Tag Archives: guitar riffs

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October Lesson Materials

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I decided to rename my newly-created ROCK BAND page, so it is now called SONGS. I didn’t want it to be specific Rock music or to the Rock Band I’m teaching. Instead it is any genre of songs that I’ve come across and decided to transcribe. Also, the songs are suitable for many different ability levels, so there should be something for everyone. Since I want this to be a hub for all of the songs that I have music for, I moved “Songs with One Progression”, “Mary Had a Little Lamb / Hot Cross Buns Medley”, “Amazing Grace”, “Two Hanukkah Songs (Treble Clef and Bass Clef”, and “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” from the GUITAR, UKULELE, PIANO, MALLETS, and BASS GUITAR pages to the SONGS page.

With many of the songs I took multiple approaches to how I notated them. The “lyrics and chords” PDFs are similar to what you might find on most websites, except that I edited them and added a simple version of music notation using text (“|” is a barline, “/” is a beat or quarter note, “-” is a sustain, “X” is a quarter rest, etc.). For example, strumming a G Major chord for four beats (quarter notes) would look like this: |G / / / |. Strumming a G Major chord on beat one and letting it ring out for the remaining three beats (whole note) would look like this: |G – – – |. Strumming a G Major chord on beat one and then muffling/silencing it for the remaining three beats (quarter note, three quarter rests) would look like this: |G X X X |. This gives more clarity about what the harmonic rhythm is. The “tab” PDFs have text-based tablature for songs that go beyond chord-strumming and have simple riffs. The “riffs” PDFs use more detailed music notation for songs that have riffs that might be too complex for text-based tab. The “YouTube” links are so that students can listen to recordings of the songs. The “guitar tutorial” links are to YouTube videos of how to play more complex riffs and songs.

All of these materials can be found under the FOR MY STUDENTS tab, on the SONGS page. As always, please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.

teaching

July Lesson Materials

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In July I started compiling songs from my Guitar and Ukulele Recital Songbooks to create a Beginning Band Songbook for Ukulele, Guitar, Piano, Bass Guitar, and Drum Set. Like the individual Recital Songbooks, it’ meant to teach beginners how to play songs using only a few, easy chords, and also how to play with other people (everybody plays the same chords at the same time), and to learn the difference between “practice” and “rehearsal”. The book itself is still very much a rough draft, but once I smooth out the edges, I’ll be able to post the first 20 songs, so stay tuned.

I added more songs to my Guitar Recital Songbook (23 songs so far) and Ukulele Recital Songbook (50 songs so far). PDFs of the sheet music are now only on the GUITAR RECITAL SONGBOOK and UKULELE RECITAL SONGBOOK pages, and no longer on the regular GUITAR or UKULELE pages.

After creating and posting the tracks for Ukulele Recital Songs 1-5 and Guitar Recital Songs 1-5, I decided that I’m not going to keep making tracks for all of the Recital Songs, but I will make a track if I have a student who wants to perform a specific recital song. Part of this decision was based on the time it takes to produce each track, but it was also because some students had issues with the tempo (100 BpM). As a compromise, I created 48-Measure Song Form Practice Tracks with Drum Set only at 7 different tempos (on the PRACTICE TRACKS page) so that students will still have something to play all of the recital songs along with if they want to.

PDFs of all of these materials can be found under the FOR MY STUDENTS tab, on the GUITAR RECITAL SONGBOOK, UKULELE RECITAL SONGBOOK, DRUM SET, and PRACTICE TRACKS pages. As always, please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.

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Late April and May Lesson Materials

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For the second half of April and all of May, I spent a lot of my time finishing a number of my method books. For Ukulele I have Chord-Strumming Books 1 and 2, and Note-Reading Books 1 and 2. For Guitar I have Chord-Strumming Books 1, 2, 3, and 4, Note-Reading Books 1 and 2, and Riff Exercises (formerly “Beginning Riff Exercises”) Book 1. I also completed Strumming Rhythms Index Books 1 and 2 which can be used with Ukulele and Guitar.

