Week 4 Recaps -- All Classes

How in the heck are we halfway through the session already?!? I don't understand where September went. Wowzers.

This week, all of my classes made staggering progress. You're all making it very hard for me to keep up! I'll have to start prepping twice as much material for class because you're zipping through it too fast!

In Guitar One Rep, we took a look at Evangeline again in 3/4 time, plucking the bass notes on the downbeat. Sounded pretty good!
Then we looked at Jonathan Edwards's tune Sunshine. (Here's a little more on him, since I didn't know his background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Edwards_(musician))
On that tune, we're using the BIGlittle strumming pattern. Play straight eighth notes all the way through, but add some particular emphasis on the 1st and 3rd beats. ONEandtwoandTHREEandfourand. It'll sound like a train going chug-a-chug-a. You can further magnify that effect if you loosen your grip on the frets with your left hand during the "little" strums in order to add a muting effect.
We rounded out the day Under the Boardwalk, with some fun two-part vocals and a bit of stoptime on those final Eminor chords. Boardwalk! Boardwalk!

In Guitar Two Rep, we spent most of the evening hammering out Imagine (with nice, fresh, correct song sheets!), and then took a look at Harry Nilsson's One. Here the trailer for the documentary I was talking about.  If you can track it down, I highly recommend it. What an incredible story!
There's nothing terribly difficult in that tune, although the B7s are probably a bit uncomfortable, and the Bminor (alt) likely needs some of your attention too!

Sunday's class also had time to look at a Dylan tune (don't worry, Thursday. We'll look at it this week if we have time). It uses a chord I call the "C-in-G". Play a regular G chord for the first down-up pair of eighth notes on beat one, then on beat two you'll keep your first and 4th fingers where they are (at the third fret of the 6th and 1st string, respectively) but with your index and middle fingers you'll make the shape of a C chord minus its lowest note. A C chord IN a G chord. Get it? Alternate between a regular G on beats 1 & 3, and a C-in-G on beats 2 & 4 while strumming through down-up eighth notes.  Substitute that pattern anywhere you see a full measure of G on the songchart.
On the D chords at the end of each verse of the Dylan tune, we switched to a triplet strumming pattern. That's when you subdivide each beat into three parts: 1-and-a-2-and-a-3-and-a-4-and-

a (as opposed to subdividing it into two like we've been doing when we play eighth notes). You can also think of the word "triplet" as having 3 syllables--"trip-a-let". Say that outloud four times and you'll be hearing the rhythm of measure of triplets! It's 12 notes altogether, and you can do them ALL as fast downstrums. It feels very rock and roll.

We also used triplets at the end of the first two verses of Crazy Little Thing Called Love, which we dusted off and added the Bb chord to our vocabulary.

WHEW! That's a huge to-do list. Keep up the incredible hard work, you guys! I'm awfully excited about this session so far, and it's only going to get better from here.