Session 1, Week 4 Recap -- ALL CLASSES

Hey Gang -
Thanks for a great week of paying tribute to Pete Seeger and learning the Song of the Session! All of my classes took a unique approach to playing Turn Turn Turn and I think we had lots of fun. Those of you who were around on the weekend and stuck around for the extended Seeger Sings got a special taste of how warm and expansive the Old Town School community can be!
Stick around awhile, will ya? Registration is open and you can save $15 if you use "PICKNGRIN14" when you register before February 9. You don't have to stick with me, but if you wanna (and I'd love to see you!) here's my registration page: http://www.oldtownschool.org/teachers/Jane-Hanna/

In Guitar 3 on Thursday, we played TTT in the key of C, and we did some fingerstyle playing. Repeat after me: Thumb, Two, One, Three! That's the finger order you use to pick out beats one and two and (a pair of eighth notes). You thumb plays the root note (which moves depending on the chord), and your other three fingers stay glued to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd string--each finger assigned to a string. It takes a bit of concentration and coordination, but it seemed like you were enjoying yourselves even though it was big brain work! Remember, because that pattern is only two beats long, you'll play it twice through in a full measure. And in a split measure, you'll only play it once per chord listed.
We also finished putting together Killing Moon, by adding a dramatic upstrum to the second measure of Em at the end of the verse (krrrrrang!). As requested, I'll try to bring in a tab for the little riff at the beginning of the song--if I can figure it out!
Great work filling in the names of the notes on the bottom two strings, those of you that did the worksheet! The closer you can get to memorizing that map, the easier it'll be to move barre chords around and feel like a musical master of the universe.
Do me a favor and revisit Ziggy this week at home so that we can spend some more time on the next chunk of that in class.

For Guitar 2 Rep this week we did a different kind of fingerpicking on TTT. Just like in G3, our thumbs were responsible for the root notes, but instead of the other fingers having individual jobs to do, we used them to pluck the three strings altogether as a chord, which has a beautiful kind of chime effect that I love. Rhythmically, that means that your thumb plays the root on every beat, and your fingers pluck the chord on every and. If you wanted to get REALLY fancy, you could go in and figure out where all the alternate bass notes are, and pluck those on the 2nd and 4th beats.

Speaking of alternate bass notes, we started looking at those in the context of Stand By Your Man, which will be one of our projects in the next class. You can always use the worksheet in the front of the packet to check yourself, but see if you can figure out the alternate bass notes yourselves by counting up five notes from the root. Once you know the note, you just have to find it somewhere on the three bass strings (E, A, D). Remember that chord families have the same root, so all A chords for example (A, Am, A7) will have the same roots. (btw Heart of Gold is sounding great, so be sure to keep polishing that one up)

And in Guitar 1 Rep we went Under the Boardwalk to get more comfy with that "golden strum" pattern. I LOVED divvying up the vocal parts so that half were doing the bits inside the parenthesis, and half were outside. It sounded great and it was a lot of fun.
For our version of TTT, I changed the key to A and talked a little about how I got there (finding the I, IV, and V chords and figuring them out in alternate keys). We played a straightforward quarter note strumming pattern, but I gave you the choice of reading the song map with the chord changes over the lyrics, or the chords to the left and the lyrics to the right. There are virtues to both approaches, and it'll serve you well if you can get comfortable with both kinds of charts because musicians tend to be a diverse bunch and we all write things down slightly differently. Being able to remain flexible and adapt is a terrific skill when playing with others.
We made a good start on Dream Lover too. Practice that one with the golden strum at home, and next week will spruce it up with some slight augmentation to the strum. Remember that there are a couple of D chords on that chart that don't quite line up with the lyrics. Look at the first "'Cause I want..." line. That one is correct. The other two times, you'll see the D is printed too soon. It should come in over "a girl." Just FYI. Sorry for the error. (just trying to keep you on your toes)
Thanks for all your terrific questions about changing strings, strumming, body position, and all things musical. Keep 'em coming!