Nadine Plchová

January 2016

Nadine Plchová, age 12, has been playing guitar for nearly five years through Music Generation Cork City in partnership with Cork Academy of Music, and has recently started writing her own songs. At the moment she is working on a song for the ‘16 All Island Song Competition, which is part of the National Concert Hall’s 2016 Centenary Programme.

I’ve been playing the guitar nearly five years now. The school (Sundays Well Girls’ N.S.) recommended the instruments for us to learn and I have to say I’m really happy to be playing guitar.

I think with every instrument, when you start learning it is going to be very hard and and it was! But after a while you do get used to it and its fun!

We’ve  learnt quite a number of songs. This year we’ve been playing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ from Titanic  and ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele. There can be a lot of chords to work out, but our guitar teacher Tom (Mulcahy) makes it easier for us by picking out the chords he knows we can play. 

We play a lot of different styles and depending on what’s needed for the song, for instance if the tuning is quite high, we might use a capo. We learnt some jazz songs last year, which was really fun, and we got to use a capo then and they sounded really cool. I guess you could say its all in the style of the strumming too.

I’d consider I have a good sense of rhythm and after a while of learning and playing, it does get easier. “We’ve also learnt to write songs. So far our class have written two songs and I have also written one myself.

For my own song, we had been learning all about Syria and I decided to base my song around that. I found the chords I wanted to use first and what rhythm I want to strum and then I would look at fitting my lyrics around what I played.

At the moment I’m writing a new song reflecting on 1916  which I am entering for the ’16 All Island Song Competition. If I make the final, I’ll get to perform in the National Concert Hall and the final winner will have their song published by the Disney Music Group.

Nadine Plchová – Music Generation Cork City