Start your practice with some warm ups:

Spanish Romance

Coldplay - In My Place

The Black Keys - Lonely Boy

Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud

AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long

Level one guitar student expectations

Technique

Students in their third year of itinerant guitar tuition will be developing from synchronised fretting and string sounding (pluck/strummed/picked) toward hand interdependence with increasingly independent finger control in both hands. The fretting hand uses a number of fingers, referred to as PIMA:

Pulgar (thumb)

Indice (index finger)

Medio (middle)

Anular (ring),

Chico (pinkie or little finger).

Generally the right and left hands will coordinate fretting with the melodic or chord patterns. Shifts in the fretting hand may include some changes in hand positions with movement toward barre chords or riff interspersion. Melodic, harmony or riff lines will be relatively stepwise; classical finger picking and arpeggiations are achievable [using PIMA fingers] and strumming relatively motoric/consistent.

It is good practice for some pieces to be made more accessible to the performer’s range/tessitura/ keys/techniques. For example, transposing to a more comfortable key, applying a reduced range to suit their tessitura, omit or simplify passages.

Correct posture and hand position will aid students in creating effective tone and fluency. Generally electric guitarists stand, acoustic guitarists sit. Standing is acceptable if comfortable and style appropriate. Often Achievement level performers opt exclusively to perform sitting down. Achievement level performances can often look/feel/sound somewhat like unprepared raw talent. Further, at Achievement level there will be evidently accessible technique that meets the fingering demands of the piece, which ideally will contain some variety of shapes/positions with appropriate expressivity.

Performances at Level 1 will demonstrate the carriage of timbral consonance through stable technique. Knowledge of fingering and effective selection of string and fret positionings and timbral range in the fretboard playing will vary with experience.

Repertoire

Ideally, clean musical ideas/legato lines will be demonstrated; articulation such as staccato may also be appropriate and this should be cleanly articulated and controlled. If appropriate, accents, slurs and phrasing will further be exhibited. For Merit and Excellence, guitarists will be able to demonstrate independence between hands. For example, they will perform music where the interest, rhythmic or melodic, is shared between hands. Students will also be able to use contrasting dynamics between phrases/musical ideas/sections (e.g. further advanced techniques may include a passage at p contrasting a passage at mf). The ability to demonstrate a range of dynamics, including cresc. and decres. should also be evident.

Students performing at Achievement level will play with general accuracy and evidence of adequate preparation. The performance will contain errors (the piece’s recognisability is impacted by some of hesitation, fumble, slip or stop).

Merit level students will demonstrate secure technical skills, a mostly accurate performance, evidence of effective preparation and an awareness of phrase shape, dynamics, rhythm and feel.

To gain Excellence, guitarists will display technical assurance, fluency, accuracy and show evidence of careful preparation. Further, students meeting excellence criterion will provide a performance of any musical genre/style which pays attention to detail and convinces the listener.

Musicality

As students gain confidence in the technical aspects above, their ability to communicate interpretive understandings appropriate to genre will also increase. Expressivity at Achievement is present and developing in delivery and control; at Merit is controlled effectively enabling communication of sensitivity of the music and composer’s intentions; at Excellence the musicality convincingly demonstrates regularly rehearsed and integrated expressive technical control.