Beautiful Silvia ! Seems the old boys back in the day kept changing those minor scales when it did not fit their master plan. Including the old video above I am sure Justin explains it elsewhere as well. Ain’t music theory great ? If it sounds good it is good. If it sounds a bit sus, go monkey around for a bit, find what fits, then rename ! Purists ? Pah !!
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Thanks Rick, Justin lesson was very useful…the only way I have to remember all this stuff is analysing which notes I play on the pieces I’m learning and and see in which kind of minor key they are. I’d better let this kind of theoritical knowledge gradually go along with the practical aspect.
Hello Steve, thanks a lot for listening and your really nice comment on my playing 
It happens to me quite often too, I listen to something and think of something else!
Who knows…now I hear some similarities as well!
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Thanks for listening Toby, it’s a little and very simple arpeggio piece but really when you add some piano/forte dynamics even the simplest 3 notes thing comes to life!
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Wonderfully played, Silvia. Your classical guitar skills are coming along in leaps and bounds.
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A well played piece Sylvia. Played with sensitivity and feeling. Great stuff.
I too heard a bit of Hotel California in there. I think a lot of what we think of as ‘original’ rock/pop/jazz has a basis in the classics. There really is nothing new. It’s all been done before in one form or another.
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AUGUST UPDATE
Classical Guitar
This is how my progress with the Classical Guitar looks like from my friend Rogier’s point of view…again my heartfelt thank you @roger_holland for this beautiful picture and the kind thought 
After having recorded the Sagreras Lesson and the Romance Duet I allowed myself to do my practice routine and just revisit the beginner stuff and my few Repertoire pieces. Using the piano/forte dynamics is one of the most fulfilling thing I’m learning to do…a very simple arpeggio piece where I change only one or two notes every 4 bars, when I play it with p/f it becomes something that really delights my soul! I was happy to find back a few short pieces under my fingers and in my ears as well, the tricky passages still are tricky passages, but nothing that hard and with a bit of further practice they become easier. I also found out some trick for better more accurate practice of my scales and fingerpicking technique: I divided the 5 minutes chunck into 5 × 1minute shorter chunks, I work with the metronome and in that short time I can really aim to do as much perfect as I can: it makes a big difference! And it also helps with my self-confidence and my weak focus!
Practical Music Theory
I’m really making something musical out of those triads…not much of a work of creativity but, I listened, I decided where to play the triads on the neck according to where the song lead my ear, I’m learning to play mini-barrè for the first time…and now there are only a couple of pesky grips where making all the notes ring out clear is a real struggle…but they’re improving with a bit of daily practice! To be mentioned also: now at each new or old song I’m playing I ask myself “What key I’m in?” I found out Greensleeves is an A Melodic Minor key because of that G# to F# notes passage in the melody…
maybe not…it descends from G# to F# while in the A Melodic Minor those # are used only while ascending the scale 
. Generally I’m more attentive of chords progressions and keys.
Strumming
Last but not least! I’ ve practiced my strumming really really a lot and I should be able to record on Tuesday or Wedesnay.
Aspects I’m happy with:
- Changing the chord quite consistently on the and after 2 didn’t require much effort and I can do it quite confidently
- I worked out the main strumming pattern of the song by myself, in the tutorial it was reccomended to just keep the hand moving on all DUDUDUDU; I worked out the variations too… and I can also put some accents!
- AYE…my hand really seems to be keeping on moving properly! Even when there are 3 chords changes in just one bar!
- I learnt the song from memory, it really required effort and time but it was all worth it, because this song is sooo beautiful!
Aspects I’m not happy with:
- My focus sometimes seems so weak…I’ll persist, you know how it goes “went the distance, now I’m not gonna stop…” but
without wanting to complain too much really, I sometimes feel like Rocky working out in Russia 'snow…
sometimes is a 
and sometimes is a … 
raising up to the challenge of our rival 
- That damned little thing called pick!
Now…I have a very colourful collection of picks…throwing it all out of the balcony would make such a joy for the neighbours’ little boy downstairs! 
I’ll record this song with the pick and then I’ll have a “cooling off period” with the pick…and…Fingers Strumming Course I’m coming 
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Hi Silvia, A great read. You are really coming along. Do you find that music theory is helping you? I found that the basic stuff helped me but anything more complicated than that just didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Looking forward to you videos.
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Yes, I think it does. My Nuovo Cinema Paradiso arrangement for example…I had the melody so clear in my mind that I could sing it decently enough…when I found out the notes I thought “wait a minute! This is the C major scale…but there’s an additional G# note …also it can"t be in the key of C because the feeling of it is clearly a minor key feeling…it’s in the key of Am!”
