Hey dudes!
Here's a clip of Evangeline from "The Last Waltz." The production quality is a little corny but you can't argue with how gorgeous the music is! Remember we're in 3/4 time here (ha! The Last WALTZ! And we're doing a WALTZ! Get it?! A-hem.)
We're also picking the bass note on the first beat, which we locate by looking for the lowest (in terms of its sound, NOT it's proximity to the chord!) note in the chord, which is the first string your pick makes contact with when you downstrum. Pluck-strum-strum all the way.
Your bass notes will all be located on the 6th, 5th, or 4th strings, aka "the bass strings." See how that works?
Apropos of nothing...there's a documentary about Levon Helm called "Ain't In It For My Health" that I noticed has just come up on Netflix streaming. I only watched the first 30 minutes of it today but I already know it's worth recommending.
See you Saturday!
Hello Guitar 2 Rep friends! Sincerest apologies for the gaffes on this week's chart. On Thursday we only made it past the first riff, but it turns out I was off by a digit on ALL the extras at the bottom of the page--as we discovered on Sunday. Here's a better chart with the errors fixed: Corrected PDF of Imagine
If you don't have access to a printer before the next class, just subtract 1 from each number listed in the tabs. (so 3h4 becomes 2h3, etc.) Speaking of which, Ryan from Thursday night suggested sliding that up instead of doing a hammer-on, which I think is an EXCELLENT idea, and that's how we played it Sunday. Use whichever technique you prefer. On the corrected chart, I changed it to "2s3" for "slide.")
We're in full swing here this session, and all of my classes last week were simultaneously hard work and a lot of fun (at least for me! If I'm wrong about the fun part, please let me know!)
In Guitar 1 Rep, we tackled some reggae rhythms with Three Little Birds. (incidentally, when I got to Second Half after class, my colleague Michael O'Toole happened to be playing with a "three little birds" puppet--robin chicks in a nest--that he had in his guitar case from having taught a Wiggleworms class for kids. If only I'd known that was in the building, we could've had PUPPETS in class! What a missed opportunity!)
We worked on a strumming pattern that uses sixteenth notes--each measure is divided up into sixteen (very slow!) counts, with four in each beat: one-e-and-a-two-e-and-a-three-e-and-a-four-e-and-a
Put the emphasis on the "e"s and the "a"s, which should be up-strums. Eventually, you can leave out the strums on the numbered beats and the "ands" altogether and mute the strings there instead. (Leave in a downstrum on the "one' and the "three" though, otherwise you'll be too decentered)
There's a nifty version I found on YouTube from a soundcheck up there.
In Guitar 2 Rep, we continued our streak of "stage bait" tunes with Heart of Gold. The main bit of fancy business there is the new technique called "hammer-on," in which you use a percussive action of the finger on your left hand against the fretboard to produce a sound from the string, instead of picking it with your right hand. Here's a handy video tutorial (never mind the "pentatonic" stuff. Just get the concept and try the exercise on any old strings).
There's some "stop-time" rhythms that you'll see on your song sheet where the asteriks are. You can follow my notes, or you can listen to the man himself in this great clip. It takes him awhile to find the right harmonica, but once he does, boy is he great.
Keep at it! I'm learning from my own practice getting ready for my gig next week that techniques which seem impossible--and how could they EVER get easier if they're so impossible?--do actually suddenly improve if you keep at it. Keep on messing it up and eventually the mess will start to straighten, I promise!
Hey gang! My sincerest apologies that the weekly recap is so late this week. Every free moment I've had has been devoted to rehearsals for the Bowie gig I mentioned (so at least it's a music excuse)!
It's Monday, 9/23 (oh my gosh that's NEXT WEEK!) at Martyrs'. Show starts at 8pm. We'll be performing two albums live in their entirety--Ziggy Stardust and Station to Station. I'm nervous as all get out because I'll be playing a lot of guitar techniques I've never tried before, and I'll be playing a 12-string guitar for the first time. Hope to see you there. I need the moral support!
Hope you're all enjoying this sudden return of summer! I for one am ready for flannel and cute boots, but maybe that's just me.
Here's a rundown of our classes last week, for your reference.
In Guitar 1 Rep on Saturday morning, we broke out a trusty Wilco tune to get back to guitar after the summer (or even longer!) break. California Stars has a great, simple chord structure that just repeats and repeats and repeats, so you can stop thinking about your left hand altogether. It goes AAEEDDAA. That's it! After a few times through, your fretting hand should start to know what to do automatically and you can focus on strumming instead. For that, we talked about "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 Here's Bob Seger doing a nice little cover of the tune at a recent concert. He's using different chord shapes than we are because he's got a little device called a capo on the neck of his guitar. We'll talk more about that later. (it won't let me embed this one for some reason, but click here for the goods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOUbxsRlkO8 Next week we'll start some reggae strumming and look at a couple of songbook tunes to revisit some of the lesser-used chords you touched on in Guitar 1. Practice well!
In Guitar 2 Rep on Thursday night AND on Sunday afternoon, we got back into shape with Yellow Submarine, as requested by Tom. It's a simple tune in terms of chords, but it has a deceptive rhythmic pattern. In the split measures, be sure to give the first chord 3 beats, and only one beat to the second chord. When you start to swing it a little, that last beat will start to feel like a pick-up note that leads into the next measure. (Less like "four, one" and more like "and one") That's the right feel, but just be careful not to get lost on the chart!
Here's the trailer for the Yellow Submarine film. (you can find the whole thing on YouTube but it's a Russian bootleg so I'll let you decide whether or not to go for it) This movie was kind of traumatic for me when I was a kid. But seeing the lads being cute in the flesh at the end heals a lot of wounds!
We also dabbled gently in Crazy Little Thing Called Love, which Ryan from Thursday requested, in honor of what would've been Freddie Mercury's 67th birthday. As I mentioned, that's going to be sort of a project song. There's a lot of little things to learn so I think we'll just take it a chunk at a time over several weeks. Last week it was the movement from D to Dsus4 through the cunning use of the pinky finger. Keep it simple, don't over think it, and focus on getting your right hand to behave. The first-stage strumming pattern is down-up down-up (rest on 3 & 4 and swing it just a little bit). You throw your pinky in on the second downstrum, which falls on the 2nd beat, and then you take it right back off again for the upstrum on the and. Don't worry about the extra chuck-a-chuck-as you'll hear in the Queen version on the 3rd and 4th beats. We'll get to those later. Here's Freddie and the gang making their live US television debut on Saturday Night Live in 1982. Freddie is playing a 12 string guitar, but the chord shapes should look pretty familiar to you nonetheless! His voice was all strained, allegedly from having fought with their manager rather loudly the night before. He's still twice the rock star that anyone else is!
Remember to e-mail me questions/comments/concerns/requests/awesomestuff anytime! jane(dot)hanna(at)gmail(dot)com is the best way to get me.
Hello and welcome to the first post of Session Five at the Old Town School.
To my old friends, and to those of you who I met for the first time this week--thanks for being my students! We're going to have a lot of fun together this session, and we'll all be better guitar players for it too. Nice how that works out!
If you're new to the blog, I invite you to look back at the very first few posts for some of the getting-to-know you stuff. There are lots of newbie resources in the early posts too so head over there and have a look.
I'll post weekly recaps from here on out (starting tomorrow with the Week 1 rundown), but for today just remember that EVERYONE is a bit awkward at the beginning--even Bowie. You may be feeling scared of your new instrument, or rusty on your trusty old one. But at least you aren't wearing salmon-colored bellbottoms on television. Keep on strumming!
