Hello! I'm Hannah, and on this blog, I will be documenting the seven-week process in which I improve my guitar skills for the genius hour project. So get on board and buckle up, cause my ride's gonna be a big one. And if you get motion sickness, you know, put your head between your knees, 'cause Hannah's stopping for no one. (Yes, I did just quote Parks and Recreation).
I decided to work on playing the guitar for my genius project. This decision was not hard for me to arrive at, because I really enjoy playing my guitar. About a year and a half ago, I got a guitar for my birthday, and started lessons. I took them on and off, but ever since this school year started, I've hardly picked up my guitar. Since it's something I enjoy, I figured that the genius project would be a great way to get me back into practicing. There are also many songs that I would love to learn how to play, and with this project, I will be motivated to learn as much as I can.
Over the next seven weeks, I am planning on teaching myself six different Taylor Swift songs that I can then put into a medley for the final product. Every week, I will learn and perfect a new song so that I will know all six songs by the time my final product is due. The songs I am planning on playing are I Know Places, Wonderland, Shake It Off, Never Grow Up, Stay Stay Stay, and Treacherous, all by Taylor Swift. I am going to use either Ultimate-guitar.com or my Taylor Swift songbooks (depending on which is better for a given song) to get the chords for each song. I may also use YouTube tutorials if they are available for the song I want to learn. I've used all of these resources before for learning songs, and they have all been extremely helpful. I may also start my guitar lessons again once a week, but I'm not sure yet.
My overall goals for this project are to learn six Taylor Swift songs and then compile them all into a medley of sorts. Through this process, I also hope to learn new chords and make my transitions between chords smoother. In the past, this is something that has been difficult for me, so I hope this project will allow me to improve in that aspect. Another thing that I have struggled with in the past is the sound quality of my chords. It is hard for me to push down hard enough on the strings to make it sound perfect, so I plan on improving this. I already know a decent amount of chords, but the hardest for me are barre chords (well, they're the hardest for everyone) where one finger has to push down on multiple strings. I expect that I will be learning a lot of songs with barre chords throughout my life, so I hope I can get them to sound the way they should.
This week, I am going to start learning I Know Places, so maybe in my next blog post I'll talk about that and maybe even include a video (???). I'm kinda scared to post videos of me playing, but I guess stage fright is something I'm going to have to get over for this project.
Comments This Week:
Sarah Wolbach
Jason Smith
Laura Roth
Guitar is super cool! Do you have any specific resources you're planning on using to help with your technique? How advanced are you in guitar terms now, and how advanced would you like to be by the end of seven weeks? I'm excited to hear you perform your medley :~)
ReplyDeleteThanks! I think the thing that would help most with technique is getting actual lessons, so I'm looking into those. As for how advanced I am, I would say that I know the basics and may even be a little bit past beginner. I know almost all of the most common chords and I know different strumming patterns and stuff. By the end of seven weeks, I hope to learn some new chords and improve my technique (finger positioning, clarity of sound, strumming, etc.) and also, of course, learn songs that I didn't know how to play before.
DeleteHi Hannah!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like this is the perfect project for you. Out of curiosity, how did you choose the six songs you will be playing? I know how much Taylor Swift means to you, so what made these songs more appealing than others? Also, have you decided on the order of your medley and what parts of each song you will be playing? I am sooooo excited to hear your final project!
Jason
Picking the songs was pretty hard; I went through a list of some of my favorites and looked up the chords. I chose songs that I thought would sound good acoustically, and also songs with chords that weren't too difficult to learn and remember. I threw in Shake It Off because people actually know that song, and they may not know the others I'm playing. For the medley, I really have no idea yet. It would probably be mainly made up of choruses and bridges, but I'll have to see.
Delete