Blues Guitar Lessons for Beginners 3: Alternating Rhythm Patterns

1. Blues Guitar Lessons for Beginners 3: Have you ever wanted to take private lessons from the world's greatest professional guitarist? Yeah, me, too. How about settling for me instead? Consider this. I played guitar off and on now for the last several decades and still consider myself to be an advanced beginner. But that still makes me probably a better guitars than you. Another thing to consider. I seem to be a good teacher. I taught several friends how to play blues, rhythm and leave. Now I'm asking you to join the team, not because I'm a great guitarist. I'm far from it. Not because I've developed some revolutionary new teaching method, though I may have. You don't know not because I'm out to make a $1,000,000 though. Wouldn't that be cool? I'm asking you to join me because it will be fun for both of us. This'll course is unique and that I'm not a very good guitar player, So taking this course is more like sharing guitar tips with a buddy. It's less intimidating than spending lots of money and learning from a professional. So come on, let's play some blues guitar together. There are few things more rewarding on this planet than making music with. We'll begin with learning how to play open E and open a power courts. The core, the blues and rock and roll was in just one finger. Then we'll add that be accord using the second finger. And from there were off to the races. Power chords, open courts, bar courts, rock and roll rhythm and blues shuffle with it's all Here in guitar diagrams and talent. The course includes information on a how to play lead guitar and comes to a climax with the solo blues intro Shuffle, Turn Around and singing and lead Conclusion. By the end of this course, you'll know everything you need to play. Begin blues, rhythm and lead guitar or your money back. No, seriously, you Demi offers a 30 day, no questions asked. Money back guarantee on corgis is courses purchased, so there goes your risk. So if you ever wanted to learn how to play blues guitar way, not join me for a one buddy session while we learned together, I'll see you in the classroom. This has been Brian 2. Alternating Rhythym Patterns & Two Essential Rhythms: Hello and welcome to the lecture. I hope you're having fun where you're going to rock out in this lecture. We're getting into a cool thing. It's called alternating rhythm patterns. At least that's what I'm going to call it. Or basically, we're gonna learn how to play rock and roll and the Blue Shuffle. Okay, They're not that complicated. So don't don't get all uptight. We're gonna learn it really nice and slow. So now remember the last lecture we were talking about these two power cords and Ian and A that we played with one finger. Well, we're going to keep working with those. So here is that e power court shape. Remember, you put your first finger on the second fret on the second string that turns the A into a B . So you're playing the e and the B string by strumming the top two, or you're playing the e and the B note by strumming the top two strings with your finger on the second fret. Now, rather than jumping directly to the A, which is just one string down, what we're gonna do is we're gonna put our third finger down And what this will do is it will form a a C sharp. So will be playing at e n a. C sharp these air two notes that are also in the cord but it sounds slightly different. So two ways to play the and what you can do is you go back and forth. So what I want you to do is I want you to strum one. Then I want you to strong with your third finger out first finger, third finger back and forth, just rocking back and forth. Strum, strum Okay, If we look at what that looks like together, it looks kind of like this, right? Your first near third finger is just rocking back and forth. In fact, you don't even really have to remove your first finger to play that. And if you do it, it sounds something like this a little boring and monotonous. But it's the beginning of rock and roll. Now what I want you to do is exercise one. You probably guessed it play the rocking finger of the alternating fingers one and the three going strum, strum, strum, strum and you don't need to lift your first finger, Remember you just lay your third finger down if you want to be lazy. Okay, so that's the first assignment. Now you probably are going to guess what the next assignments going to be. That's right. It's to move down to the accord the next chord. So we put our first finger on that D string, the third string down which turns the d into any. So now we're playing at a E. And then what we're going to do after strumming that Because we're going to put down our third finger, making the E into a what way have to an f sharp something like that ump's and you go back and forth, okay. And you go strum, strum, strum, strum I'm not gonna play this for you. This is a little monotonous. But once we get into the rock and roll, I'm certainly going to play it for you. And if we look at these two notes on the same fretboard, then it looks something like this. So that's the two strums that we have the rocking back and forth. And as your second exercise, I'd like you to rock back and forth on the accord. Strum, strum, strum, strum. Okay, go ahead and do that. Now, in this next section, we're gonna talk about counting. This is something that you can