Carlin+12

My name is Carlin and I am in grade 9. I have had really no music experience, just the mandatory classes in middle school. There I played guitar, xylophone and African drums. I also played the recorder in grade 4 with the rest of my class. I am hoping that by being in Guitar 11 I will learn the basics of guitar and hopefully be able to play some songs pretty well. Right now, I know maybe four or five chords really well which I learned last year in music class. So far we have been introduced to two songs, 'Something in the Air' and 'Spanish Fandango.' I'd like to be able to play without looking at the chords all the time and memorizing a lot of them. I have wanted for a long time to be able to play guitar and now I finally get the chance to learn. I am looking forward to the rest of the term and learning lots of new songs and chords.



The song I chose to perform this week is 'You Belong With Me' by Taylor Swift. The chords in the song are D, Em, G, and A. Around the third or fourth time I could play it without looking at the chords because it was already pretty much in my head. It also helped that I know all the words to the song, which helped me stay strumming at the right time. I am also performing the 'Spanish Fandango' which is a finger picking song that is really easy. Here is the link to the lyrics and chords for 'You Belong With Me.'



This week the song I have chosen to work on is 'Baby Girl' by Sugarland. The chords are C, G, F, Am, and Dm. This song adds four more new chords from the 'You Belong With Me' which are C, Am, F, and Dm. G was in the previous song as well as this one. I am excited to work on this song because I really like the band Sugarland and I know all the words to this song. Here is the link to the lyrics and chords for 'Baby Girl.'



Last Friday Victoria and I performed 'Baby Girl' to the class. Unfortunately our guitars were out of tune so it didn't sound great, but I thought our chords changes were pretty good. This week we're going to play 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster The People. The chords in the song are Em, A, G and D. I am excited to start learning this song. I think the strumming pattern will be a bit hard because it is up-down, up-down which is different from how we played 'You Belong With Me' and 'Baby Girl.' Here is the link to the lyrics and chords for 'Pumped Up Kicks.'



The week before spring break Victoria and I performed 'Pumped Up Kicks' and I think it went really well. Over spring break Victoria and I filmed us playing 'Mine' and 'Baby Girl' for the two music videos we will be making for marks. So far all we've done is film but we will be putting it into a video soon. It was lots of fun and we plan to do another one! We played 'Mine' in the forest in front of a tree and we played 'Baby Girl' at the park in different locations. This week the song we will be performing is 'I'm Yours' by Jason Mraz. The chords in this song are G, D, Em, and C. Victoria and I will be alternating strumming patterns. One of us will do just down strums and the other will do down-down-up-up-down. Here is the link to the lyrics and chords for 'I'm Yours.'Here is also a tutorial for the song by Micah Beverly.



On Friday Victoria and I performed 'I'm Yours' in front of the class. At the last minute we had to join up with two other students and we'd never practiced with them before, so it was a challenge to sound the same as each other since we both had different strumming patterns. However I think I did well on the intro to the song. This week we are going to play 'Mean' by Taylor Swift. The chords in the song are B minor, D, A and G which includes a bar chord. I am looking forward to learning this song because I really like Taylor Swift and I love this song. Here is the link to the chords and lyrics for 'Mean.'



This week the song I will be working on is 'Grenade' by Bruno Mars. I like this song so I am excited to start working on it. The chords are Dm, Am, B flat, C and F. Here is the link to the chords and lyrics.



This week I am continuing to work on 'Grenade' by Bruno Mars. I think over the past week I have become pretty good at it. We will be performing on Friday so until then I am going to keep working on it.

So far for the song I am writing I only have a few lines done. We are supposed to finish our songs by Wednesday and perform them on Friday but I still have to finish. I think song writing is really hard because there are already so many songs already out there that it is difficult to come up with new sequences of words. However I do have the intro and chorus of the song on the guitar. The chords I am using are D, Em, G and A. I start off with finger picking and then go into up-down, up-down strumming. I am writing this song and will be performing with Victoria.

On Friday Victoria and I performed the song we wrote. I think it went pretty well, although we didn't sing. This week Victoria and I will be performing 'Mean' by Taylor Swift because we never got to perform it a few weeks ago. It has A, D, G, and Bm chords in it. The chords and lyrics are higher up on this page.

On Friday Victoria and I performed 'Mean' by Taylor Swift and 'Upside Down' by Jack Johnson. It went pretty well and we sang both of the songs. I did not want to sing in the beginning but it wasn't that bad once we had started. Victoria and I also finished writing the lyrics for our song that we were supposed to hand in a few weeks ago. But we're done now!



Last week I was in a group with Rachelle, Amelia, Chantelle and Victoria and we performed 'Blackout' by Breathe Carolina. We played okay and we all sang. The chords were Am, G, C, Dm, and F. This week I'm in the same group and we are practicing 'Stand By Me' by Ben E. King. It is a finger picking song and the chords are G, C, D and Em. I think I know the finger picking pattern pretty well so I think we will do good on Friday when we perform.



It's our last week of guitar! So sad! The song we are going to do this week is 'Stand By Me' by Ben E. King. We didn't get to perform last week because most of our group was missing and we didn't have a chance to practice. We are going to make it up this week. The other song we are going to do is 'The Way I Am' by Ingrid Michaelson. Here are the chords and lyrics to the song.