The Watering Hole

Making Music
7 posts
My son Oliver, aged 13 playing along to a funky backing track

http://youtu.be/vJMwXraa6k4


I kept telling him to smile but he wouldn't :-)
You should be so proud...that's awesome. I'm a little envious, actually. :)

My daughter keeps saying she wants to, but she just doesn't do it. She has a keyboard and a guitar in her room to play any time she wants...and still nothing. She's 10. Perhaps she'll start soon...

With his autism, I don't know if my son ever will, but I bet he'd be awesome at it with his focus, surprisingly advanced sense of pitch and his fine motor control.

I just try to keep it available to them. I know when I was a kid I'd noodle all the time once we had instruments around the house, so maybe they're just different. Or just not there yet...

But here's hoping!
Tripper
Great stuff - kept great time & you can see the concentration on Oliver's face!  

BTW - is it just me, or does anyone else think Oliver looks like a young Elvis Presley!? ;)
impressive on the playing.

voxman — Jun 07, 2011
BTW - is it just me, or does anyone else think Oliver looks like a young Elvis Presley!? ;)


You're right !!!
Thanks chaps...I'm swelling with pride  :)

I just showed Oliver this thread and that gave him a nice boost and big smile.

He has been having guitar lessons every week for years now (outside of school as school music lessons suck) and it is now starting to pay off as he is starting to hit some of those "eureka" moments that takes him up a notch each time.  He reads music and tab, and the funky piece he played in the video is one of the performance pieces for Rockshcool grade 5 exam that he took only last week, so we should get the result of that in a week or two.  There are 3 performance pieces plus lots of scales, sight reading and theory during each of the exams and the solo part in each piece has to be improvised, hence it was a little shaky in the video but not a bad improvisation for a 13 year old.  He sat "debut" guitar exam when he was just 6 years old and got a distinction !  I just took a quick picture of his guitar exam wall in his bedroom attached to this post showing his exam pass history from 2005 to 2010. Hopefully we can add grade 5 to the wall once the results are in !

Tripper, I really would suggest proper guitar (or other instrument) lessons for your children as it really does focus their minds to achieve a bit more each week ready for the next lesson.  By the way, I shot the video on the zoom Q3HD and the sound was recorded directly into reaper and then I synced the two together in sony vegas pro.  The video is surprisingly good for such a tiny unit as the zoom and such a convenient unit to use.

On the Elvis Presley thing, yep I think you're right, uh huh :-)   Oliver's mum of course is from Philippines, so he is a mixture of Filipina and English which is a combination that always seems to knock out kids with good looks and a lovely skin complexion and nice thick hair....wish I had thick hair....wish I had hair :-)

Anyway, thanks again for your comments, it really made his day when I showed it to him this morning just before school.


Great Job Oliver!  
Wow, that's some seriously good guitar playing right there...excellent...I wish I could play like that.

He looks like Elvis and plays like SRV...pretty good combo right there.  8-)

Well done to Oliver and his father who inspired him to play.