During our guitar class, we learned finger-style blues and performed it with a small group. This entailed learning our own separate melody, harmony and bass parts and then coming together to play the full song in an ensemble. Some difficulties my group experienced was staying in time with each other, but by using a metronome in practice and rehearsing daily, we gained confidence in our playing abilities and performed very well with minimal mistakes.
Curricular Competencies
In guitar, I learned how to barre chords and several different styles of playing music, which are things I’ve never learned before. Some skills I need to improve on in this course is my picking, which can be choppy at times. To fix this, I practice at home with my own guitar. I believe the skills and songs I’ve learned in this course will be very beneficial to my future in guitar, as I like to play on my own at home or with family, and all the skills I’ve learned will be helpful to me later on.
Core Competencies
In guitar, in order to monitor and progress my goals I took time out of my day at home to practice the pieces we were given in class as well as my own songs that I researched chords for to improve my playing ability and understanding of the instrument. I practiced in class time and learned many new songs and techniques for playing guitar, which is an instrument I initially didn’t know much about. I’m proud of my progress during this class, as I went from knowing very little about guitar to being proficient in playing all different chords and barre chords, as well as picking styles and new songs.