Hey, how you doing? Justin here.
Today we're gonna talk about what you need to do to pass JustinGuitar Grade 1.
I've got a list here, it'll be typed out over on the website,
The reason I'm telling you about it now,
is because you wanna use this information to inform what you're going to practice
for the next few weeks. So these are your goals.
You wanna think about what you need to do to achieve these goals,
and then practice those things.
Okay, so the first thing on the list,
be able to tune your guitar with a tuner.
Now, if you've been playing this long,
I'm hopeful that you've got the tuning your guitar thing figured out.
That's really important.
You can use a tuner, you don't have to do the 5th fret method
or anything like that. Just be able to use a tuner to get your guitar in tune.
But it's really important that you can do that on your own.
You need to have memorized the 8 essential beginners chords.
So A, D and E, A minor, D minor and E minor, and C and G.
Those 8 chords you need to play from memory, in any order.
Straight away, not "Oh C, was that..which one?"
No. You need to be able to say the name of the chord and just play it.
Straight away. You should be pretty much there by now, I would hope.
You should...I can't imagine many of you are gonna struggle with that, but
it's on the list. Make sure you know all of the chords from memory,
without any little hints or chord charts around you.
You need to be able to play all 8 of those chords, perfectly, more often than not.
More than 50% of the time, when you play the chord, all of the notes ring out,
and you're muting any strings that need to be muted,
and most of the notes are coming out, most of the time.
Okay? So at Grade 1, I'm not expecting all the chords to sound as amazing
as if you've been playing guitar for 30 years. Okay?
I just want the chords to be sounding good most of the time.
It's really hard for me to define it any closer than that,
Okay? Because ideally I'd like to hear you and go,
"Hey, you need to get that buzzing sorted out".
Ideally, you don't wanna have notes in the chords buzzing,
you don't want notes muted. You wanna have notes ringing out nearly all of the time.
At least 50% of the time. Okay?
Ideally, all of the chords perfectly all the time.
But, for some of you, that'll be a bit of a struggle,
so that's why i'm setting it at more often than not.
So more than 50% of the time, when you play a chord,
all of the notes in the chord sound good.
Okay? No buzzy notes, no missed notes, no muted stuff.
And you've, of course, you've memorized the chords, so you know how to play them.
1 minute changes. All the chords, over 30 changes in a minute.
That's 2 seconds on each chord change, which is a lot.
Okay? 30, counting every chord change.
Okay? So each time you change chords, you're counting.
30 chord movements in 1 minute,
on any pairing of chords, of the ones that's you've learned so far.
I've given you suggested ones, and ones that are more important than others,
and I've suggested you pick the ones that are in the songs.
It's possible if somebody picked 2 that you weren't familiar with,
that weren't in any of the songs you looked at,
you might find that a bit of a struggle.
So, again, we're being a little bit forgiving here.
It's self-assessment, so it's up to you.
But I'd be aiming for any of the chord changes,
you should be able to do with 30 changes in a minute,
using the 1 minute changes countdown thing.
Next thing on the list is strumming,
and I want you to be able to play the 'old faithful' strumming pattern,
consistently at 80 beats per minute.
So put a metronome at 80 beats per min and play along with the metronome,
stay with the metronome, and be able to stay on that strumming pattern,
almost all the time.
Now, of course, we've talked a bit about adding variations
and it's okay to change the strumming pattern, if the hand keeps moving.
As long as you're keeping that hand consistent,
if you put in an extra strum here or there...doesn't matter.
But you need to keep the hand consistent and the pattern reasonably consistent,
enough that you can apply it to a song and be thinking about
chord changes, or thinking about singing,
and the strumming hand is fairly consistent, fairly automated.
It's the automated bit really that I'm looking for,
but that's hard for me to test, or for you to self-assess.
It's easy if I'm sitting next to someone, cos I just
get them playing, start talking to them, and see if their hand stops.
That's a really good tester for yourself. As the hand continues to go,
and then distract yourself, look at or think about something else,
and see if the strumming pattern can continue,
without you having to give it a 100% of your attention.
You need to memorize 5 easy songs.
We already talked about finding songs that have got
very simple chord progressions. I want 5 songs, that you know from memory,
that you can play at a party. Anytime somebody says,
"Hey man, oh you play guitar, play me a song!".
You go, "Huh, I got 5 songs that I can choose from! Which one would you like?".
Okay? You need to memorize 5 songs that you can play.
Again, I recommend ones with simple, repetitive chord progressions,
that are the same all of the way through.
If you remember the chord progression, you got the whole song.
You don't have to worry about learning a different chord progression
for the bridge or something like that.
I would like you to have played a song in front of someone.
If there's no one around that you can play, you need to record yourself
playing a song and pop it up on YouTube.
Just use your phone, whatever,
It's about you getting that experience of actually performing a song for someone.
Could be a partner, friend, could be at a party, at a barbecue.
It could be with a phone and putting it up on YouTube,
and asking someone to watch it.
The experience of doing that will teach you a whole lot of stuff.
Probably make you feel a little nervous.
You'll deal with a whole heap of different physical experiences in doing that,
and it'll expose any weaknesses, any problems,
particularly if you watch it back, if you video yourself.
"Oh yeah, my strumming was a bit rough there, fluffed that up pretty bad.
I need to work on that".
So, it might expose some things that you could use that as a little test as you go.
Recording yourself is a great way of checking up
that all of these things are going pretty well.
Okay?
I would recommend...you don't have to,
but I'd recommend that you've done Ear Training Grade 1,
and Music Theory Grade 1, as well.
Now you don't have to. These are optional extras.
Okay? A lot of people don't like doing it. I'll be straight with you.
When I used to have ear training as part of the course,
lot of people skipped over it, and didn't do it anyway.
Now I've changed it up. I've tried to make it a bit more focused,
little bit more possible to do later and just go straight through it if you want.
So you could leave it out, but I'd recommend
that you at least go and have a look at Ear Training.
Just, again, Grade 1 Ear Training and Grade 1 Music Theory.
Grade 1 Music Theory, we've kind of mostly covered in this course anyway,
but there's extra bits in there that you can check out,
in the Practical Music Theory Course. Grade 1 and 2 are still free.
Go and check them out and have a look,
and if you're enjoying the theory progress, you can pay
and do the rest of my course online, as well.
So, that's it. That's all you need to do to pass.
Maybe one day I'll have an assessor,
and have a way testing or getting people to do videos on YouTube
of doing all of those things. But for right now, it's self-assessment.
You don't wanna be brutal with yourself. You want to be forgiving,
and kind to yourself, cos remember this is a fun journey.
The whole idea of having a test, a list of things you wanna do,
is just so you can watch yourself progress.
It's more about that. It's about the feeling of achievement, going,
"I've done this! I finished Grade 1. I can play all these songs.
I can do these chords. I know these strumming patterns. Yeah! Well done me!"
That's much more what it's about.
So, be kind to yourself when you're thinking about...
if you sit down to test yourself, be kind about it.
Don't be horrible to yourself, but at the same time be realistic and go,
"Yeah, man that's not good enough. I need to work on that a bit more,
before I pass myself on this".
Okay? So next we're gonna talk a bit more about practice,
and the things that you might wanna do, that'll help you get through,
and pass all of those things, so you can pass out on Grade 1.