music lesson v.2 - intervals and power chords

intervals

when i first started teaching myself piano i studied intervals from my lesson book. but while i learned what intervals are, i didn't learn how i can use them in playing. this is why having an instructor is beneficial. in my second lesson i was introduced to the concept of actually "reading" (or recognizing) intervals in music notation. i see now how helpful it will be in reading notation faster.

my instructor showed me the notation for a version of "smells like teen spirit" written by tori amos. she's an amazingly talented musician and wrote a complicated piece out of a nirvana song. i'll go ahead and state right now that i'm not much of a grunge fan and i like nirvana even less. grunge killed the guitar solo. :P however, her piece was pretty. then we got into talking about intervals and went back to the notation for tori's song. still complicated, no doubt, but recognizing intervals in the piece suddenly made it not so impossible-looking.


power chords

now i'm playing with power! oh wait, that's a nintendo reference. see, video games are never very far from my conscience. so, craig showed me what he learned in his guitar lesson: power chords. they are a little harder on my untrained fingers, but wow, do these sound good! fun to play, too. now when friends or family come over i'll at least be able to fake it and show off that i've learned something, haha.

update: i've been playing power chords for a couple of days now. my hands and fingers are finally starting to loosen up. still have a long way to go, but i'm making sounds now!