Last week in Guitar 3 we talked again about the science of barre chords. Once you know the names of the notes on the bottom two strings, you can play any chord. To figure this out, remember that you have HOMEWORK! Fill in the names of the notes on the worksheet in your coursepack. You only have to do the 6th and 5th strings. (if you want to do the rest...you'll be a better musician for it!)
We also went into some more detail in the chorus of Ziggy Stardust. Check out the third line of "goodies" on the Ziggy handout. That'll give you the rhythm of the strums on the barred Am, G, and F--but remember we only strum the F chord once, and then we pluck the bass note, alternating the first fret and open string as shown on that sheet. Snag the G once on your way back up to the Am when you loop the pattern.
We also got a quick start on The Killing Moon. Play the G and Cm in the chorus both as barre chords. You can leave your index finger down on the 3rd fret, while you move an E shape (or an Am shape! Same thing!) back and forth. Conceptually, it's easy, but it's physically difficult--and it's a great way to build up your hand strength. We'll put the rest of the song together in class this week.
In Guitar 2 Rep, we kept working on that modified Golden Strum that works so well with The Shirelles tune. You could start calling that the Calypso strum if you want. That's how a lot of musicians refer to it. Then we tackled Heart of Gold--which we absolutely zoomed through! Kudos to all of you for that. Your hammer-ons are sounding great, and you seem to have the choppy rhythms down as well. When in doubt, just consult the counts written out under the tableture at the bottom (or e-mail m with questions). I'm looking forward to hitting that one again next week. Larry was kind enough to send along the Johnny Cash cover he talked about. Enjoy!
And in Guitar 1 Rep we learned "The Golden Strum," aka the Tequila Sunrise strum, aka the folk strum. It'll become an old friend soon enough!
We broke it down into a couple of steps. For starters, we down-strummed just once on beat one (a quarter note), and then down-up down-up down-up (eighth notes) on beats 2 & 3 & 4. You can stay at that stage if that's where you're comfortable, but when you're ready, try dropping the downstrum on beat three. You'll still play the upstrum on the "and" of three. It feels pretty funny at first to skip a main beat like that, but the secret it to keep your hand moving as if you were still strumming, just don't make contact with the strings. Written with arrows, it looks like this:
V V^ ^ V^
You could also think of it like this:
D DU U DU
I know it's a little herky-jerky at first, but work hard at it because it'll sort of become our default strumming pattern in 4/4 time from now on. Next week, we'll revisit Under the Boardwalk and work out the two-part vocals to put it all together.
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