Rick's World

I passed!!!!

Tonight I took my final exam in my beginner guitar class. This is the second time I've taken the course. The first time, I didn't quite pass the final exam. This time I did. I had considered skipping the class tonight. I haven't practiced in over a week and I didn't think I was ready for the test. Thankfully my friend Dave encouraged me to go, so I did. Good thing I did too. After a little last minute 'cramming' with the class notes, I was able to rip through all the major, minor and 7th chords. I even did pretty good on the playing of a song. The teacher criticized me for restarting the strum pattern in mid playing. He was right to do so. I restarted because I screwed up one of the chords and tried to start over. You must never stop when you are playing a song. You have to keep going because it forces to get faster at switching between chords. Plus, if you are performing in front of an audience with a band, you can't exactly stop and restart a song.

I just signed up for a third go at the class. It doesn't start until August 17th (almost a month away). In this second class I didn't really learn much because I was still in the beginner side, so we were just going over stuff I already learned. Since I 'graduated' to the intermediate class, which starts an hour after the beginner class, I figure that means I'll start learning a lot more new stuff. I look forward to it. This class pushes me to keep going on the guitar.