Advanced Fingerstyle Guitar Masterclass by Edward Ong - Level 1

1. 1.00 : Introduction: Without a strong steady rhythm, a piece of music can easily become disjointed and confusing. Welcome to my advanced finger style guitar masterclass level one. My name is Edward own and I am a professional finger style guitarist with over 18 years of experience, with more than 25 million total views across my YouTube videos. I have been asked many times about how I arrange songs into finger style guitar. So to create a great finger style guitar arrangement, we must first incorporate various techniques and skills into our arrangement. But before we do that, we need to break down a song to understand its fundamental foundation. Just like a tree, needs strong roots to grow and thrive. Music also has its own fundamental foundation, which is the rhythm. The roots of a tree provides stability and support. And the rhythm of a piece of music, gifted structure and direction. Without a strong steady rhythm, a piece of music can easily become disjointed and confusing. But with a well-defined be, a song can flow seamlessly, captivating and engaging the listener. In this crash course, I will be teaching you some of the most fundamental rhythmic techniques that I used in my finger style guitar arrangement. These techniques are the first steps to arranging songs and will not only improve your overall percussive skills on the guitar, but also at a new level of creativity to your song arranging journey. By the end of this course, you will be able to play song arrangements using kick drums, slept, and body hits. So grab your guitar and let's get started on this exciting journey of arranging songs. 2. 1.01 A : Understanding How To Play Kick Drums: The first step to arranging a song is just like the first step of how a plant grows. We have to first grow our roots. Growing our roots would mean that we need to first break down and figure out what makes up the foundation of a song. As mentioned in the introduction part of this course, rhythm is the base foundation of a song. So a question for you, what instrument carries the main rhythm of a song? Is it the drums? Is it the piano, the guitar, or the singer? The first step to arranging a song is to listen to the draw lumps. This is because the drum carries the whole rhythm of a song. For some songs that do not have Trump's, you will need to listen carefully to the main instrument carrying the song. It can be a piano or it can be a guitar to begin with, and drums, there are four most basic sounds you can look for. Firstly, the kick drums. That's the biggest item in the drum. Hi-hat, snare. And Tom's. To practice your ear. Here is a quiz for you in this song. What are the most rhythm heavy instruments that are going on here? You think? What do you normally get away from the drains and gender? But it doesn't. It will be best if you distinguish which part of the drums is being used and how to replicate it in your guitar playing. So not to worry, in this module, I will teach you about the foremost essential sound of the drums to play on a guitar, kick drums. In guitar, we use our palm to hit the guitar. Snare, drums and hi-hat, we play as different types of slaps. You will learn that in the next few sections, toms and guitar, we played as other different types of body hits like this. Four basic types of drum sounds are in different sound frequencies. So you have to treat your guitar as the drunk to look for different frequency sounds which are similar to the drums, starting with the kick drums in this module. What is the kick drum? Kick drum is the main part of a drum kit as demonstrated earlier. So if you listen to a song, e.g. this song, there is a main bit that goes 1234. Kick drums are more like heartbeats. The heart of a song that sets the rhythm. Playing kick drums is the easiest method and finger style. We usually use our palms to perform kick drums. What you can do is bend your hands like this, forming an inverse V shape. And then use your wrist as a pivot to ban it downwards. To form a V-shape. This will naturally hit the guitar, giving you a deep sound. It is from an inverse V to a proper V-shape, inverse V. So proper V-shape. Here are few examples that I have used in my YouTube videos to perform kick drums. 3. 1.01 B : Where To Play Kick Drums?: Kick drums can be played in different parts of the guitar. It can be played nearest town hall, which is here. This is the most common place to play it because you will be needing to play other strings at the same time as well, like this. Other times when you would not need to play the strings using your right hand. Kick drums can be played at the lower bottom of the guitar here. So Waltz your hand perform tricks like tapping hammer ons and such like. So. Here are a few examples in my video that I have performed this technique. Other times when you will not need to play the strings using your right hand, kick drums can be played at the lower bottom of the guitar, right here. Same technique, inverse V to the normal V. Whilst your left hand performs trick like tapping MR. on and such. We can incorporate the kick drums right below here. Here are a few examples is my video that I have performed. This technique. You would want to usually hit the more hollow parts of the guitar to produce a deeper frequencies sound similar to kick drums. Hollow parts like these places here, here, here. Or maybe here. We usually play kick drums according to the main beats in the song. So given that your time signature is in common time signature, which is four beats in a bar. The kick drums are usually on the main beat of the bar, 1234. In some songs where there are ups, the drums only come in during the pre-chorus or the chorus. E.g. this song, just like their attention. It's written. I don't want to play strategies. 4. 1.01 C : Kick Drums In Alternate Beats: King drums can be played in alternate beats in a bar as well. Depending on the song, we will not stress too much about where to place the kick drums. Instead, we can always refer to the original song. We would like to play and arrange the kick drums accordingly. At the end of this first module, I will give you some examples of drumbeat for you to actually figure out and be creative yourself on how to look for your own combination. 