Here follows a summary of the topics of the 1st lesson:

- General presentation and objectives;
-Name of the guitar strings: from the 1st to the 6th strings (top to bottom, or from the thinest to the tickest):
E - B - G -D - A - E  (Eastern Bunny Gets Drunk After Eastern)

- Mini concert/lecture by Andrea Buning
- Chords: E minor, A minor

Here follows last Tuesday's summary, courtesy of Andrea Bunings:

We have decided on 2 dates for the concert:

Friday November 18 Trail concert (bring 2 guests)
Friday Dec 9 Final concert (big event! :-) )

Songs for trail concert:\

Kamran: Dreams (will be helped by Helen)
Wiola : Remember the tinman
Helen: Hej du
Céline: Falling slowly (helped by Wiola, Vincent and Andrea.
Damien: To be announced
Vincent: Hey there Delilah (helped by Murat)
Murat+ Marjan: More than words
Francisco: Velvet
Anja: Het is een nacht (helped by Marjan and Vincent)
Andrea : Vincent (helped by Damien)

Attendance issues:
Céline will not be there on the 15th of Nov.
Murat will not be there on the 8th of Nov.
Marjan will not be there between the 17th of Nov and the 8th of Dec.

Marjan will only play during the second concert.
Anja will probably not play during the second concert.

Some things to keep in mind
We are in charge of our songs and determine how the intro will be, the chorus
and outro (so we decide what the ”helpers”/co musicians will play)

Try to do mainly fingerpicking, and to do something challenging. This can either
be the vocal part, the transition of chords, finger picking, etc). Remember to
play slow and repeat parts that you find difficult (looping)

After this part we played the song Fragile once more, this should be done by
plucking three strings at the same time.

This week's (very personal and insightful) summary, courtesy of Mehri Behroezi:

Hello everyone,

Last Tuesday we had this special guest, Otto Cepella, who taught us many useful things and helped us out with some struggle issues .
First of all, now that we all know about the basic parts of a guitar, it’s handy to give some tips about how to hold your guitar.  When playing the guitar sitting down, the body of the guitar will rest on one of your legs.  When someone playing the guitar in a lefty manner will rest it on their left leg also.

Awareness and attitude:

Desire, Attention and Awareness are the three things you must understand in order to begin your journey toward getting as good as you want to be on the guitar, each leads to the other.

Techniques:

There are several notation symbols appearing in tab notation. This is how the guitarist should play them. The most usual guitar techniques are: Bend, Vibrato, Tapping, Hammer, Pull-off etc…
Beginners strumming patterns is as follow. First make sure your guitar is in tune. using your fretting hand, from a G major chord on the neck. Making sure you are holding your pick properly, practice playing the example that Otto gave us, which is a basic on bar strumming pattern. Alternate between strumming down, and strumming up. When you get done playing the example once than loop it. Count out: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and over again.

How to learn a new chord fingering:

There is usually a pattern to learning new chord shapes. First you learn the fingering and then you memorize the fingering by practicing the new shape you just learned. Once you remember it you practice applying it quickly. Then you start messing around with it and somewhere along the way, the chord shape become natural automatic. An important stage in this is eventually you learn to recognize the chords. Once you hear it played,  you know it’s the particular shape.

CAGED System:

The CAGED system is an idea that is based on the relationship between common major chord and major scale shapes. If you can easily find the notes on the 5th and 6th strings of the guitar then all it takes is a bit practice with the CAGED system and you will be able to find any major chords tone very easily anywhere. As you remember Otto draw us the CAGED system and how to use this system. If you don’t remember it anymore I would say look on internet and you will got a lot of explanations about CAGED system.

Smooth transition:

You have to make sure that your final is positioned in a way you don’t need to move your hand as much. For example if you play a A-major and need to start the solo in the 5th position, don’t play an open A. first Visualize, than execute and finally lighten up. Do some looping, like this you not only can get a great sound with looping, but it is also one of the best ways to get better at timing and rhythm.

At the final we want to thank Otto for this great performances and handy tips that he gave us. I think it was a very useful lesson. Also a special thank to Rafael who give us his time, energy and talent to teach us. Thank you so much.

Here follows last lesson's summary (courtesy of Marjan Feldman):

- New chord: B7, in this way: Index finger first fret 4th string, middle finger second fret 5th string, ring finger second fret 3th string, little finger second fret 1st string.

- New tune was played: Fragile (Sting) : Chords: Em, Am, B


- Important playing tip: Place the highest finger on the guitar first (so the finger on the lowest string), the other fingers will follow! The highest finger will sound first. So with the B chord, you first place the middle finger on the 5th string, then you place the other fingers.
              Ex:With the C chord, you first place the ringfinger on the 5th string, then the other fingers.

    If you move from one chord to the other chord, don’t move the fingers that will be the same in the other chord, but let them stay on the string.
              Ex:if you go from Am to B7, you can leave the ringfinger on the second fret 3th string. That makes it easier to change chords!

Topics of the 3rd lesson (courtesy of Murat Ceceli ):  

Bare chords: a type of guitar chord where one or more fingers are used to press down multiple strings across the guitar fingerboard. It allows to play a chord not restricted to open string chords only. When we move the hand in the guitar neck with same position, we get a different the chord. Barre chords are preferred when we don't want resonance and they allow easy position change for left hand when moving from one chord to another.

We start with F barre chord (index finger (1) on all strings in 1st fingerboard, middle finger (2) on 3rd string 2nd fingerboard, ring finger (4) on 4th string and little finger (5) on 5th string both on 3rd fingerboard). Then we slide our hand 2 fingerboards in same position and get G barre chord, 2 more fingerboards to (index finger on 5th fingerboard) to get A barre chord.

