. From reading the article, I particularly enjoyed reading John Williams’ tips on guitar practice as he is a musician I admire greatly and it was interesting to gain insight into how he practices.
I also agreed with the concept of choosing your guitar based on how it feels instead of always on how it sounds and looks. As one of the points in the mentions in the factsheet, I often feel I put too much pressure on my left hand to get chords to ring the way I would like them too and as such should adapt the guitar instead of pressing too hard and risking injury.
The final task was to play the B section of Spain by Chick Correa which is attached below.
Later in the week I also took part in quizzes that forced me to research and then use the research in my answers which is a good way to remember what you have learned. Below are my answers to the first quiz I completed.
This quiz on guitar distortion and its rise in mainstream music made me research how The Rolling Stones achieved their iconic sound and also made me think on who my inspiration was who used distortion in new ways. This links heavily to my pathway as it got me thinking tonally and how I should influence my sound on those that I admire.
The second quiz was a test on musical terminology commonly found in sheet music. I achieved a score of 10 on the test after a first attempt of 6 afterwhich I research the terms I didnt understand.
Bapam.org.uk. 2020. The Acoustic Guitar. [online] Available at: <http://bapam.org.uk/documents/GuitarErgonomics_BAPAMfactsheet.pdf> [Accessed 1 April 2020].
Unit 12 and 13 Blog 