Guitar stuff

I'm coming along steadily, I guess. I wish I had more time to practice and learn. Some day, I guess. There's sure a lot you can do with moving your finger(s) up, down and around the high E string on open D.

 

Thought y'all might enjoy this

 

Returning to this thread for the first time in more than a year. I feel like I've gotten considerably better - I've been really working on bar chords the last few months, which opens up the number of songs you can strum, and just feels cool when you start to nail them. ("Hazy Shade of Winter," "Gold Dust Woman," and "Salt of the Earth," in particular, are a few that use bar chords to strum acoustically.) I'm also trying to add singing. Some songs are easier than others.

From some of the more experienced players, what next? I only own an acoustic, for now. I want to get a little bit of mastery on it, since it is harder to work. I'm always impressed when I see people kind of combining riffs with their strumming patterns - think like the Grateful Dead or John Denver - but I haven't really been able to pick that up yet, even from videos. They just go too fast for me.

 

You can use various ornamentation and note riffs in first position to add color when you are strumming with a flat pick.

I also recommend you play around with finger picking. Work on alternate bass notes with your thumb while adding additional notes and strums with two or three fingers on the higher register strings.

 

I get the feeling that proficient players are able to incorporate chord patterns into their rhythm strumming. Is that correct? I do things like play short arpeggios over the chords and it sounds cool enough - it at least gives it a little flavor. Or I'll hit the pinky on the D chord or something like that. But I don't quite grasp what's going on in a song like, say, "Friend of the Devil," where there are chords being strummed and changed at the same time some kind of pattern is being picked.

 

You've often got color and lead-in notes going on as part of the ornamentation, but often it's picking pattern, too.

So for finger picking, Travis style is really a good starting point. Very simple to learn, but it will really open you playing up:

So as to you other point, hammering that pinky on the third fret of the high E on the D major chord is an ornamentation, in very general terms.
However, in more structural terms it creates a Dsus4.
If you strum a D major chord, you can let the high E ring open, which is a Dsus2. You can fret the high E at the second fret, which is your standard D major; and you can fret the high E at the third fret, which is a Dsus4. As you play around with that, you're creating a little mini melody of E, F# and G on that strong.

 

Yeah, that's the opening note to "Torn and Frayed" - that Dsus2 and immediately hammering on the third fret to form a D.

 

So finger picking, by it's nature, is creating arpeggios. It is breaking up the notes of the chords.

Often times, though, players are often using additional notes from the scale, which means it's no longer technically an arpeggio.

 

For strumming, a G, you can ornament by fretting the B string at the first or third frets. That is pretty common.
You can also play your first-position G and then hammer on B string at the first fret and the D string at the second fret. It's like an open G chord with an a7 of a partial C pasted on top. Hammering that on and off is the main chord riff for 'Bertha' by the Grateful Dead.
With your C, you can unfret and let the D string ring open. You can also hammer the B string at the third fret, and/or let the B string ring open.

Those three chords with those various ornamentations (key of G) are at the heart of a lot of rock, country and folks songs.

 

= Good Loving, Helpless, Story of My Life, Forever Young, Knocking on Heaven's Door (change C to a), and many more

 

I'm really just a hack on guitar, Dick, but I can tell you that singing and playing together is a lot of fun. Open mic night is calling your name! (seriously, it's worth doing once you get a song or two down. The people who attend those types of things usually have some much-needed sympathy for us).

The trick, of course, is the timing: making the words and chords/riffs line up as you're learning the song on guitar.

Good luck and have fun. Just reading this during a quick break at work makes me want to pull my acoustic guitar out this weekend; it's been too long.

 

It's a tremendously fun and rewarding hobby.
I have really no innate musical ability whatsoever, aside from being able to sing in key, which all people of Irish descent can do.

Stick with it and have fun.

I recommend a metronome. Everything is easier when you real lock down your sense of time.

G D a = Knocking on Heaven's Door. Very simple with a simple rhythm. You can sing and play, plus add ornamental notes to the chords. It's 4/4. One measure of G, one of D and two of a. That just repeats through out. No verse-chorus-bridge structure. Just verses and the refrain is lyrical only. The chords and rhythm stay the same.