Entry Check

How to Use This Entry Check

Entry check — The eight tasks of Session 1, each with its own pass mark, that show whether you can already do what this course starts from. (Session 1)

This page holds the eight items of the entry check and your mark for each. Read this section before Session 1 begins: it is not part of the session’s 50 minutes. You take the entry check in Session 1, with this page open, and you take the items in their order. Print this page, or copy the item numbers and the lines to write on onto paper, so you can write your marks. After each item, tick Yes or Not yet on the two lines under it. Each of items 1 to 6 may be tried a second time straight away, and the second try counts. There is no third try. Item 7 is four presses at most, with no second try: a minute of barre presses holds four. Item 8 is taken once. Nothing on this page is taught. A “Not yet” is a result, not a fault.

Each item says how it is checked. The items use six kinds of check:

The tuner: pluck one open string and read the note the tuner shows.
The metronome: it clicks the beat while you play.
Counting aloud: count aloud while you play; the item says what you count.
Counting the strings that ring: pluck the strings of the chord one at a time and count the ones that ring.
A recording: record the item on your phone, then follow the recording on the page the item names.
The change test (Beginner Session 3): the beginner course’s rule for a chord change, printed under this list word for word.

Set the metronome to the tempo given; each click is one beat. Strum each chord once, with a downstroke, and let it ring. Play a new chord every 4 beats (on beat 1 of each measure) or every 2 beats (on beats 1 and 3), as the target says. Alternate the two chords until you have played 8 chords in a row: that is 7 changes. You pass when all 8 land on their click with every string that should sound ringing, twice on the same day.

In an assessment a change-test pair passes on one run of 8 chords in a row with no click missed. “Twice on the same day” is the pass mark of the weekly Self-Check Questions.

The Phone Test

The phone test is in Segment 1 of Session 1. It asks two questions. Write yes or no after each.

Can you hear both the strums and the clicks on a recording made with the metronome sounding? Yes or no: _____
Can the phone record while it plays a backing? Yes or no: _____

If the phone cannot record while its own metronome sounds, a second device or a separate metronome gives the click, set down where the recording picks it up.

If the phone cannot record while it plays a backing, a second device plays the backing, and the two checks that are played over a backing say what to do with one device only.

If your phone cannot play the backing and record you at the same time, play with the backing sounding and judge it as you play; checking it on a recording then needs a second device.

The two answers are not items of the entry check and do not count in your result. The first is used in Session 1 itself: item 8, and every later check that is marked on a recording with the metronome sounding, needs the click on the recording. The second is first used in Session 4.

The Eight Items

Items 1 to 7 are taken before the break of Session 1, and item 8 after it.

No notation is printed on this page. The strumming pattern of item 4 and the TAB of items 5 and 6 stand in Session 1, each under the heading that its item’s “If not” part names. For items 5 and 6 you follow your recording on the TAB there.

Under each of items 1 to 7 is a line to write on. For an item you marked Not yet, Session 1 has you copy two things onto it: the item’s drill, which is in its “If not” part, and its entry tempo, which is the tempo in the item’s first part (items 3 to 6 have one). The other lines, under items 2, 3 and 8, say what is written on them.

Item 7 is barre work: the simplified F counts.

Barre work: no more than 5 minutes a day in total. Pain rule: tender fingertips are normal. Pain in the wrist, forearm, thumb joint or knuckles, numbness or tingling, any sharp pain, or pain that lasts into the next day means stop. The full rule is in START HERE.

1. (0.5 minutes) Tune all six strings with the tuner, then pluck each open string once more, from string 6 to string 1. Check: read the tuner for each string. Pass: all 6 strings read their note: E, A, D, G, B, E. If not: tune each string from below, as the beginner course taught, at the start of every practice day, under “Item 1: Tuning” in Session 1; take this item again on the last practice day of the week.

Yes
Not yet