As well as offering Electric, Bass and Acoustic Guitar Exams, RGT has also expanded their curriculum with the addition of the Rock Guitar Syllabus.
Rock Guitar Exams focus entirely on the core skills and techniques required to play rock guitar. RGT rock guitar series starts at the Initial Stage, which is suitable for novice guitarists, with the series progressing up to Grade 8 level for advanced players.
To view more articles in this series, please visit the “RGT Rock Guitar Video Lessons Archive.”
For the Rock Guitar Initial Stage Exam, you will be required to perform two rock tracks from the RGT Initial Stage handbook. In this article, we’re exploring an excerpt from one of these rock tracks – ‘Quiet As A Bulldog.’
Check out the Video below to see and hear how this rockin’ track should be played, and click here to purchase the RGT Initial Stage Rock Exam book that contains the full music to this piece, as well as all other musical requirements for this exam.
Quiet As A Bulldog – Practice Tips
To help get you started, here is a bit of advice on how to navigate the song ‘Quiet as a Bulldog.’
“This piece contains two power chords – A5 and E5; each can be played just using one finger fretting the higher note in the chord, with the lower note in each being an open bass string. The chords are interspersed with the some single-note lines, all of which are taken from the A natural minor scale.”
Quiet as a Bulldog Lesson – Audio Tracks
Along with the embedded video lesson below, here are two audio tracks that will help you as you explore this song further in the practice room.
It would be productive to practice with the audio track first, so that you learn to play along in time with the recorded guitar track.
From there, a good practice goal would be to play along with the backing track only, so that you can perform the song without the aid of the guide track.
Here are both of those tracks to check out.
Click to listen to the audio track for Quiet as a Bulldog
Click to listen to the backing track for Quiet as a Bulldog
Quiet As A Bulldog Lesson – Video
Video presented by Chris Bird, Music Editor of Total Guitar Magazine.
RGT Rock Guitar Books
To find out more about this exam, please visit the RGT Rock Guitar Exam Information Booklet, or check out the Rock Guitar Initial Exam Book, which includes a CD and contains all the exam pieces, as well as all diagrams for all the chords and scales that the pieces are based on.
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