Week 2 - Jazz

8 April, 2014

Week 2

We have a new class room, much bigger, and a good thing; there are a few more people as well. 

We started out the week tuning, and then reviewing what we did last week.  A whole lot of handouts came our way, mostly songs that we could cover in the class.

We added the G chord, and then worked on moving from C to G during a steady strumming rhythm.   Then we strummed through the Hank Williams classic, Jambalaya.

We used a D – D – pattern where the strums alternated hard and soft.  At the end of the song, we learned a couple of fancy finishes for the song (Danno joked about doing the ukulele spin as well, but we didn’t get into that).

Next we got some strumming exercises to practice, learned just a bit about music theory and chords that belong to particular keys.  Then we added the G7 and F chords.  So now we have the primary chords for the key of C; C, G (or G7), and F.  We were shown different fingerings for the chords, and practiced moving through the chords while strumming.

I felt pretty relaxed on the chord changes and kept up without losing a beat.  The strumming hand is where I need more work.  I’ll spend more time on this outside of class working on the exercises. 

During the last 15 minutes of class, we worked on sounding out the song Happy Birthday (by ear) figuring out the chord changes, and what they should be in C.

We covered a lot:  by the end of our 2^nd class we have 6 different chords, a couple strumming patterns, a basic understanding of how to figure out simple songs by ear, we are getting dangerous! 

As Lou Reed said, “One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.”