5. 1.01 D : Combining Kick Drums With Other Techniques: As we know, finger style guitar is a style of playing the guitar where the guitarist becomes a one man band. Therefore, we have to include drums, bass, melody, and accompaniment in our plane to be a drama on the guitar, we have to first understand what a drama plays in a band. As mentioned, the three fundamental drumming techniques in finger style guitar are the bass, drums, slaps, and fields. Now, I will bring you through these techniques and how to apply them into your guitar playing. Percussion adds groove, helps maintain a constant tempo and enhances the dynamic of the song. And since drumming on the guitar creates noises, it does not compete with the songs melodies, it compliments. Therefore, it plays a vital role in spicing up your plane. Let's get straight into practice. As we have learned about crotchets before, here are four crotchet beats you can try. Playing techniques individually is an easy task, but the complex part of fingers style combines the methods simultaneously, e.g. combining the kick drums with plucking like this, hold the G chord. Perform a kick drum. Whilst you pluck the G chord. Before we start the exercise, the letter P in my tabs stands for palm. Play as the kick drums. Sometimes you will see this and P together in a taps, which means the same thing. In this case, the G chord and the letter P, our plate like this. The one with the bracket X means you only have to perform the kick drums Alone. Let's start with exercise one. 6. 1.01 E : Kick Drums Exercise 1: Let's start with exercise one. 7. 1.01 F : Kick Drums Exercise 2 Walkthrough: As you can see from this arrangement, did you notice that the bass drums are played at the start of every code? Yes. In this case, every chord changes at the start of every bar, except for the second last bar. However, it greatly depends on the group of the song. Sometimes the bass drums can be played twice in a bar and sometimes once in 2 bar. Please don't worry, we will go through all of these situations later in this course. As for now, let's move into exercise two. This time we shall play the kick drum. So four times in a bar. This will help you get used to playing the kick drums. In this part of exercise to, you will have to combine a slide with a base strong. Here is how you can play it using a pinky slight from the fourth to the fifth fret on the second string, so forth, to the fifth fret on the second string. At the same time, performed the bass drum together, wall plucking like this. Let's proceed with exercise two. 8. 1.01 G : Kick Drums Exercise 2: Let's proceed with exercise two. 9. 1.02 A : Introducing the Slap Technique: Have you ever slept someone in the face before? What sound does it produce? Slapping someone interface produce a high-frequency sound. So it is the same on the guitar to create sounds similar to the snares or the hi-hat of eardrums. We need to look for sounds with higher frequencies. So you can slap the front bot. You can slap the body, and you can slap the strings. So here is a practice for you. Out of the four parts of the guitar, I have slept. Which part of the guitar is the most similar to the snares? Which part of the guitar is the most similar to the hi-hat? 10. 1.02 B : Playing the Slap Technique Correctly: It is the strings and the fret board of the guitar. So let's begin slips. It is a technique used in finger style guitar to produce a high-frequency percussive sound similar to snares on the drugs. We usually play it using our right thumb. As you know from the term itself, it is called slip. So basically you have to slap the strings to produce a sound. Slap usually comes after a kick drum. Usually what I do is I use the sight of my thumb, the left side of the thumb to actually slap the guitar. We use slaps because we want to replicate the sound of a snare hi-hat of the drums, a site from using the thumb, what we can do is also slept the whole friend bought closer to the sound host. My sound hole is here. In regular guitarists, the sound hole would be somewhere here. So stepping near the sound hole on the fretboard would mean it's somewhere in this location. It is usually beyond the 12th fret with your three fingers like this. An example would be like this. It's in the fret board with more than two fingers would give you a mixture of hitting the woods and the high frequency of the slab on the strings. This would give you a sound similar to that of snares than hi-hats. Here are a few exercises and examples of when I use slap. 11. 1.02 C : Combining Melody With Slaps: There are a few types of slapping techniques in finger style guitar. The most important slap technique we will be learning today is the thumps lab technique. This is the most common technique used in finger style guitar to achieve a snare sound and melody at the same time. As said previously, to perform this trick, hit the side of your thumb lightly on the strings. It should give you a snare sound. But now, how do we combine the melody and slept together? We can introduce our middle finger into this technique. In guitar tabs, you will usually see x and a note at the same time like this. What you have to do is slip the strings using your thumb and at the same time, flip your right middle finger along the desired strings. Slip the strings using your thumb. And at the same time flip your right middle finger at the desired strings. Let's try out a simple exercise with this segment of the slipping exercise one. So how do we play this bar? Hold a D chord. Accordingly. When you reach the slapping part, slap the strings with your thumb and flick the second string simultaneously using your middle finger like this. To recap, hold a D chord, right? When you reach the slapping part here, slept the strings with your thumb and flip the second string simultaneously using your middle finger like this. Let's try it one more time. So did you get yours correct? The correct method to play the second slap node is the same as the first slap, not hold the D caught as usual and slept the threat string. It is the same like the previous Latin note. But now you are slapping the third string. I believe by now you must be thinking, why is there a bracket around the first slapping node and no brackets in the second. Here's a tip for you. The notes in the brackets stands for ghost notes and they are meant to be played softly. Why? It is? Because the first slapping here is not the melody. Therefore, it is meant to be in the background. However, the second slapping note is the main melody of the song. Therefore, you will need to play it louder than the Goes naught. You might think that this is not necessary for your playing. But trust me, understanding and applying dynamics correctly in your arrangement is what differentiates you from any other guitarist. So let's try out slapping exercise one. 13. 