About Our Levels

Photo: Nausheen Ishtiaq

At every level of Community Guitar class we are working on three things:

• Technique: what your hands can do.
• Theory: what your head knows about what your hands are up to.
• Creative Musicianship: what your head and hands can create together under their own guidance.

Each level is defined by the mix of these three elements. In general the mix is tilted more toward technique and theory at Level 1 and way over toward creative musicianship at Level 3. At Level 2 the three balls you're juggling are roughly the same size. Below you'll find the level-by-level breakdown in a little more detail.

Level 1

• Technique: at this level we put a lot of emphasis on helping students develop basic technical skills. To participate, a student should already be familiar with a number of common chords and be able to move between them with some ease, so a Level 1 class is not suitable for total beginners. L1 arrangements tend to use fairly common chords in open position and a variety of rhythmic styles requiring the use of a pick (sometimes in combination with fingers). As lead players, students are developing the ability to play melodies with alternate picking, including eighth note phrases with a moderate amount of syncopation at moderate tempos.
• Theory: covers basic music theory applied to the first few frets, including the musical alphabet and note names, the structure and spelling of common chords, the major keys of C, G, D, A and E, the major scale and scale degrees, and chord degrees (chords built on scale degrees) in a progression.
• Creative Musicianship: at level 1, we don't put a lot of emphasis on this, except to encourage students to work up some version of the song—whether our arrangement or their own— with as little reliance on written music as possible.

Level 2

• Technique: in both the rhythm and lead departments we allow for faster tempos, more syncopation, and longer stretches of eighth notes at this level. Solos require a strong foundation in alternate picking. Both primary and secondary rhythm parts include more subtlety and syncopation.
• Theory: our focus at this level is to take the basic concepts of music theory that are covered at Level 1 and apply them all over the fingerboard, primarily with reference to the CAGED system. New theoretical concepts are introduced as required by the songs themselves.
• Creative Musicianship: Level 2 students are encouraged to begin crafting their own solos, especially relatively straightforward statements of the melody in different positions on the fingerboard. We also begin to lay the foundation for more extensive work on improvisation by using arpeggios to outline a song's chord progression all over the fingerboard and connect them with strong voice leading.

Level 3

[In 2008-09 I'll be suggesting some changes to the way we approach working at Level 3. These changes are reflected in the comments below. ~Andrew]

The primary focus of our work together in a Level 3 class is on creative musicianship. Please note that this does not necessarily mean "improvisation". If you were to spend a week crafting a nice second rhythm part or solo for a song, that would be no less "creative" than if you were to work one up on the fly. The point is that, at this level of work together, you are the one developing everything but the most basic rhythm guitar part.

This is not to say that technique and theory are unimportant in our L3 work, but rather that those pieces of your foundation have to be pretty solid before you begin working at this level. The simplest way to get a sense of whether you are ready for a Level 3 class is to see how challenging you find our Level 2 work. This work consists of three things:

• Playing the recorded and transcribed rhythm parts and solos.
• Working through the theory/fingerboard exercises that accompany the arrangement
• Playing through the progression using only arpeggios of the chords.

Our L2 treatment of Hesitation Blues is a good piece to use for this level assessment. The difficulty of the second solo is fairly representative (if anything, a little on the simple side) and the song covers a lot of theoretical ground. So if you can play the arrangement without much difficulty, do the theory exercises, and outline the song's progression in arpeggios, you are probably ready to join a level 3 class. If you would like to give it a try, download the written and recorded material for that song (below) and be prepared to demonstrate each of these skills before registering. (If you'd like more guidance on any of them, just get in touch with your local CG instructor.)