Hi gang! Sorry for the delay. Yours truly has been busy prepping a couple of major suit-and-tie presentations to give to executives at the day job this week, so I haven't had as much time for music as I'd like (not that I EVER do!).
Of course, I do have another more musical excuse for my tardiness, which is that I've been prepping for a gig this Sunday, and I'd love to see you there! My fellow teachers and some students will perform Beck's Song Reader in its entirety. That's the "album" that has no recorded component--just sheet music. It's up to the audience to make the songs, and so that's what we're going to do! It's been really fun to interpret a song from scratch like that, and I'll be fronting an extremely talented house band--with a cello!--for one tune. Here are the details: https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2014/01-26-2014-becks-song-reader-7pm/
Ok, back you YOU ('cause it's not about me). Last Thursday--can you remember that far?--Guitar 3 tackled the all-powerful F barre chord. It's just an E shape with your second, third and fourth fingers, played above a barre at the 2nd fret. It's mean and it hurts, but once you've mastered it, you can move that shape up and down the neck to any position. If you know the name of the note you're barring on the low-E string, you know the name of the chord you're playing! Wanna make it minor? Use the E-minor shape instead.
Same rules apply to the Am and A shapes played with a root note barred on the 5th string. If that doesn't quite make sense, don't worry. It'll sink in and we'll work on it each week.
Practice the Otis Redding tune to get that F chord into your fingers. (and perfect your whistlin' skills!)
In Guitar 2 Rep on Saturday, we dove a little deeper into The Shirelles tune we started last week, and got a little more comfy with that root-drag version of "The Golden Strum." We also put together the rest of "Picture Book" by The Kinks. Just repeat after me: 0 0 2 4. Remember that sequence of numbers and you're most of the way through the riff because you play those frets on the 6th, 5th, and 4th strings in that order. Once you've gone up the 4th string, come back down with 5 5 4 3--remember those are fret numbers, not string or finger numbers. I recommend "the zone" strategy with your fingers: assign a single finger to each fret and use that finger each time you're called upon to play a note on that zone.
Next week we're going to get into something called a hammer-on! It's gonna be great.
And in Guitar 1 Rep, we talked a little more about swinging your strum, and about how in any given key, you're likely to use the I, IV, an V chords in combination to play most simple pop and rock songs. That's why you've gotten so much mileage out of A, D, and E in your guitar career so far--those are the I, IV, and V chords, respectively, in the key of A.
We also tackled 3/4 time, which is a waltz. You're subdividing the measure into thirds instead of quarters, and giving the first beat a little more emphasis. ONE two three. You'll wanna use all downstrums or you'll get tangled up. For added fun and complexity to the sound, pick the root note all by itself on the first beat. The root note is (usually) the lowest note in the chord, so just figure out which string your pick comes into contact with first when strumming the chord. For E, it's the open E string. For A, it's the open A string, and for D it's--well you figure it out. :)
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