Progress Report – Week 7

This is what is Rockin’ this week:

Last week we began to learn Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen.  This tune opens up a discussion on the difference between straight time and swing time.  Ask your slinger to hip you to this idea.  The intro of this tune introduces the Dsus4 chord.  We had this baby set up in a flash.  We are also using this song to introduce the rhythm quarter note triplets.  This sounds complicated but it is easy to hear when Brian May plays the chorus.  By the way Queens guitar player, Brian May is a doctor of astrophysics.  I guess playing guitar makes you smart, very, very smart.

This week we have finished up learning Crazy Little Thing Called Love by jamming the tag, which is a repeated musical phrase generally found at the end of a song.  We have also spent time tackling Brian May’s solo to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. This includes bends, slides, and multiple position shifts.  It is quite tricky and if they want to give this face melter a shot, it will be important to learn short section of the solo before trying to add it all up.  The solo is by no means necessary to successfully play the tune.  

The BIG Show is coming up fairly quickly.  To best prepare for this it would be a good idea to run through the tunes we have learned this session to prepare for the crowd.  As always, we recommend a weekly Rock routine of 10-20 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week.  This will allow for a noticeable rate of improvement.