Rock _ Blues Rhythm Guitar Lesson (Key of A)

And what I'm doing there for that is I'm just playing the middle G string and the B string , open a hammer on to the first fret G string for that note , which in essence is making it cool to think about it .

Then I take my middle finger and go ahead and borrow that second Fred .

I'm making the A cord .

Now .

Obviously , I'm not making it the way that we learned it before because my uh my pointer finger is occupied .

So then I come back and then I close it with this upstroke , those top two strings .

So slowly it sounds like this .

And you may just want to practice doing that over and over again because that is something you use all the time when you're playing rock rhythm .

Now , before we get started , I'm just gonna play through a little bit of this rhythm by myself without the jam track .

And I want you to watch my right hand and watch the , the strum pattern that I'm , I'm repeating over and over again in particular .

So what I'm doing there is I'm creating a rhythm that looks like this over and over again .

Now I recommend you practice before you even start worrying about the left hand and what's going on with that .

Most people always make that mistake .

You always , people try to always learn what's going on with the left hand .

And , um , that's important , but sometimes it's more important to get the right hand down and in a rhythm like this , the right hand is what's gonna make this thing .

That's what people are gonna stomp their feet to .

So , um , so what I'm doing is and I recommend you , you , you practicing it this way , kind of mute the strings just by resting your fingers on them .

So they don't make any noise and practice getting a rhythm like that .

Now , what I'm doing in that rhythm is I'm playing , I'm on one down stroke , I'm brushing across the middle four strings or so .

Now I'm not playing on this , this bottom E string or the six string .

I'm starting it on the fifth string or the A string and I'm just raking down once , then I'm coming back and I'm hitting just that a string .

So it's , it's all the strings then it's just the A string and both of those are downs strokes .

So it's downs stroke down , stroke , downs , stroke down stroke .

And so the , so that's what I would practice if , if I were you in the beginning is just doing a downs stroke , downs stroke , downs , stroke downs stroke just to get that down .

And it will be slow in the beginning .

But over time you'll be able to pick it up a little bit .

Tell us about this tempo and it , OK , so we'll get back to the right hand .

But now let's take a look at what the left hand is doing .

So , the first thing , uh , to point out is I'm playing an , a chord here , first quarter that I'm playing .

And the way that I do it is I just bar the second fret .

Um , I bar the first four strings and I play the middle four strings when I strum it with my right hand .

So I'm not playing the bottom E and I'm not playing the high , I'm just playing the middle .

That's one way to make an , a , some people make an A by cramming three fingers in that allows you to let the high E string uh ring out , but it's not very versatile for doing these kinds of rhythms .

So I recommend when you're playing rhythm , especially , you know , uh rock and roll or blues , you probably wanna bar your a like that .

So , what I'm doing is uh when I'm barring that I'm playing this little rhythm and by the way , the , the strings that I'm playing , I'm actually not playing all four , I'm just really playing string , which is the A string , the D string and the G string .

So I'm playing this , that's the first thing I do .

And what I'm doing there is I'm , we get to the right hand but with the left hand barring the second fret and I'm coming up to the fourth fret , fourth string , pushing down just that one string , releasing it .

So , and you've heard that rhythm ?

You , so that's , uh , that's , uh , what's going on with the left hand now with the right hand .

I'm actually , even though I've got that rhythm going that I showed you , I'm doing one other thing in conjunction with that and that's , I'm muting with my right hand .

So I'm letting this part of my hand kind of rest on the strings back here to give it that sound if you don't , it sounds like this .

So it rings out too much and by just resting your hand , you know , kind of towards the bridge back here and it gives you a much chunkier sound .

Now , you may want to practice that you can't go too far this way , you can't go too far towards the neck or it will completely mute the strings , but you got to pull it back until they're just , you know , like I said , it's just right there by the bridge .

OK .

So there , so that's what I'm doing with the right hand .

And so the , the left hand after I play this , play those two notes and what I'm doing there is I'm playing the uh third fret , uh fifth string , middle finger , then I'm playing the fourth fret , um fifth string with my ring finger or the eight string .

So , so it's all right .

So this with this D part again , I'm just playing the D string and the G string in the middle just , and I'm barring here the second fret , the , the top three strings , I'm just playing those .

Uh , you know , I'm just using one of those .

I'm actually just , technically I would just have to play the second fret , third string , but it's just easier to bar those since you're already barring them for the A But anyway , so I'll come up here .

I push down on the third string , fourth fret with my pinky to create that note .

Then I come up and stretch to the fifth fret , slide down back to the fourth , back to the second threat and then down to the fourth threat and on the fourth string .

So here's what the right hand is doing .

Notice I do an upstroke there on that , on that note .

So I go right there .

So it's down , then all that's left is to play the E part and we transition right out of the D .

So we go and to do that , we come down and play the uh fourth string on the second threat there .

So we go and then we hit the bottom .

So it was an octave there .

You're playing this high E and then you're playing the low E hit that , that gives you just enough time to free up your hand to , to go right into the position of the cord .

And for that what I'm doing is once I'm in position I'm , uh , hitting the bottom string , doing it with a , with a downs stroke and then hitting the top two or three strings with an upstroke .

So it's so it's down , down , down , up , that I notice I'm kind of palm muting those .

Uh , it's kind of a very , uh , top thing to do that maybe may have been where I got that from .

I don't know .

All right .

So then there's just this little tag at the end that goes .

Let's say we were playing in the key of a major , the a major scale therefore would be our natural harmonic basis for this key .

Some major key songs will be based around major modes such as Mixolydian and Frigia dominant .

But it makes sense to start with the most commonly used scale to keep it simple .

We'll begin with a single tonic chord of a major .

We now need a pattern that will allow us to explore the harmonization of this .

A major scale here , I've taken the first two positions of the a major scale giving us a good neck range .

We're gonna start by working through the scale using two note pairings also known as double stops .

You can either pluck each pairing with your fingers or pick them together or in succession .