Friday, 9 October 2009

Yuan Ping took leave from her work, and ahe was enthusiastic to ask us to go ACCESS practice guitar together with her. Not a bad thing to spend your off-day practicing guitar eh? haha...

So meet amanda, YuanPing, Shawn, Peter and Sharman at the conference room, then tuned guitars before starting. Normally, at the start, we would anyhow play what we like first, for me being to play chords haha..

But this day when we agreed amd decided to go for guitar practice, it wasnt met to be practicing individually on our own only, instead, there was a certain seriousness about the session thus far..

I and Amanda started to try combining play chords, and it proved a success to a certain extent. Then after that, Amanda was suggesting to me to implement Arvind teaching method to conduct this practice session. I wonder why it must be me, well, I think is time as coordinator that I learn to try to lead this team. After a certain "persuading" from her and shawn, I accepted her suggestion, under the request that she helped me around, also guiding them.

So I started off by asking them to sit around me. I decided to guide them the basic chords first, Am, Em, so that i ensure that they coud cope with the basics first, before progressing on to another level. So it proved to me to be a correct decision, from the looks of it....

I showed them the fingering of the Am chord, and asked them to show me their fingerings. After which, i seeked to use the "hand test" to ensure that when they press the chords, all strings can be played well without buzzing sounds. I got demostrate to them the supposedly correct way of playing Am chord with the strumming method, with them following me play at the second time. i felt that it went quite well for the first part. Mistakes, if any, were thwn corrected with the help of me and Amanda. Overall, i felt that it went quite well.

Then i guided them the Em chord, same thing, must pass "hand test" first, they did pass with credit, so it was easier to guide. I then tested each of them one by one, showing me their methods of playing each chord at 1 time, so I think that it was great, as they didnt disappoint. I was quite happy with their progress thus far, and Amanda was like doing a good job to guide them too. Thereafter, I challenged them to move up another level, play the strum pattern with Am, then play again with the changing chords from Am to Em.

After some time devoted to practicing what I have guided them, it wasnt really surprising that Shawn could do it well, Yuan Ping has indeed improved quite fast. At 1 time, I even took away the chords notes from her, to test that she really have learned the 2 chords without refering to the notes, and I think it has benefited.

Nevertheless, Peter also progressed as he was able to strum the pattern well, with the guidance of Sharman. All in all, it was possibly the best practice session we had, and it turned out to be huge success..

Saturday, 10 October 2009

Well, Saturday is clique day, so went down ACCESS for guitar lessons, met Amanda and the rest at the pantry, preparing for lesson.

At the start of this week's lesson, Arvind asked us to demostrate to him the strumming of what we learnt the prevous week, with the C chord. Having guided them the previous day, Friday, i wasnt at all surprised that many of them could show the correct way of strumming, while some others had to work harder to get it right, but no matter, as long as all players had showed their effort can de.

This week, we seeked to progress again as Arvind taught us to move up another level, teaching us to change from C to Am chords, and then back from Am to C, using the strumming pattern taught last week. It proved to be a challenge at the start, but as time progressed, we slowly got the hang of it.

Then he taught us to change the chords using two "down" strums each for each chord before changing chord. It was a bit of a stiffer test, as we had lesser time to set our mind to changing the chords and knowing where to place our fingerings of each chords. It enables us to learn to change chords faster. Homework: Practice...

After lesson, followed Peter and TJ to Sengkang buy Sharman's birthday present then come back home.

Sunday, 11 October 2009

Went to play soccer with TJ, kelvin, shawn and Peter. Nearly scored when I played as a midfielder attacker. But for most of the time is play goalkeeper, my best position I supposed. I made quite alot of saves, and played well I guess..Shawn scored a goal from close range, so it was quite fun...