I first started playing the guitar (figure 1) around 4 years ago and I self taught myself utilizing the internet to the best of my ability, where I downloaded tabular music sheets of many difficult songs to play. This helped me with being familiar with the fretboard and also with other techniques whilst playing. Starting to play on the steel string acoustic guitar really prepares you to play on the electric guitar as it essentially makes it easier to play. After 3 years of playing I had decided to take the Trinity exams on guitar and I was immediately put into grade 5. During the CAS Creativity day I practiced for the possible exam coming up where I am supposed to learn 3 songs from the given list, but also to practice improvisation and music listening. This was a lot to learn when I first heard about it, but after further practice and thinking about it, everything is linked together. If you play more, you become more familiar with the fretboard, thus more familiar with the notes, which inherently makes you better with improvisation. As you understand the notes better, the improvisation will flow easily. This CAS Creativity day, I played the first piece that I will play if the exam takes place, which was “are you gonna go my way – Lenny Kravitz.” (figure 2) This piece was a bit of a difficult track to first learn mainly because of the fast tempo of the song, this makes it harder to play when you’re also involving nuances such as bending especially on the 1st fret where the string tension is the most and its painful on your fingers. I also wanted to improve upon my fast strumming that appears in mid section of the piece. After playing today, I felt that I could move onto the next couple of songs as I wanted to learn something new. Practicing the guitar especially, really taught me to be patient because in the early days when I first started to play, I wanted to improve at a very fast rate and I wanted to be good instantly but even after 4 years now, there are somethings that I can still improve on and I still have to practice and be patient to show results.

The learning outcomes connected with playing the guitar aren’t very prevalent as its mainly looking at how you can improve yourself and how you play. LO1 depicts the idea that I understand my strengths and weaknesses and how I can develop that towards personal growth. In this case some of my strengths would be playing the solo sections, but some of my weaknesses would be playing the song to the correct timing. Since I’ve identified my weakness, I know what I can improve on to be better at playing. The last learning outcome is LO2 where I have demonstrated that I am taking challenges and developing new skills in the process. I think that going straight into grade 5 is a challenge in itself as I have to learn music theory but the playing is quite tolerable because I have been self teaching myself for a while now. Taking these challenges not only makes my playing better but also improves my patience and discipline to keep practicing because you can’t be the best in 1 day.