I also overhauled my Guitar and Ukulele pages, partially because I removed all of the books which are now for sale. On both pages I added “How to Tune…” PDFs, updated the Karate Belt requirements to include pages from the Strumming Rhythms Index, and on the Guitar page I added the Blue and Purple Belt requirements. I removed all of my Chord-Strumming materials, except for the “Practice Instructions and Fretboard” pages (in case anyone loses theirs and needs to print a new copy) and “Unit 1 (part 1)” (so that any student can work on their White Belt requirements, even if they haven’t bought the book yet). On both pages I added Chord-Strumming Recital Songbooks (which I will talk more about later) and kept the Progressions Using Only Three Chords, so that students who are having a difficult time learning new chords can make the most of the chords they do know. I removed the Strumming Rhythms Index except for page 1, so that students can still sample it for free before deciding if they want to buy the book, and on the Guitar page there are finger-picking exercises. Like with the chord-strumming books, I removed all of my Note-Reading materials, except for the “Practice Instructions and Fretboard” pages  and “Unit 1 (part 1)” (also part of the White Belt requirements). Both pages still have PDFs of Two Hanukkah Songs and Amazing Grace, and the Guitar page has a sample of Riff Exercises and all of my Advanced Exercises.

My new project last month was to create Recital Songbooks for Guitar, Ukulele, and Drum Set (with Piano and Bass Guitar Recital Songbooks coming in the future). These will be ongoing and I will continue to add more and more songs as time goes on. The initial idea was to provide songs for beginners to be able to play in a recital, even if they only know a few basics. I use standard short song form (to also teach them about verses, choruses and bridges) and follow along with my method books to incorporate new concepts (chords, rhythms, etc.) as they are learning them, so no matter where they are in the book, they are able to utilize what they know in a musical context.

I finished my Mallet Instruments (Treble Clef) Book 1 and it is now ready for sale, but Unit 1 (part 1) is still available to print for free as a sample. Unit 5: The Key of B-Flat Major is also done and available to print, and I also started working on a Bass Clef version (Level 1: The Key of C Major is available to print).

Throughout all of my method books, I made a conceptual change and now instead of referring to each section as a “UNIT” I know use the word “Level” (there may still be use of the work “Unit” in older PDFs). I talked with a few colleagues about it to get their opinions and we all agreed on the switch. Some of their thoughts were: “Unit sounds like a chore. Level sounds like when I get to the end, I’m closer to reaching the candy in the top shelf of the cabinet.” “Unit seems like a larger chunk that may be overwhelming to try and accomplish. I think of level as just one more step or rung of the ladder to get to that new skill.” “…level in reference to video games.” “UNIT just signifies a section (and sounds like homework) but LEVEL implies improvement and ascending.”

PDFs of all of these materials can be found under the FOR MY STUDENTS tab, on the GUITAR, UKULELE, DRUM SET, and MALLETS pages. As always, please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.

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More Guitar and Ukulele Materials

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Recently I realized that while I have Practice Instructions pages for my Guitar and Ukulele Chord-Strumming Method Books, I didn’t have a Practice Instructions pages for my Guitar and Ukulele Note-Reading Method Books, so I made them. Like the pages in my Chord-Strumming Method Books, it is meant to be cut out and referenced on every page that the student is practicing (like a bookmark). I will always leave a link to a PDF of these pages on my website in case a student loses them, even when the Note-Reading Method Books are for sale. In my Guitar and Ukulele Note-Reading Method Books I also added numbers to all of the lines so that it is easier to reference which line a student should be playing at any time (allowing the teacher to say, “play line 3” as opposed to saying, “play that line” and having to point).

I added a couple of new units to my Guitar Beginning Riff Exercises. Unit 3 deals with playing riffs using major pentatonic scales starting on the A string in I IV V progressions and 12-Bar Blues in various major keys (and uses Riff Rhythms pages v and vi). Unit 4 is playing riffs using minor pentatonic scales starting on the A string in i iv v progressions and 12-Bar Blues in various minor keys (and uses Riff Rhythms Pages vii and viii).

I also prepared my Guitar Chord-Strumming Method Book 4 to sell. As with my other completed method books, for now they are only available for sale through me directly, but soon I will add links to purchase them online.

