Guitar Genius {presentation}

We've made it to the final work days of our Genius Projects. For my guitar presentation, I have my introduction and research information prepared on Google Slides, will play a Christmas song with two different sounds thanks to my amp, and will end with a conclusion with helpful suggestions based off my own challenges throughout this project. This will require me to bring in my music, guitar, amp, and music stand.

I am feeling nervous about this presentation. Typically I am very comfortable with public speaking thanks to my previous speech experiences. I took two speech classes in college, so that helps. My most intimidating speech, though was at high school graduation. Another reason to feel comfortable is that we've been studying as a class for more than three months, so I know that my students are extremely respectful. This helps me feel more comfortable. To be honest though, I have not practiced as much as I should have these last four weeks, and now I am not as prepared as I should be. This makes me nervous of making mistakes when I play my song selection.

I hope you enjoy my Guitar Genius presentation this week!

{practicing} to be a Guitar Genius

This past week I have been working on the creation part of my Genius Project. This requires me to practice my song(s) that I will be performing with different sound settings to my class. I have been trying to complete most of my research during class and then practicing guitar three nights every week. Some weeks I have done a good job of practicing, but there was one night that I thought I was going to fall asleep with my guitar on my lap! So I went to bed instead.

I am finding that it's difficult to practice guitar on the nights that I have basketball games or late practice, but I also find that even though this is my homework, I enjoy this time and it's a relaxing part of my evening. My dog Chance is a little confused by what I'm doing. He stares at me, and occasionally barrels over to be pet when I pause between songs.

I have chosen to play a holiday tune because then students will be familiar. It is also practical for me! Christmas break is coming up and I will be able to play sing-along songs for my nieces and nephew now. I have been practicing two different songs since I haven't decided which to play. It'll either be a fingerstyle of "The First Noel" which is my personal favorite to play or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". This one would be fun to play with the rock-style settings on my amp!

Here is Carrie Underwood's version of "The First Noel".

I will NOT be singing when I present, but this is beautiful and for any students reading this before my performance, you may be able to sing along!

Just for fun, I found this rock version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Deer students, please don't expect this kind of expertise from me.

I'm looking forward to preparing my presentation and performing next week already. Yikes!
Thanks again for following this Genius Journey!

Guitar Genius {research focus}

The first step I needed to accomplish was to dust off my guitar case and get this musical beauty set back up on it's rightful place on her stand. Yes, I personify my guitar. I spent 33 minutes searching through all the electronic cords in our house looking for the power cord and auxiliary cord to connect my Taylor T-5 to my Fender Mustang I amp. Guess where I found it... yeah, in my bag of guitar supplies.

Once I got my guitar unpacked and plugged in (which took 31 minutes longer than I expected), I had to tune my guitar. Despite being a recluse in it's case for over a year, it wasn't as out of tune as I expected. The first strum still made my ears burn, but it is relatively painless to correct. No, I cannot tune by ear. I can tell you when it's off, but don't have the skill to correct it.

Alright, power source ready, tuned guitar, and now it was time to warm up. Ay. Ay. Ay.

My fingers are out of shape! Compared to what I used to do, they are slow and I felt like I could only get them moving one tempo and trying to swing notes got me mixed up. However, I successfully made it through two warm-ups both with a pick and finger style.

After this warmup, I did my first research step: examined what I already know. While in college, I took a year of lessons, one semester with a small group and one semester private lessons. Luckily, since I was earning a minor, my program of study wasn't as intense as music majors. Did you know they practice THREE to FIVE hours EACH DAY?! Anyway, I started looking at all the scales and arpeggios I had memorized about six years ago, and yikes! I feel like I don't remember any of it anymore.

Copies of scales memorized while in college.

It's intimidating to feel like I've lost all of this knowledge and skill, but then I returned my thoughts to my goals of this project:

Short term: Learn the settings on my guitar and amp to create different sounds.
Long term: Feel comfortable to play at church.

This helped me narrow the focus of what research I need to do. I want to be able to play notes and chords at different speeds and create different sounds for different genres of music; I'm OK with not being able to improvise over a jazz piece. There's no reason to stress over my scale proficiency.

Now I've been working on learning and relearning settings on my guitar and amp.

This video has helped me understand my own guitar better:

This ten minute tutorial explains the different pickup settings on my guitar. I found it really helpful to set my amp on a neutral setting, watch the video, and pause and change the settings along with Corey Witt. These are sound changes I can adjust right on my guitar without changing the settings on my amp at all. Note, I have to connected to an amp for these, not playing my guitar acoustically.

There's a disc with settings that came with my amp and direction booklet for my amp, so I started looking into this but haven't done much with it yet. Turns out my amp has pre-programmed settings and then I can also create my own once I know what I'm doing.

This next week, I plan to pick out my song to play for students and to learn the settings that are on my amp.

Thanks for following my Guitar Genius Journey!