Monday, February 27, 2012

Catching Up

    Well, It has been a while since I last had an update. For that I must apologize. Things have been just a bit busy. The guitar that I wrote about last time has worked very well. It is just the perfect size for me. I have begun to work on a piece by Erik Satie. The piece is called Gymnopedie NO.1. Perhaps you all have heard of it. This piece is a favorite of mine. It might be called sappy, but it is still pretty. My teacher and I are trying to learn it together. Working by sections really helps. We ran through the whole piece a couple of weeks ago and since then I have learned the first page. The second page is a little tougher. With all of the bar chords and different finger positions it has proven to be a challenge. My hope is that it will only take a few more lessons to be able to play to whole piece through without too many mistakes.
    Before I began to work on the piece by Satie, I worked on a little piece to help me get use to bar chords. By working on bar chords my hands have gotten stronger so that I can do bigger and bigger bar chords. I know that I have said this before, but they are not easy to do. I thought that it would be easy. If you are just begging using bar chords start out with little ones first. Once your hands start to get stronger move on to bigger ones. It will save you a lot of pain.
    Sight reading is a very useful skill to have. I have not done a lot of it, but it has helped me. My mom bought me a book that is one level below what I am now. My teacher is having just pick it up and play a piece at random. I hope to get better at sight reading. I am sorry that I have not written about the past almost four months. My hope is to get back into writing about my lessons every week.