Ragtime piano, blues guitar

Ok, I pulled out my old piano sheet music. Playing the entertainer by Joplin again. Will switch to ragtime piano, with lessons next spring. Guitar will be my blues instrument. I'm back to a focus on piano. Wow! Didn't expect it.

Ragtime is it

forget jazz.  That book will have to wait.  I'm going to focus on ragtime guitar this summer.  I'm finishing up the Wabash rag, and will start on the next one, Keep On Truckin' Mama.  Then I'm gonna get a book of ragtime guitar pieces.  This is the instrumental type of music I've been looking for.

This week's lesson went well.  We worked on the songs I chose.

april 11 lesson

this week we worked more on the ragtime piece, Wabash Rag.  Since then I've gotten the hang of it, and it's not hard once I got the stretch in the A chord and melody in the first two measures.  The rest is smooth sailing.

Today I bought a book, a Mel Bay book, Teach Yourself Jazz Guitar.  Not sure if it's what I wanted, but it has some good exercises and scales.  I want an intermediate level book of jazz standards.  i thought I could start learning jazz songs, and learn the theory later.  why not?  just learn to play some pieces.  that's still my plan for the summer.  probably need another book, though.

ragtime blues for today's lesson

so I showed my guitar teacher the new book of blues pieces, and I chose a ragtime song by Blind Boy Fuller, Wabash Rag, to work on.  It's a VI II V I form in C.  Good lesson today.

Captain's log

Star date 2012.4.1

new strings for the 339

Finally, I put a new set of strings on the 339!  yeah, I've had it since June 2010.  The guitar was made in July 2009.  So those strings are pretty old!  Well, she's got new Ernie Ball Slinky 10s now.  Sounds so much better.

Still working on my list of songs from the previous entry, although I'm not doing B&O Blues.  Haven't figured a good way to make it an instrumental.  Also have a new piece in C, Hot Coffee, and I'm working  on one in D.