add and even use with your little strum pattern. Because the first count we're talking about here is this is what we're gonna do. This is my drawing of a leg and a foot. It's your left leg left foot. This is my representation of tapping your foot. So what I want you to do is I want you to put your foot down, and then I want you raise it and put it down and just tap your foot by flexing your ankle, okay? And as you tap your foot, what I would like you to do You start county every time your foot comes down. Count one. So one, 2341 234 Tapping your foot. What you've just done is you've tapped out a measure or a bar which is usually four counts , and you notice that it has this count in between, which is really it's raising your foot isn't is another count in a way. So if you add that count and you go one and two and three and four and one and two and three. And Floren, you're counting a rock and roll rhythm. Don't I don't. I don't. Uh, right. So that's the rock and roll count and rhythm. Give it a try One and two and three and four in really smooth so equal time to each of the counts. Now here's a more complicated count. This is pretty much counting in triplets, and it's the blues shuffle count which, rather than counting exactly the and on lifting your foot you're a little early and you add in, uh, so these air triplets or you go one end to end a three and a four end a one day in a two in a three and a four end up and he keep doing that. That would be a blues shuffle rhythm. So you've seen the counts. Now the only thing left to do is to start playing some rock and roll. So what I want you to dio is I want you to put your finger on that a string, turning it into a B, and I want you to do strum down twice and say one and right. That's the 1st 2 counts or the first count and 1/2 of a rock and roll rhythm. And then I want you toe put down your third finger on. I want you to strum two more times and say to and and what it's gonna end up sounding like is this. If you keep repeating that, that's basically rock and roll. So just keep playing the same rocking notes back and forth, done an in and then and then and then And then you can even put variations into your playing if you want to, uh, get a little fancy, tried to add our power record back there again in the very beginning, but play with it. You can do these. This shuffle are this rhythm of going back and forth on a rock and roll pattern, all kinds of different ways to make very songs that you're familiar with. They all use this, so that's the rock and roll rhythm. Your exercise is to play the rock and roll of them going at and at in the E quart. So that is exercise three, and you can probably guess where we're headed with exercise, for We're going to go down a string and we're going to do exactly the same thing. To play the A chord Dan and then and Nana, it's gonna be a little higher. And then that's your exercise is to play the accord. So do that one and two and three and four in rhythm, strumming down on the two strings and alternating your finger and you'll be playing rock and roll in no time. Now Exercise Five is once again to switch back and forth. So go from the E chord to the Accord, back to the E chord shape again and try going as fast as you can and keep everything as clean as you can. Now the next thing we're gonna talk about is pretty exciting. It's the blues shuffle now all rock and roll rock and the blues is rooted in the blues. So we're gonna you learn the blues and play quite a bit of blues getting into our rock and roll and rock roots first of all to convert the rock and roll rhythm to a blues shuffle instead of counting one and to n if you count in triplets one in the to India, Okay, and you strum on the one ah two and Ah, so you skipped the and the middle thing. You're skip, you're playing on the first and the third of the triplets in each count. So what that does is it kind of delays the second strum and this produces a delayed strum that sounds like this. In fact, in most cases, after you've counted it out a few times and figured it out, it's just Azizi to just figure out, you know, and play. It just becomes part of your playing style. You go rock n roll, done it. It ended up and then go the blues done. Uh, we've all heard the blues, right. So you're gonna know the count, the pattern, but it's what it is, is it's play the strums on the one and the, uh, and Skip the and and it kind of pushes the the second strum over closer to the start of the next count. And here it is. Have you looked at it all at once? And here's the A would just be moving it down and doing the same thing. And your exercise is to try and play the two chords as fast as you can, going back and forth in a blues shuffle rhythm You may actually be more comfortable with the blues shuffle, rhythm the rock and roll The rock and roll can get a little frenetic The blues you can get cool with so go back and forth between the courts. Now what I want to do is I want to add a few tricks of the trade to start making your vibrating strings and your power cords start making them sound a little chunkier and a little better. First, I want to talk about a little speed technique here. Notice that between the the second count in the third count, where you're going to shift up from the e chord shaped the a chord shape that you can sneak your one finger that isn't holding a string at the moment ahead and