The move of hand should be 1 fingerboard from barre chord B – to barre chord C and 1 fingerboard from barre chord E to barre chord F. Between all other chords, change is with moving 2 fingerboard. Moving one fingerboard changes ½ tones so we follow the same rule with musical scale: C__D__E_F__G__A__B_C

There are marks on neck or fingerboard of guitar for easy reference of position. When we release our middle finger off the string in any major barre chord, we get minor chord of same chord ( A = > Am). When we release our little finger off the string in any major barre chord, we get chord 7 of same chord ( A = > A7).

For Gm and Cm chords, always barre chords are used. The key to practice everything is doing it SLOW.  

Ø  Right hand exercise:      
-          thumb, 3 fingers at the same time
-          thumb, 1,2,3
-          thumb, 3,2,1
-          thumb, 1,2,3,2,1
-          thumb, 1 , 2&3 at the same time

> basic practice: right hand exercise, chords C, G, Am
> Upgraded practice: right hand exercise, barre chords (Yesterday or One with barre chords)

Here follows a summary of the topics of the 2nd lesson (courtesy of Vincent Paul):

- Chords: G, C, D, F, Am (A minor)

- Right hand posture:  G - B - e strings for index, middle and ring finger and D-A-E strings for the thumb.
Position the thumb far in front of your fingers, so they will not touch while strumming.

- Rule of practice; the slower, the better.
Better learn one or two chords slow but well instead of five fast and bad

-Songs:
Yesterday (Beatles) - only the chords. PDF
One (U2) (chords + finger picking ->not strumming) PDF

- Get yourself a musicstand: it will cost you +/- €20 euro: it will save your back and improve your practice. If you don't use it as often, it will always look cool standing in your room!

Here follows a summary of the topics of the 1st lesson (courtesy of Yasnaya)

-Name of the guitar's strings: from the 1st to the 6th strings (top to bottom, or from the thinest to the tickest):
E - B - G -D - A - E
(Eastern Bunny Gets Drunk After Eastern)

- Posture (back, shoulders, hands and leg support): basically, respect the body's natural position.
- Chords: E minor, A minor, G major, C major D major.
- Song: Leaving on a jet plane
- G major scale

> Basic practice: right hand exercises; chords
> Advanced practice: right hand exercises

Friday, July 1st - 20h
Talia, Amsterdam

In order to allow people a performance experience, the Free guitar lessons group will do a pre-vacation final concert. Everyone will play a few songs in different ensembles, for an audience of friends and general public. There will also be very special musician guests.

Program:
20h: Students' performance part 1
20.30h: Otto Cepella: finger style acoustic guitar
Break
21h: Students' performance part 2
21.30h: Rafael Fraga | Guitarra e Mistério (with Rafael Fraga and Eva Aukes)

The final concert is getting closer; below, there is the temporary line up, as discussed in the last lesson (courtesy of Sara - thank you Sara, what an amazing job!!).

Schedule:
Friday, July 1st, at Talia
18h - 19h: general rehearsal
19h - 20h: dinner, courtesy of Talia's Nico and Michelle; please bring drinks.
20 - 22h: concert

Line up (not order in the concert, though! That will be decided this Tuesday):

All I want is you” => Helen, Kamran, Aby

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20PQBtyfNZY
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/juno/1216095/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/b/barry_louis_polisar/all_i_want_is_you_ver2_crd.htm

“Wish you were here”=> Helen, Kamran, Sara

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11UUVzlI6hI
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/pink-floyd/63065/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/p/pink_floyd/wish_you_were_here_crd.htm

“Leaving in a jet plane”=> Kamran, Helen, Marjan

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLBKOcUbHR0
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/kreviazuk-chantal/21906/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/p/peter_paul_and_mary/leaving_on_a_jet_plane_crd.htm

“Candle in a wind”=> Aby

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoOhnrjdYOc
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/elton-john/20090/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/e/elton_john/candle_in_the_wind_tab.htm

“Sing” Travis?=> Aby

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1f2M5G9KG8
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/elton-john/20090/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/t/travis/sing_crd.htm

“Lost” Anouk??=> Marjan, Aby

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn_CjkNtl6s
Lyrics: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/a/anouk/lost_crd.htm
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/a/anouk/lost_tab.htm

“Anyone but you” Juno=> Marjan, Wiola, Group

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBDbUVXXp-U
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/michael-cera-and-ellen-page/1175285/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/m/misc_soundtrack/juno_-_anyone_else_but_you_crd.htm

“My wonder moon” Hands on approach=> Sara, Ewa

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1cQB1bxHsI
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/hands-on-approach/17392/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/h/hands_on_approach/my_wonder_moon_crd.htm

“Dunas”, GNR=> Sara, Helen

To get inspired:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMcAAxhTVxw
Lyrics: http://letras.terra.com.br/gnr-musicas/78374/
Chords: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/g/gnr_dunas/dunas_crd.htm

OK, so here goes a summary of yesterday's lesson (courtesy of Kamran)

1- In order to allow people a small performance experience, we'll do a pre-vacation final concert: Friday, 1st of July, at Talia. Everyone will play a few songs, in small ensembles, for an audience of friends and general public.
There will also be very special guests. Everything followed by a unique dinner, courtesy of Nicola and Michelle;

2- Final song from the movie "Juno" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBDbUVXXp-U); to be played using the right hand thumb only or other combinations of right hand fingers;

3- Knocking on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan) - Playing only the chord basses;

4- Barrés: how to practice and study barré technique; F Major and Fm chords;

5- Right hand finger-picking exercise -> move fingers i-m-a only + thumb resting on a string;

6- Task: Bring two songs for next lesson that you want and can play; bring printed tablatures, lyrics, links, etc.

7 - KEEP IT SIMPLE!