November 25, 2011

This week at TG we had a set of new Target lessons, a Pink Floyd Fly
On The Wall, and a nod toward the American tradition of playing
Alice’s Restaurant around Thanksgiving time. Our Arlo Guthrie
connection was rekindled with a Student Review of his country-blues,
talking-blues, ragtime fingerstyle guitar, 1960s folk-protest song
(I’m sure I missed a few adjectives there so feel free to fill in your
own).

As part of our Fly On The Wall lessons we took Kevin a little further
into the world of Pink Floyd with a look at Another Brick In The Wall.
Of course, this is the title song (or at least Part 2 of 3) the last
real PF album that also included Comfortably Numb, Is There Anybody
Out There, and Goodbye Blue Sky, all lessons we have here at TG, I
think.

Our main Target releases started with John Lennon’s Instant Karma, a
lesson presented in our Work It Out style to improve ear-training. I
guess I have to start warning people to not print out attachments
until watching the Preview, as this format is obviously gaining
popularity. On Wednesday we stayed firmly entrenched in the 60s with
Donovan’s folk song Catch The Wind. This is a nice song to work on
picking out some bass lines as part of the strumming, much like is
done in Bluegrass playing. The week ended with a look at You’re So
Vain by Carly Simon. This lesson included some of the piano parts, and
even the little bass flourish at the beginning.

I hope everybody in the US had a good Thanksgiving weekend with
relatives/food/football… whatever.

Stay Tuned & In Touch,

Neil