Letter War

My youngest is having some trouble deciphering letter case and with recognizing a couple letters.  So, how to make learning letters fun?

I came up with Letter War.  This is like the standard card game of War but instead of a deck of playing cards you print out a deck with upper and lower case letters on the cards.  Now play the game with the letter deck and score like this:

• Uppercase beat lowercase letters.
• The ranking from lowest to highest is: a..z,A..Z
• If the same lower and upper case letter is played then it is war.  This is less common in this deck of course.

Pretty simple I think.  Let's look at some examples:

• E and t are played: A wins
• A and a are played: War
• J and M are played: M wins
• c and v are played: c wins

Improvising with Backing Tracks

When practicing improvising it can be helpful to have something to play with.  A practice partner is great but if you don't want to drive them crazy as you work out licks a backing track is probably better.

Thankfully we have the internet.  Head over to YouTube and do a search for "backing track" to find a long list of tracks to practice with.

Even better, narrow down your search like I did recently with "blues backing track in d major".  I found this one I liked: Blues Backing Track in D Major

Another a little more soulful I am using slide with is: Slow Soulful Blues Guitar Track in D  For this track I am especially trying to work on pauses in the improvisation.  As well, I am trying to repeat licks to come up with something that is interesting to listen to.

For a much better example of improvisation and to watch a more detailed discussion of improvising check out Justin Guitar's: Major Scale Pattern 1: Basic Improvisation lesson.  This gave me a lot of insight on how to get started.

Guitar Improvisation

I consider myself still a beginner guitarist.  As such, I find it amazing when I listen to other guitarists who can just come up with licks on the fly.  I have a friend, Carlos, who can play amazing finger picking style classical guitar.

Carlos can turn any song into something beautiful and melodic.  One day, Carlos played some for me and I asked him what he was doing.  What could I study to learn that?

His answer, I don't know.

He does not know?  How can one not know?

He explained he just knows the guitar so well, the position of all the notes.  The notes to make up chords, scales, etc that be can just ad-lib a song.

Heck, how do I do that?

Another friend, James, my practice partner is good at scales and improvising with those scales.  I have done scales practice as well, but I still had not really gotten improvisation.

An aside for a moment.  Recently, I have mostly been playing slide on my acoustic guitar.  I have it tuned to Open D which means the guitar notes are different from standard tuning.

For a refresher:

• Standard Tuning: E-A-D-G-B-E, from 6th to 1st strings
• Open D Tuning: D-A-D-F#-A-D, from 6th to 1st strings

For more tuning info, see Guitar Tuning.

So, back to improvisation.  When improvising you generally want to stay within a scale to keep it sounding good.  So, let's look at what we can do with Open D.  The D Major scale is D - E - F# - G - A - B - C# - D

Taking our D Major scale we can start to experiment with improvisation.  First though, to really walk around the guitar neck we will need to know the notes on the frets.  Here is a rough sketch I made for Open D.  I do this when I am learning a tuning so that I can reference the notes and to try and help me drive the notes into me head.

So, I started with this and began improvising on a single string (1st string) while picking chords.  This sounded not bad.  Here's a rough track I did while improvising.




I am pretty happy with it but I want to explore more and see where I can take that first attempt.

Let me know what you think.

Are you reading to your kids? No I mean, really reading to your kids to foster Creative Writing skills?

I have been informed by my boys teachers that they need to either be read too (my youngest) or be more creative thinkers (both).  Like what?  They have vivid imaginations and we read to them every night (seldom does a day go by that we do not read 3-10 books with them).

So, what is up?

We read to them but we are not always analyzing the book and breaking it down.  For my youngest, this means asking him to explain:

1. What happened in the beginning of the story?  Who is the story about?  What is the location and situation?
2. What happened in the middle?  What as the problem that occurs to the characters?  How did you think they might solve this?  (Ask that last one in a new book only part way through when the problem is presented and watch their imagination run wild, you hope.)
3. What happened in the end?  Was that good for the characters?  What would you do?

So, ok, we are reading but are we reading and analyzing the books in depth?  I would have to say no.  So that is something that has been added to our routine.  The number of books has gone down but the quality of our reading will go up I hope.

For my older son, he has to cover the same issues but we need to ask more open ended questions so that he can come up with creative answers to them.  We have a couple books that ask such questions at the end and I will lean on those a bit.

So far that has gone well.  Only tired that a little bit so far.  What can I say, we are more math oriented parents.  Math comes easier to us and hence the creative writing/thinking is something I am struggling with a bit.

I'll post more as I find other things that work with this area.

Mmmm...Cereal: Or Teaching Fractions the Edible Way

Fractions, addition and subtraction are some math topics I am working on with my youngest (Kindergarten).  Fractions in kindergarten, ok, I am sure we did that when I was in Kindergarten.  What can I remember.

So, hmm, how to teach this and make it fun.

Chex style (Gluten free in this house) cereal to the rescue.  Those little guys are great.  Nice little squares to make 4x4 for Whole, 1/2, 1/4 fractions.  2x4 for Whole, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 fractions.

