Monday Blurp...

Once again, no time!

Toxic Slut set on Friday was really good. They did 30 minutes and really had everyone along for the ride. Covers included Clash, Aerosmith stuff and so on, punkee-stylee.

While I didn't spend the whole weekend in the office, I was briefly at work both Saturday and Sunday, which sucked. Particularly as I got embroiled in the traffic diversions from the Lord Mayor's Show during a serious downpour on Saturday. I was soaked to the skin even before I could find somewhere to pull over.

We finally get to have our second band rehearsal this week! Yay! Oh... now wait a minute... I've hardly had any time to practice the material. D'Oh! Best pull Red out tonight I guess. Neighbours, I apologise in advance.

With Rockschool, I decided to shoot for the Grade 5 exam in June. From their website:

"You will be confident in a range of physical and expressive techniques. You will be able to demonstrate your abilities across a number of styles and have control over tone and sound adjustments to suit the playing style of your choice."

Exam requirements:

These should be played at 100 bpm in a straight feel: eighth notes

Group A Scales 2 octaves to be prepared chromatically in the keys of G-B, root note 6th string
• Minor pentatonic scales: The candidate must prepare all positions and the examiner will ask two consecutive positions

Group B Arpeggios 2 octaves to be prepared chromatically in the keys C-E, root note 5th string
• Major arpeggios
• Minor arpeggios
• Minor 7 arpeggios
• Dominant 7 arpeggios

Group C Chords
• Root 5th string barre chords: C, Dm, Em7, F, G. Play as a continuous sequence

Group D Legato Study. Candidates should prepare the eight bar legato study to be performed with the backing track.

Doesn't sound too bad... but I don't know how I'll play in an exam type situation! Realistically, passing the exam is secondary to getting something out of the course for me.

Rockschool homework...? Been trying to learn all the notes on all the strings. It's not easy to do without resorting to some kind of 'relative' methodology, such as knowing that if you skip two frets down then two frets over, then if that's a C on the A-string then it's a C on the G string... just have to keep plugging away at it I guess. I learned the A-string by remembering that the 3rd, 5th and 7th frets were C, D and E respectively. Once you know that, everything else falls into place. Brain exploding... Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

Maybe I should just stick a crib sheet on the back of my guitar in case we get tested this week!