Guitar Sus4
My first class at Old Town School of Folk Music was a success!
Guitar 4 (aka “Guitar sus 4”) with Shelley Miller was a class filled with equal parts challenging music and funny shenanigans.
“I’m tired of runnin’ ‘round
Lookin’ for answers to questions that I already know
I could build me a castle of memories
Just to have somewhere to go”
My favorite song that we worked on was a finger picking song called “Clay Pigeons”, originally written by Blaze Foley. We studied the version by John Prine; here’s a live performance of John Prine’s version that I really enjoy.
“What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing
And what do we think we might see?”
-Kermit (Rainbow Connection)
The most difficult song was surprisingly also one of my all-time favorite songs: Rainbow Connection, from The Muppet Movie (1979). The first part of the song is approachable, but the key change involves lots of barre chords, and I haven’t gotten quite proficient enough at those yet, so I took the easy way out and just moved my capo up for the key change… heh! I’ll have to keep practicing. You might already be familiar with the version sung by Kermit in The Muppet Movie, but have you heard this one by Weezer and Hayley Williams? It’s my favorite!
The students in this class were such a fun and friendly group! We had a great time getting creative with our final showcase, where we performed a mashup between “Nameless Faceless” by Courtney Barnett and “Maybe Sparrow” by Neko Case. Notable shenanigans included some creative costumes that were maybe only very tangentially related to the music, plus some choreography and bird noises to add to the ambiance. Someone kindly filmed and posted a video of our performance, and here it is! Enjoy :)
