Prep for 10/2/15

3 Strengths:

• I can confidently lead a group, I can take care of group problems and hopefully encourage the group to have good attitude to be able to be successful.
• I can play the guitar quite well. I am able to play quite complicated riffs, chords and fingerstyles in the guitar.
• I can play to quite high standards as I project my instrument's sound and play calmly. It doesn't sound cut off or distorted.

3 Weaknesses

• I can't sing while playing guitar. I find it difficult to multi task when playing guitar.
• After a a couple of hours, I start to play worse and worse until it sound horrible.
• I can be quite irresponsible when it comes things such as attending in-school meetings or outside school to practice.

3 Technical Exercises

• My personal exercise before playing the guitar  - https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guitar/Technical_Exercises I go back down again after and I do this 4x
• After the warm up above, I warm up even more using the pentatonic scale. This awakens my fingers to be able to play more complicated riffs.
• The next exercise is what Mr Ellis gave me. 

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 on the bottom e string then you move up a fret and a string repeated. When you reach the top E string, you go back down strings up to the bottom e string but still moving up a fret each time. After reaching the bottom e string, you go back with the same pattern.

SMART target

I will perform confidently and as fluent as possible on our final performance in year 11. I will do this by practising as much as possible at home and at school in order to achieve my target.

2nd Lesson (Counting Stars - Class Project) 15/09/15

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Today, we have recorded the song as a class. In my opinion we did fairly good as we managed to keep in time in the verses and the chorus. We just fell apart in the bridge section of the song and when we took a break, leading to the chorus. Apart from that I would say everything went great in out performance. I think me personally did ok in the song. I managed to keep in time with the group and made only a little amount of mistakes. I feel contented with my own individual performance in the guitar as I have met the targets I set myself last week. I didn't meet one target though and that was to learn the C#m pentatonic scale. I struggled with the pentatonic scale at home, so i'm hoping to learn this difficult technique in my guitar lessons with Mr. Ellis. In conclusion I think out overall performance was great but can be improved. Everyone kept in time in the chorus and the verses and everyone found it fun to play the song as a class

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1st Lesson (Counting Stars - Class Project) 08/09/15

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Today, I learnt the guitar chords. I have grasped the tempo of the song "Counting Stars". I found it quite difficult to get in time with the drums and the other people as I get lost in the timing quite easily. I must try my best to get in time with the others in order to make the piece better as the guitar is quite loud and if I stop or make a mistake,  it would be too obvious. For next lesson I must try to get in time with the other people in the group and I can try the solo part of the song. It may be difficult as I haven't learnt the pentatonic scales yet but I will try to learn it as much as I can and then hopefully be able to play it in the final performance

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