PDFs of all of these materials can be found under the FOR MY STUDENTS tab, on the GUITAR and UKULELE pages. As always, please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.

teaching

More Guitar and Ukulele Method Books for Sale

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Lately I have been making it a priority to prepare more of my method books to sell. For a while I have been selling my Guitar Chord-Strumming Method Book 1 and my Ukulele Chord-Strumming Method Book 1, and over the past few weeks I also prepared my Guitar Chord-Strumming Method Book 2 and Book 3, as well as my Ukulele Chord-Strumming Method Book 2. As of now, they are only available for sale through me directly, but soon I will add links to purchase them online.

While my first Guitar and Ukulele Chord-Strumming Books are no longer available for free on my website, I did decide to make all of the materials for Guitar and Ukulele Karate White Belts available for free. On the GUITAR and UKULELE pages there are links to free PDFs for both the Chord-Strumming as well as the Note-Reading books “Unit 1 (part 1)”.

I also recently made some changes to my Guitar Beginning Riff Exercises (which was formerly known as “Guitar Beginning Riff and Solo Exercises”). I updated and re-formatted Unit 1 so that the Riff Rhythm pages are now “cut-outs” at the beginning of the book that are used with the progressions in different keys throughout Unit 1. This way I only had to print the pages of rhythms and progressions once. Since the Riff Rhythm pages are meant to be cut out and will become individual sheets of paper that might get lost, I’m going to leave the links to the PDFs of them on my page for free, even when I finish the book and start selling it. The other big change that I made was that I was originally going to have major pentatonic scales on the A string for Unit 2, but instead I changed it to minor pentatonic scales on the E string. My original thought was to do everything with major pentatonic scales then do everything with minor pentatonic scales, but I decided that it would be better to switch back and forth between the two. So to summarize, Riff Rhythms pages i and ii go with Unit 1: Major Pentatonic Scales on the Low E String, and Riff Rhythms pages iii and iv go with Unit 2: Minor Pentatonic Scales on the Low E String.

PDFs of all of these materials can be found under the FOR MY STUDENTS tab, on the GUITAR and UKULELE pages. As always, please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.

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End of 2024 Lesson Materials

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Happy New Year! Here is an overview of all of my lesson materials that I worked on for the last few months of 2024 (aside from my Christmas Songbooks).

I took my Strumming Rhythms Index out of my guitar and ukulele books (originally I was planning on having it as an appendix in those books) and made it into its own book. After the first page of rhythms in 4/4 time using quarter notes and 8th notes, I added a page of strumming rhythms in 2/4, 3/4, and 6/8 time also using quarter notes and 8th notes (dotted quarter notes in 6/8 time). The next 15 pages incorporate rests on various downbeats (students can either not strum on the rests, or if they are more advanced they can actually muffle the strings on the rests). Originally I didn’t include rhythms that had a rest on beat 1, but I added those rhythms to this new version. I added a section with rests on various downbeats in 2/4, 3/4, and 6/8 time (also including rhythms with rests on beat 1). I also added a new section incorporating what I call “Selective Strumming” which is halfway between strumming and picking, which many guitarists do. Instead of strumming all 6 strings, or picking only one string at a time, I first divide the strings into two sections (three strings each) to create “low” and “high” sounds (notated on a two-lined staff), then in later pages I divide the strings into three sections (two strings each) to create “low,” “middle,” and “high” sounds (notated on a three-lined staff).  To make it simpler, I didn’t add rests to these exercises (for now). Reggae Strumming Rhythms will eventually be a part of this book, but for now it is a separate document. The new Strumming Rhythms Index can be found on both the “Guitar” and “Ukulele” pages under “For My Students”.

I added some introductory pages to my Guitar Beginning Riff and Solo Exercises, to give an explanation for where major pentatonic scales come from and how they are played on guitar and why we use specific finger patterns. I also showed where all of the natural notes are along the low E string (up to the 12th fret) so the students can see where to start any major pentatonic scale. The rest of the unit has exercises playing four-measure phrases using a I IV V progression and 12-bar blues in various keys. I added more riff rhythms (some in different meters), so now there are two pages to go through in each of the keys (the second page incorporates leaps in the beginning or middle of the measure). The new Guitar Beginning Riff and Solo Exercises can be found on the “Guitar” page under “For My Students”.