Now that my knowledge is progressing I would say it is in the key of A harmonic minor. But what matters is that I started finding the chords over my hummed melody by strumming them…and it wasn’t difficult because I had to choose only from the chords in the Am key and just follow my ear and chose the chords that sounded good over the melody…Now I’m pretty sure the “real thing” is way more complex than my arrangement but…if it sounds good then it’s good, right? It was very fulfilling and I wouldn’t have ever be able to do it by ear without knowing the key!
Another way Music Theory helps me is knowing how a chord is constructed and I can use this knowledge for my Chord melody arrangements…though I’ll still suck at playing them until I 'll learn to use my fretting hand properly
Now I expect it will help me in songs memorising too as I progress on the Course.
I’m sure I’m forgetting something…Standard Notation and Solfege…those also help me hugely to develop my skills…
I think I’ll find out new shortcuts through Music Theory along the way…
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Good to see making progress Silvia and also good to see you analyse the positives and negatives. But you know that old saying, practice what you can’t do. Time to get picking 
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Silvia, you are continuing to make progress and finding new ways to enjoy the guitar. I was thinking today that learning the guitar is like climbing a mountain. The best path is not alway just charging straight ahead, but sometimes wandering from side to side and finding the best path for you. As you find your way up the mountain the view gets better and better.
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…what I can do is replying to my husband “yes dear, I know we need a consistent pace, or we won’t get there!” Then I always end up getting him mad because I stop at each wild flower on my way to take a picture!
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In fact… I can’t strum with thumb properly yet so I put the picks in the drawer for a long nap and started practicing my fingers strumming 
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Nowt wrong with finger strumming, there’s more opportunity for feel and expression !
Go for it.
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Hi Silvia, my mountain climbing analogy was not based on recent experience. Both my wife and I recently had our 69th birthdays. Our biggest challenge is climbing up the hill walking our two small dogs on the 1 mile (1.6 KM) hike back from the park two times a day. My Apple watch says that it is a 75 foot climb ( 23 M), not exactly “mountain climbing” 
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Monthly Update
CLASSICAL GUITAR
-
Minuet by Bach
There’s no way I can listen to the original piece by Bach on YouTube: the only Minuet I can find is the one by Petzold that was attributed to Bach
Anyway…this was a cheerful fun piece to practice, once more I wondered To sight read or not to sight read?…and once more I found it more purposeful for me to try to actively listen to the Major Scale going up and down and internalise it. This made me think that it will be beneficial to me to restart the Ear Training Course (which by the way I never completed 
) and sing the intervals. Tomorrow I’ll write down my October schedule…just 5 minutes a day of it will be very helpful! Sometimes it’s a bit sloppy and notes don’t ring out clear, but the video is only to record progress and some progress has been made. -
Kean O’Hara by Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738)
Adding the root note of the chord on beat 1 was an extra challenge for ambitious students, but while I don’t consider myself ambitious I could foresee it would be a very good way to improve my fretting hand and infact it proved to be just what I needed! Ideally I want to aim to hold down the bass note for the lenght of the bar and give a good confident stroke with thumb so that the root note rings out for the all 3/4: too much for me at this point. I’m happy with my fretting hand though, a lot of work still needs to be done …but a lot of work has been done too to reach this point! And yes, I’m playing it from memory!
THEORY
My mini barre to play the triads on the 3 thinnest strings improved and overall the changes all over the fretboard are quite smooth, even if sometimes some note doesn’t ring clear. I hope to record this month and move on the Course.
STRUMMING
I did good practice on thumb strumming and I found out a song I can apply and practice it…much more than that with this wonderful song I’ll tell you later on about it! In October I’ll move on to practice other techniques from the Fingers Strumming Course as there are 2 other songs I really want to learn.
A new adventure into The Steady Thumb Blues is waiting for me tomorrow 
now I’m really curious to see if I’ve been too much optimistic in thinking it wouldn’t be too difficult to learn 
let’s see what happens 
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Silvia
Very good playing again: perhaps slightly better on the Bach than the O’Carolan where the different note lengths are possibly skewing the timing a little. As ever I enjoy seeing and hearing your enjoyment when you play.
Brian
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Lovely update and progress recording, Silvia. I know I always say it but I get happy just looking at how full of joy you are when you play.
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You’re right Brian, timing is not bad overall but it’s sometimes innacurate, especially on the 2/4 notes, there I’m rushing and play the next note too early; the triplets seem quite in time. Thanks for listening and your positive feedback!
@DavidP …sometimes when something is challenging and I’m not smiling I think “oh…but I have to smile at least a little bit or David will be disappointed!” And that helps really! Thank you David
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