Guitar lesson 2

Holy crap today has been a long day already. Im soooo tired even as I write this. Anyway. I had my second classical guitar lesson today. My teacher copied some scales and little simple pieces for me to practice. Ill finlly be really working on my music reading skills, which seems like its gonna be fun. He saw me work through a few measures in like less than a minute, so he said he thinks ill be able to catch on quickly. He also told me ive developed a good sense of the instrument. I feel like i have as well. My right hand technique was a bit off. What im supposed to do is pluck with my top knuckle as opposed to the bottom knuckle. Its like walking with your leg instead of your knee. Also, with my left hand, hes been helping me keep my pinky especially curved. Ive been having trouble with that. It tends to straighten up a bit. He noticed when i try to curve it, I would bend my wrist, but after he corrected me, i realized something. My fretting hand/wrist is supposed to be completely straight. Then if i need to keep my hand so curved and move up to higher strings, I move my thumb/whole wrist up the back of the neck of the guitar. So pretty much i need to work on keeping my hand aligned at all times. One other thing he corrected me on, was that my thumb is supposed to be between my index and middle finger at all times, whenever I move it. It feels a bit better. I always thought it should be behing the middle finger. Plus a lot of the times it would lag behind or get ahead of my fingers. So aside from that, I need to re-work my right hand technique as well, which shouldnt be too hard. Im gonna be practicing a lot this week on reading music, and memorizing key signatures. My music theory class teaches me to memorize the note names of the staff for a specified clef, but not the ledger lines above or below it, and for guitar i need to work on memorizing them below it. So thats a bit extra work on my part, but its all good. The open E string (6th string) is the space right beneath the third ledger line going down from the staff.

I have jazz lessons this friday. ive memorized most of the chords, still need to do a few more though. It seems like everything is coming together, with learning key sigs, the notes of the staff, and on the guitar, and starting out with basic music reading. I think after a few short easy pieces, I will know the notes of the staff and key signatures well enough to move quickly onto more advanced pieces of music. Im not trying tp aim so high, it just seems reasonable.