In my Guitar Chord-Strumming and Bass Guitar Chords method books, I decided to swap Units 3 and 4 so that sus chords are introduced in Unit 3 followed by 12-Bar Blues in Unit 4. I made this change in the Guitar Chord-Strumming book, but I haven’t updated it yet in my Bass Guitar Chords book, so I just removed the old PDFs from the “Bass Guitar” page.

Like my Christmas Songbooks, I started preparing my Guitar Chord-Strumming and Ukulele Chord-Strumming books for publishing and to sell. Guitar Chord-Strumming Book 1 includes Unit 1: Major and Minor Chords, Unit 2: Common Chord Progressions, Unit 3: Sus2 and Sus 4 Chords, and Unit 4: 12-Bar-Blues (23 lessons). Ukulele Chord-Strumming Book 1 includes Unit 1: The Key of C Major, Unit 2: The Key of G Major, Unit 3: The Key of F Major and Unit 4: The Key of D Major (25 lessons).

Finally, I did an arrangement of Amazing Grace in the keys of C Major, G Major, and F Major. PDFs can be found on my “Guitar,” “Mallets,” “Piano,” and “Ukulele” pages under “For My Students”.

Please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.

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February Lesson Materials

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In February I finished my Guitar Method Book Note-Reading Unit 1, which teaches the eight natural notes on the three high strings (G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G) and Unit 2, which teaches the nine natural notes on the three low strings (E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F). I also rearranged my “Guitar Beginning Riff and Solo Exercises” so that all of the major pentatonic and minor pentatonic exercises are side-by-side, and I also put all of the quarter note rhythms first, followed by all of the 8th note rhythms.

I worked on my Snare Drum Method Book for the first time in a long time. (To give you an idea of how long it’s been, all of my sentences had TWO spaces after the periods… which I changed.) I did a bunch of overall formatting clean-up, but the main thing was that I rearranged Units 5 and 6. Originally Unit 5 focused on 3/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, and 12/8 using mostly 8th notes with occasional quarter notes, dotted quarter notes, and rests, and Unit 6 added 16th notes to the same set of meters. In the updated versions Unit 5 is all of the compound meters (3/8, 6/8, 9/8, and 12/8) first using mostly 8th notes with occasional quarter notes, dotted quarter notes, and rests, and then adding 16th notes to those same compound meters, and Unit 6 is the complex meters (two versions of 5/8 and 3 versions of 7/8) first using mostly 8th notes with occasional quarter notes, dotted quarter notes, and rests, and then adding 16th notes to those same complex meters.

It had also been a long time since I worked on my Drum Set Method Book, so it was in need of some updates. I realized that in addition to 4/4 which is the most common meter in music, I should also include exercises in 2/4 and 3/4 at the beginning of the book since they are also relatively common. I followed the same format that I originally used to introduce 4/4 on drum set: building a basic quarter note beat, building a basic 8th note beat, learning how to navigate four-measure phrases, and then playing a whole song form. I added 2/4 and 3/4 versions of those exercises parallel to the 4/4 versions, so that the students will be well versed with all three meters right from the beginning.

Please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.

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January Lesson Materials

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Throughout the month of January, there were many resources for my lessons that I worked on. They can all be found under the recently-streamlined “FOR MY STUDENTS” tab.

I started work on a method book for mallets. So far, I have unit 1 which is note-reading exercises in the key of C Major, unit 2 in the key of G Major, and unit 3 in the key of F Major. On the topic of note-reading, I started a ukulele note-reading method book and a guitar note-reading method book. Also for guitar, I created “Beginning Finger-Picking Patterns”, “Beginning Riff and Solo Exercises”, “Which Pentatonic Scales and Modes to Play Over Chords”, “Common Chord Progressions”, and “Reggae Strumming Rhythms”.

I also made a big addition to my Composition/Songwriting page. I included “Which Pentatonic Scales and Modes to Play Over Chords” and “Common Chord Progressions” from my guitar page, and also added staff paper of varying sizes, staves, and orientations. I created an entirely new document, “Composing Phrases, Periods, and ABA Compositions” so that I have a workbook to use with composition students, teaching them how to use common chords progressions found in major and minor scales and modes.

Please let me know if you use any of these teaching materials with your students, and if you find them helpful, or if you have any questions or comments.