We worked on fractions and then moved into addition and subtraction.  Subtraction he felt was the best since we got to eat the cereal ;-)

So, that worked out well for me.  He was engaged, was a little slow on some of the subtraction and addition at first but he got into it and was answering problems with gusto by the time we finished.

We did homework later in the day when his older brother got home.  After our cereal math earlier in the day I was wondering if he would be up for more homework.  Was he up for it?  He did all and more.

I have found that my being super engaged with the boys, now that I am not thinking about work, is helping ramp up their enjoyment of learning.  I will try to continue to harness that and make learning fun enough they don't realize they are learning.

Tonight we rewarded the boys, since they concentrated on their homework and got it done so quickly, and well.  We had an hour before bedtime, something unheard of in this house before I went off.  Our oldest asked for a game, Ticket to Ride, which we all decided would be a good reward.

The youngest worked with his Mom as a team.  He was in charge of sorting the cards, counting out train car cards, counting out train cars to place on the board, and building stick figures with his train cars (he takes after me, there).  We played a game in just under an hour.

The boys came up with some fun rules.  The youngest player gets to add his age to his score (he did not need it though, his Mom and he beat us already).  They also enjoyed the idea of subtracting the oldest players age from their score.  That would be me.  They had a grand time decreasing my score so that I came in last ;-)

So, all in all, a Math filled day.

Fundraising for Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center

I hate fundraising and I usually do it by just donating the minimum for events myself.  But hey, it can never hurt to ask.

So, for Stinky Spoke I am raising funds for Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center.  From their page:

Little Bit's mission is to improve the lives, bodies, and spirits of children and adults with disabilities through equine-assisted therapies, and to be an inspiration and educational resource to the therapeutic riding profession both regionally and nationally.

If you are in America and would like to donate (and get a tax receipt) to help people with disabilities take advantage of equine-assisted therapies then please donate at my fundraising page: https://fundraising.active.com/fundraiser/MarkThistle

Thanks,

MT

Guitar Practice FAQ

I've had a few friends ask about what I do for guitar practice.  Here my Guitar Practice FAQ.

• What websites do you use?

• Justin Guitar: The main source for self taught training I am using.
• Get Instinct: An innovative guitar lesson site that uses javascript to deliver a play along/scoring lesson.  Well worth a try.  Also handy for looking up and learning riffs.  Lots of fun can be had in the riff library.
• Justin Guitar Youtube Channel: I just subscribe and get regular updates in my email when Justin posts new vids.
• Ultimate Guitar Tabs: Well not sure I need to mention it but hey, beginners like tabs.
• Six String Recess: New but great info and tips.

• What do you practice?

• Chords
• Rhythm guitar: Strumming patterns
• Finger strength exercises: Hammer-Ons and Flick/Pull-Offs.
• Aerobics: Riff and techniques like finger picking, string bending, vibrato, etc.
• Scales
• Timing: Keeping a beat, keeping rhythm, and playing at different speeds.
• Doodling: Where I just play with chords and try applying my practice to come up with original songs.
• Songs: Songs last?  Yes, I used to practice songs more often earlier on but now I practice them less as I spend more time working on technique and doodling.

• How do you practice?
• Practice Partner
• Once a week (we miss a few) I practice with a friend.  We do some warmups like aerobics and then play songs.  We play for about 2 hours.  The partner really helps keep you motivated, allows you to practice playing with another musician, and allows you both to introduce new techniques you are learning and push each other to do better.
• I highly recommend finding a friend to play with.
• Solo Practice
• The majority of my time is spent practicing by myself.  This is where recording yourself becomes useful so you can listen back to how you are doing.

• What books do you use?

• Justinguitar.com Beginner's Course by Justin Sandercoe 
  
• Justinguitar.com Beginner's Songbook by Justin Sandercoe 
  
• Guitar Aerobics by Troy Nelson 
  

• How often do you practice?

• I try to practice daily but usually it works out to about every other day.
• Regular practice is huge to helping you improve.  You really get out of anything what you put in and that goes for guitar as well.

• For how long?
• I aim to practice for 15 minutes if I have "no time".  This lets me get in at least a little practice.  Normally this turns into about 45 mins or more.  When I am doodling or practicing songs I don't track that time and it can be hours.

• What software do you use?
• GarageBand for Mac  
• Recording your playing and then listening back is a humbling experience.  Trying to get a piece perfect the entire way through is difficult and listening to yourself will help you pick up areas to improve.  
• Listening to yourself play solo will let you hear if you are adding dynamics effectively to make your playing stand out.
• Rocksmith
• I use the Xbox 360 edition.  This is worth it for the USB guitar cable which I also use for recording with GarageBand on my Mac.  
• The game is fun and it really has helped me learn neck positioning so that I can move around the neck of the guitar faster and land frets more consistently.
• The scales practice is also out of this world for speeding up your playing.  It is a great finger workout.
• Soundcloud
• I am just getting into this and use it with my practice partner to share stuff we are working on privately.
• This is very handy for sharing music with friends of practice partners.