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Greg Hasted
Past Notes
April 28th, 2026
We went through Grandpa Was a Carpenter, Catch the Wind, You Ain't Goin Nowhere, etc. going over the melodies we had talked about last week, and writing out more. We fined tuned the intro to the Donovan song too, and lowered the capo (in the key of C) to I think the first fret (if I'm remembering correctly).
We also talked briefly about Four Strong Winds, and he played and sang through it for me.
Lastly, we looked at how to find keys that are better suited to the voice, moving one to the key of D (I forget which one). YOu try to find a note that is your top comfortable note (not a key, but a single note), and which number that note would be in the key you're in.
April 21st, 2026
We worked through the melodies for last week's two songs again, this time kind of simplifying, and taking the numbers right out of it.
I wrote it out as [chord] [note note note] [chord] etc. to make it really doable, and we made a video.
Then we looked at a few other songs that Greg had in his book, and talked about finding the first note to start on... sometimes it's not the note of the chord name, but one of the other notes in the triad which you begin on.
We also talked about working more on Catch the Wind by Donavan next week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuc9_46wf7I
April 14th, 2026
Greg worked on the C and G scales last week.
Today we reviewed the minors, starting on 6 and going up to 6... these are the natural minors.
We also talked about harmonic minors, in which a leading tone is added right before 6... a sharp 5.
After that we talked about melody solos on open chords and tried it for two songs: Grandpa Was a Carpenter and one by Bob Dylan.
April 7th, 2026
Greg wants to get to the point where he can play at open mics, and wants to understand music and the neck better.
He knows all of the open chords, and is fairly comfortable with bar chords, but wants to fill in the missing pieces.
We talked about the order of major and minor chords, how they're related to the scale, (major minor minor major major minor diminished).
I suggested he learn the open G scale for picking out melodies with chords and possibly the open C scale.
I also suggested he work on using his thumb to find the bass notes and do a 1-5 pattern with the thumb instead of the first finger the way he's played thus far.