My youngest son and the guitar classes at his high school held their annual recital performance last night. The class is new (started after my oldest graduated) and I thought had only a hand full of students so I figured the night would go real quick. Well to my surprise there is 3 levels of the class (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and next year there will be a Senior class) and the song list to be played was looooonnnnnnggggggg and then I noticed the song titles, knowing how long those songs are I realized I should have brought supper with me instead of planning to go out to eat afterwards.
Well it got better, their teacher made the introduction announcements and it seems he only allowed each group (thankfully it wasn't all solos) up to 2 minutes for their song but they had to do at least one minute of the song for a major class grade. He wanted to see what the kids would do to arrange what they were playing to meet the guidelines. I must admit some of the kids were really good at getting the songs to seem like complete works and not just chopped off at the end. This was also the first time most of the kids had played in front of any one other than their class members so the butterflies were swarming and you could hear it in the music but they were all giving it that old school try. As with anything, some kids have talent and some are playing for their own enjoyment and for that I salute their efforts and they did great.
With all that said, the better groups were moved to the end of the show and there was 1 freshman group mixed in with final 6, the other 5 were juniors. The freshman group was ranked third in the final six. My youngest, Kyle was in that freshman group (trio) and he was the one that taught the other two the song they were going to play. I have never heard an acoustical version of the song they played but I've heard Kyle play it many times on his Strat and if I do say so myself, he could sit in with the originals and you couldn't tell they had a kid playing with them. Thru out the groups and solos ahead of them, the crowd cheered the kids as they took the stage, sat quietly as they played and as they finished they were once again cheered. Kyle's group was the first one to get a reaction from the crowd and the other class members after they started to play.
Kyle is the redhead in the middle. Sorry about the poor audio quality . . .
[video=vimeo;57653323]https://vimeo.com/57653323[/video]
Well it got better, their teacher made the introduction announcements and it seems he only allowed each group (thankfully it wasn't all solos) up to 2 minutes for their song but they had to do at least one minute of the song for a major class grade. He wanted to see what the kids would do to arrange what they were playing to meet the guidelines. I must admit some of the kids were really good at getting the songs to seem like complete works and not just chopped off at the end. This was also the first time most of the kids had played in front of any one other than their class members so the butterflies were swarming and you could hear it in the music but they were all giving it that old school try. As with anything, some kids have talent and some are playing for their own enjoyment and for that I salute their efforts and they did great.
With all that said, the better groups were moved to the end of the show and there was 1 freshman group mixed in with final 6, the other 5 were juniors. The freshman group was ranked third in the final six. My youngest, Kyle was in that freshman group (trio) and he was the one that taught the other two the song they were going to play. I have never heard an acoustical version of the song they played but I've heard Kyle play it many times on his Strat and if I do say so myself, he could sit in with the originals and you couldn't tell they had a kid playing with them. Thru out the groups and solos ahead of them, the crowd cheered the kids as they took the stage, sat quietly as they played and as they finished they were once again cheered. Kyle's group was the first one to get a reaction from the crowd and the other class members after they started to play.
Kyle is the redhead in the middle. Sorry about the poor audio quality . . .
[video=vimeo;57653323]https://vimeo.com/57653323[/video]
