Declan Gaughan Diary Feb 2008

Every year our sponsors 'Marshall' give a scholarship to one lucky student. This years winner Declan Gaughan, is from Ireland and will be updating you with his diary every month. Here is his first entry from Februaury 2008.

We are nowin the 4th week of the 2nd term. The first term flew by and I really enjoyedit. My knowledge of music theory, the Fretboard and scaleshas greatly improved and I feel confident playing in our LPW's (Live PerformanceWorkshop) and RSS (Rhythm Section Skills) classes. We had a lot of work tocover in term 1 and it felt great to have a few weeks back at home in Frosses,at Christmas to digest all that we had learned. I had one gig in Ireland over Christmas with the cover bandI’m in 'Aurora' and it was great to play and have a few drinks withfriends I hadn’t seen for a while.

Our exams took place in week ten. We had aural and theory exams on day one. They went well and I felt confident going into day two. Our hardest examswere Fretboard and sight reading. In Fretboard we were questioned on major andminor scales, the caged system and arpeggios. In sight reading we had toplay a few bars of rhythm, then a few bars of notes, then both at the sametime. In RSS we got to chose a song from the previous weeks and play it in astudio based environment. We had only one take which increased thepressure. Overall I think the exams went well!

This term we are focusing more on funk and reggae which I think is brilliant. Someof the songs we are learning this term are 'Master Blaster' by Stevie Wonder,'Sex Machine' by James Brown and 'Stir It Up' by Bob Marley. In theory we havestarted studying the modes. There are seven modes that can be derived from themajor scale and we are being taught how to use each one in the right context.

Carl Orr recently visited the Guitar-X facilities for a master class. Carl hasplayed with artists such as Billy Cobham, Nathan Haines and Dale Barlow. He hasalso released 6 albums in total, his latest cd being 'Deep Down' is on sale onhis website, www.Carlorr.com. Carl played tracks from his own albums and he wasjoined by Darryn Farrugia (head of drums) on drums and Andrew McKinney (head ofbass) on bass. He talked of developing our own sound and he demonstratedimprovising on one string etc… to get out of playing licks. Carl also encouragedus to transcribe music to develop our ears and to develop our phrasing. It wasan interesting master class and he gave us good advice on manytopics. 

We had our 3rd studio session last week too. This time we recorded 'Sex Machine'by James Brown. We recorded the song for the first few hours then we got torecord our own ideas over a backing track. We got to use different effects likedelay and chorus to add a bit of taste. The track came out well and it was goodcraic. 

I’m looking forward to the rest of this term at Guitar-X! ;-)