already have it all positioned for the three count. Right, So you go duh. And here comes the to count two, and, uh, and by then, while you're playing to India, you can stick your first finger on to the next chord. So you're already to just lift your third finger and say, three end a and you're there, so sneak fingers ahead. If they're not holding down a ringing note. Then you can do something with them. Next is walking up to the next fret. This is really cool. Okay, so we've got this. Duh duh duh duh going. And what you can do is you can add the next fret. Uh huh. And it sounds something like this. So there you go. You had the fourth finger in there, you know, and have to do it every time seeking going down and and and it and it and it and it and it and it And something like that is a pattern. Uh, that's another trick. So putting in that walking bass up their palm muting This is something that I've already used a few times in playing. If it makes it into the final recording, what you do is the place, the base of your palm against the strings near the bridge that's up with the strings. Connect to the body of your guitar that's called the bridge There. That's actually the saddle where the strings go over that little those either little metal things or the or the big plastic white thing. If you're playing an acoustic guitar and what you do is you put your thumb in that whole meat of the bottom of your palm against the strings just past the saddle. So you you put a little mute and you get kind of a chug out of the strings, and you need to experiment with where you want to put things to get your chug. Let me give you a little chug. Okay? First, listen to let's say the blues the EQ ward with just the strings ringing out. Okay, It sounds all right, but listen to this, okay? You could see how you can, By the way, I ended their playing the open e chord so you can go between these kind of rock and roll things and actual open chords. But notice that you get that thumb P. Basie jug out of palm muting. I almost palm mute everything nowadays because I don't play very well, so it makes it sound better. It gives you more of a chug and ah Ah, good. Earthy sound sounds really good with the blues, too. So this of this, right? So we're gonna play that in the exercise, tried chugging it with a little palm muting okay. And a final trick that I want toe, uh, tell you about is try playing one string at a time. This actually sounds really good with a palm you to let me show you that. So I hold down my fingers and I played the first string and then I play the second string on and like that, you notice how they ring out together. That's all right, because they're complementary notes on. Then I can go up to the next note. Okay, I kind of mess that up, but we'll see what makes it into the final recording. That's the idea is pluck one string at a time and you get this due to did a kind of walking bass kind of sound out of playing those notes. So that's the last technique. And the only thing left to do is to play a song, and I call it I got the blues so bad it makes me blue. So what? This is and you don't know this yet because we haven't We're not going to cover this. Maybe for another two lectures is you've got 12 bar blues here that we're going to play. We're gonna play the standard 12 Bar blues and then at one point, ah, Cord is going to be missing because we haven't learned it yet. So that's what also really makes me blue about this song. But let's play the blues together, shall we? So, account of four, we're gonna play the e chord, actually, account of 16 or so We're gonna play this record back and forth. Let's review ahead. Actually, the next thing we're gonna do is gonna play the a chord for two measures or two counts of four or eight counts. And then we're gonna go back to playing the E chord again and then comes in the ninth Measure, the mysterious missing cord. And then we're gonna do the accord, and then we're going to do the e chord for two more measures. So it sounds like this. Let's go to the first screen and play the e chord blues shuffle. I think I'll put some palm muting on way. Go. That was kind of the song, But you noticed that there was that missing area. Well, we're gonna fix that in the upcoming lectures. First, you gotta learn bar chords, then actually is part of the bar chords. We're gonna learn that missing cord, and then we're gonna get back into 12 bar blues and we're gonna wrap up with playing lead. So this is really exciting, and I look forward to playing guitar with you. Let's see what's next. Okay, we got the rest of the song here. Go ahead and play through it on your computer screen. And what have we learned so far, what we learned, how to play an open e rock and roll rhythm and open a rock and roll rhythm and how to switch back and forth pretty fast. Then we went to an open E blue shuffle two and a blue shuffle and switch back and forth, and we learned a technique for switching a little faster. And then we moved on to how to walk up to the next. Fret writes ago 1343 every once in a while and then palm muting to get that chug and then playing one string at a time. And finally we learned how to play. I got the blues so bad it makes me blue. So in the next lecture, we're going to talk about bar records on our way to beginning to play the full 12 bar blues rhythm along with its various variations. So I'll see you see