Hello folkie friends! Long time, no update.
Sorry about that. Like many of you, I find myself busier than EVER during the supposedly laid-back vacationy time of year. I know lots of you have been traveling and having fun in the sun (albeit with sweaters on if you've stayed in Chicago. What is UP with this weather?!)
Let's take a moment to check in:
GUITAR ONE:
You guys are rockin' it! By now you've got D, A7, A, E, Em, E7, G (two ways!), C, and Am under our belt. That is a boat load of chords, my friends! We've talked about strumming patters that use quarter notes (down strums, four to a measure in 4/4 time), and eight notes (down-up strums, eight to a measure in 4/4 time--not faster in terms of tempo necessarily, but just a subdividing of the time)
We've also conquered split measures, and stop chords (marked with a !, where you hit it once and let it ring).
The tunes in our songbag are Jambalaya, Sons and Daughters, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, Another Saturday Night, Sunshine, and Mad World, plus lots of old familiar favorite in the book.
Please pause for a moment and appreciate how EPIC that is. Look at all you've accomplished after only 5 weeks of classes! You can also TUNE your guitars without my help (mostly). That alone took me more than a month to understand, so you're already miles ahead of where I was when I was a G1 student.
If any of the above is confusing or foreign, just drop me an e-mail so I can work with you to get you back up to speed. This is usually the point in the session where I try to talk you off the ledge because you're feeling overwhelmed, but I don't think that's necessary because you've all done a marvelous job so far and it's obvious you're working on it outside of class time, so just keep up the good work!
GUITAR TWO:
Oh my friends, we've been through a lot together, haven't we? It's getting to feel like family to me on Thursdays and Sundays. Both groups are now champions of the F-chord, Fmaj7, Dm7, Dm, Bm, and Bm-ALT, Am7, and Em7.
But chords-schmords at this point, right guys?! You all have moved onto the big time, and you've learned how to find the bass note in a chord so that you can get fancy with pluck-strumming. In 3/4 time, we pluck the bass note on the first beat, then strum the chord twice. In 4/4 time, we pluck on the one, strum on the two, pluck on the three, and strum on the four. And as if that wasn't enough...we've also begun to alternate bass notes! You know how to find the one AND the five (and you can always consult the handy chart in your course packet if you get confused), and switch between them on one and three.
But wait, there's MORE! You can also connect your chords with bass walks between them! There's a chart for that too, and we'll do a lot more of it in this week's class.
Your songbag contains Summertime, Cosmic Dancer, You Send Me, Daydream Believer, Be My Baby, The Old Country Waltz, and maybe (if you did your homework) I Walk the Line, as well as songs from the book like Careless Love--our song of the session!
One of you told me last week that you feel like you jumped from G1R to G4 with all this riff-playin' and bass-walkin', and I feel you. Breathe, be patient with yourself, and remember that it wasn't so very long ago that the concept of a G chord blew your mind and you thought you'd NEVER get that pinky to behave itself--and now you probably throw down that G-shape without a second thought. Stick with it, practice, laugh at yourself, call each other to commiserate, e-mail me when you get stuck, and keep strumming!
