Well, I'm even later than usual. The day job really gets in the way of me doing the work I WANT to do, which is blogging and playing music with you guys. (anyone want to fund an assistant for me at the Museum?)
And I was soooo sick last week that I honestly don't remember most of what happened in my classes. Maybe you all can help me fill in the blanks?
Here goes nothing--better late than never. Thanks for your patience.
Guitar 4ever -- Seriously...what did we work on? I was soooo full of cold medicine. I remember we did some of the rhythm nitty gritty with Pretty in Pink, which we'll finish putting together tonight. Lots of saying "and and and" to yourself, because we change chords in odd places where there would normally be an up-strum. The main emphasis is on 1, the and of 2, and 4. That's a little weird, but if you listen to the song and play from the gut rather than the brain, I think it'll come naturally.
We also started talking about 12-bar blues patterns. It's so common, it has its own Wikipedia page! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-bar_blues The one we did is the "shuffle" variation in that article. Practice that in A with that boogie woogie shuffle rhythm we talked about, then branch out into other keys to work on your finger stretching. Bonus homework: can you find any songs in the songbook that utilize that pattern?
Guitar 1 -- Tuning! Tune early, tune often. I handed out some resources for relative tuning, and you'll find some additional ones in the back pages of the song book. This is the blog I mentioned last week that explains things too: http://allsixornone.blogspot.com/2013/03/ermahgerd-tuning.html Do yourself a favor and pick up a cheapo electronic tuner if you haven't already. It makes things much simpler, but it's still important to start training your ears to hear those intervals and match-up tones.
We added eighth notes to our strumming repertoire as well. Those are simply a subdivision of the quarter notes we've come to love, so there are twice as many of them in a single measure. We strum them with a gentle down-up motion, which I will write out with arrows as: V ^
A full measure would look like: V ^ V ^ V ^ V ^
You can play the new song, Sons and Daughters, with eighth note strums, and your new friend the A chord. It's just like A7, except with some meat in the sandwich. You'll have to cram three fingers close together, but the sound is worth the initial discomfort! We also briefly looked at E, E7, and Em, and talked about the differences between major (happy!) and minor (sad!), and a little bit of chord theory. If that stuff didn't make sense, don't despair. It will or it won't--we'll talk about it more so you'll get lots of chances--but you don't actually have to understand it to make music!
Guitar 3rep -- We started with some fingerstyle playing on our song of the session, Roll Me On The Water from the songbook. We were using a T-2-1-3 finger pattern, but you could also go T-1-T-1 if that's simpler. Your thumb is a busy guy, finding all different bass notes throughout. The rest of your fingers are either in zone 1 (strings 432) or zone 2 (strings 321) depending on the where the root note is. The bonus homework was to see if you could figure out how to add some bass walks between chords. Tough stuff, but pretty sounding!
We also got into more of the nitty-gritty of Ziggy.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.
The third time through, you do not snag the G. Instead, you either play the open E string one more time before heading for a D chord, or else you just leave that space sonically empty and use the time to concentrate on transitioning into the next shape smoothly.
We also learned the extensive strumming rhythm that'll see us through
the bulk of Ziggy Stardust. You have to subdivide the measure into 16th
notes and pay attention to emphasis (on the 1, 2, and 4).
You can break it down like this:
V V^ V V^ V^V^ V V^ (one and a two and a three e and a four and a)
(If you're feeling fancy, take a look at the Mick Ronson brilliance of the optional verse riff!)
Kudos to you for sticking with it and hammering out the first part of that intro. It
starts with one big strum on a G. K-R-A-N-G! Let it ring for a full
beat. Rest on beat two, or mark time with a mute. On beat three, you have to subdivide into sixteenth notes, so say to
yourself "three E and Uh four and" while you strum a D chord (on two), and then
add and take away your pinky at the 3rd fret to play that suss chord on
the "E and Uh" bit. That's the first measure! We'll finish it up on Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment