What Comes After

What You Can Do Now

The end-of-course assessment tested these, in the order of its eight sections:

Form twelve seventh chords from their cards, and play the change test for five pairs of chords.
Keep D D U U D U going for eight measures, and play the plain sixteenth-note pattern, the Stop-Time pattern with its damped rests, the 6/8 pattern and swung eighth notes, each with the metronome.
Play three scales drawn by card and two arpeggios, from memory.
Play a four-measure TAB passage and a four-measure staff melody you have not seen, and strum an eight-measure chord chart you have not seen, each after 30 seconds of study.
Name the natural notes on strings 6 and 5, answer theory cards, and make a song map from a chart you own.
Play back a two-measure phrase after hearing it twice, and clap back a two-measure rhythm.
Improvise eight measures over a chart you drew, over your own recorded backing.
Perform three complete pieces in one take, each from your own count-in to its written ending, and play one piece over a backing you recorded yourself.

This course takes you from the end of the beginner course to about Grade 2 level in the skills it teaches, and makes a start on Grade 3 skills. It is called intermediate because it follows the beginner course. In the exam boards’ own terms it covers the later early grades: Grades 1 to 3 are the first level of the graded system, and RSL calls Grade 3 the “final stage as a beginner player”.

Your own result is in Final Assessment, under “What Your Result Means”.

What This Course Did Not Teach

This course leaves these for later:

Full barre chords below the fifth fret, and the barre shape with its root on string 5
Four-string shapes at other frets, and the minor four-string shapes
String bends and vibrato; hammer-ons and pull-offs to the little finger; slides on strings other than the first
Picking through a held chord with the pick, and two-note chords with the pick
The other pentatonic shapes, the second position, the A major scale, the harmonic and melodic minor, and the natural minor in two octaves
Picked triplets, the picked gallop, and faster palm-muted playing
Lower tunings
More chord types, modes, and the CAGED system
12/8 time
Working out music by ear from a recording, and naming intervals and chords you did not play yourself

Dsus4 and Asus4 are each a chord you know with one finger added, and they are among the first things to learn next.

You finish this course with one full barre chord at fret 5. The next steps are the same shape at fret 3, then at fret 1.

Move the shape to fret 3 only when, at fret 5, at least 5 of its 6 strings ring 3 times in a row (the press part of the pass mark of item 4 of the end-of-course assessment), and to fret 1 only when the same is true at fret 3. Make every press by the four steps of “How a Barre Works” (Session 19). If a string is dull, move the finger closer to the fret wire: do not press harder.

At each new fret, press the shape, pluck the strings and release it for three weeks before any piece uses it, for 2 minutes a day at most, inside the 5 minutes of barre work; the pain rule comes first.

After the course the full barre keeps the course’s figure, at every fret together: no more than 3 minutes a day, the presses at a new fret included, inside the 5 minutes of barre work.

An ache in the hand, wrist or thumb during barre work stops all playing for that day.

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.

Many Nirvana recordings are tuned a half step or a whole step low. This course stays in standard tuning.

If an Item Is Still Open

If an item of the end-of-course assessment that has to pass is still open after the week of Session 36, your result names it by its number. Its own “If not” line in the assessment says what to practise and when to take it again. Keep the practice plan of Week 36 going, with that item in its “Assessment sections” row, until you have taken it again.

A second try at an unseen item (16, 17 or 18) is made on the passage under “Second Try: Unseen Passages” in the assessment, never on one you have already seen.

The daily limits hold at every try.

The full barre never has to pass: the pain rule comes first.

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.

When an item that has to pass passes, write your result again. The result sentence under “What Your Result Means” is used only when every item that has to pass has passed.

A reading item that is still open after its second try stays open and is named in your result: the course holds no third unseen passage. A third try needs four measures in the item’s form (for item 18, an eight-measure chart) that you have not seen, written by a teacher or another player.

What a Graded Exam Also Needs

The benchmarks are the course’s own. They are set from what RSL Awards, Trinity College London and LCME publish for Grade 2 and Grade 3 guitar, but they are not any board’s requirements, and meeting them does not mean you are ready to sit an exam. A real exam also needs the board’s own book: its set pieces, backing tracks and tests, which this course does not contain.

A board’s book holds three things this course does not:

its set pieces
its backing tracks
its tests

If you would like a certificate, read the current syllabus of the board you choose, and take its book to a teacher.

Where to Go Next

Keep your programme alive. First, play one of your three pieces from memory each practice day, with its page closed. Keep the “Rotation” row too: one scale card, one change-test pair and two chord cards, 4 minutes a day. A piece with barre chords, slurs or three-string power chords counts in that day’s limit.

Learn more songs. Use the method of Learning A Song. First screen each chart, as “Rule 3: The Screening Step” there says: a song whose chart does not pass waits.

The next studies. Carulli’s “Andantino in G” and Sor’s “Leçon no. 1 in C” and “Petite pièce in C” are the natural next pieces after Giuliani’s Andantino. None of them is printed in this course; their opus numbers are in Fingerstyle Studies, under “Studies in Reserve”. First find a printed copy of one of them.

A teacher. Some things only a person can check. First, ask a teacher, or another player, the questions below.

Nothing in this course has yet been play-tested: nobody has checked its pieces, arrangements and charts with a guitar in hand. Do the ones I play work as written?
This course plays A7 with fingers 1 and 3; many chord charts use fingers 2 and 3. Which should I keep?
In fingerstyle this course keeps each picking finger on its home string: p on strings 6, 5 and 4, i on string 3, m on string 2, a on string 1. Should I keep that rule?
This course strums the shuffle down-up; many players use downstrokes only. Which should I use?

The pain rule holds after the course, and the daily limits stay as they are until a teacher changes them. An ache in the hand, wrist or thumb stops all playing for that day. No stretch of playing is longer than 30 minutes: then put the guitar down for 5 minutes. With the full barre and barre limits under “What This Course Did Not Teach”, these are the other limits:

Slur work: no more than 5 minutes a day in total.

Three-string power-chord work: no more than 5 minutes a day in total.

Little-finger work: no more than 5 minutes a day in total in the first two weeks at a new fret.