1.03 : Slap Notes: I believe you have watched traditional movies about how people go to war, riding on a horse in the olden days, what they would do is that they whip the horse. Well, every single time the horse is being width, there is a sound produced which is similar to what we are learning in this section today. In the previous section, we learned how to use the slapping technique to produce percussive sounds. In this section, we will learn how to use the slapping technique to produce notes like this. So when we need to slap and played notes at the same time, we use this technique. What we can do is instead of resting or thumb on the string after you perform the slab. What we do now is write after the slab, immediately lift your thumb away from the strings, like that. Just like the whip bouncing off the strings, immediately lifting your finger off the strings. This would vibrate the strings creating the note you want to play. This technique is mainly used by bass guitarist when they want to include percussive elements into their baselines. We can also incorporate this technique into our plane. Here are few examples of this technique that I have used in my videos. 14. 1.04 A : Body Hits: Body hits, as you can see from the name itself, you will hit the body of the guitar, creating multiple different sounds. For body hits, we usually use three fingers, the index finger, the middle finger, and the ring finger. So we can do finger rolls. Using your ring finger, followed by a middle finger, index finger continuously as triplet beads. As well as reversing the sequence from the index finger, the ring finger, index finger, middle finger, ring finger. To play the finger roll in triplet bits. We can play like this. 1231, 23s for body hits, you can use your thumb as well to hear the guitar. Usually the bottom part of the guitar here. So whereas the index finger, middle finger, and ring finger can be hit at the sites of the guitar. It will give you a higher frequency sound then hitting it here. Compare. What you want to do here is actually listened to the type of sounds you want to create using the body hit. There are no strict rules to it. It is more like knowing what kind of sounds you want. So usually body hits are similar to Tom's on the drums. Poems are usually used as fuels. So when we want to play the fields, we use toms. Let me give you an example. You have various sounds for Toms. You have a range of frequencies, ranging from high frequencies to the low frequencies. You get, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. What you can do with a guitar is the same thing as well. You can look for spots on your guitar. Hollow spots will give you a deeper sound. Whereas less hollow spots, which is nearer to the edges of the guitar, will give you a higher frequency sound. This trick can be used in conjunction with kick drums and as well as slaps and tapping. This technique is rather complex when you are combining it with other techniques. But not to worry, I have performed body hits in my arrangement on YouTube. So I will go through this with you so that you will learn how to use them and then proceed to create your own sets of body heat combinations in your arrangement, you will need to get inspired by combinations that you have played before or combinations in other songs to naturally create your own body heat combinations, it is going to be tough. So what I would recommend first is you will need to practice a wide range of body heat patterns or tom patterns in drunk tracks to create one on your own. 15. 1.04 B : Breaking Down Body Hits Sequences: Here is a section in my arrangement where I have used body hits. I ended the song Blue Book with a percussive sequence like this. Stripping the body hits down. If you can hear, there are different frequency sounds to each and every body hit. I started the bit sequence with a low-frequency kick drum sound, followed by a finger roll from ring finger to the middle finger to the index finger. Proceeded by another deep kick drum sound using the inverse V to V technique like this. Followed by a high-frequency slap on the bottom side of the guitar. Here. Using your ring finger and your middle finger. Then followed by using the size of my thumb to replicate the sound off Tom's. Moving up the thumb to another less hollow part of the guitar, which is here, which is near the fret bought. And proceeded to perform another Tom slap on the body to create another high-frequency sound. Then finally ended the sequence with slept harmonics. Here is how the combination of body hits would sound like slowly, fast. Now, practice with me with just seven steps. Step one, kick drums. Step two, finger roll. Step three, kick drums. Step for high-frequency Tom slip. Step five, thumb slip. Step six, thumb slip. Step seven, slept the strings. I repeat. Step one, kick drums. Step two, fingers. Step tree, kick drums. Step four. Hit the site of the guitar. Step five, high-frequency Tom's. Step six, another high-frequency Tom's. Step seven, slap. 16. 1.05: Outro: In my future courses, you will learn how to combine the percussive techniques and the melody techniques together to create a masterpiece. But before you proceed, it is crucial that you fully understand and know how to use these techniques accurately and correctly. To help you with this, I've compiled all the exercises from this masterclass into a PDF document. Click on the link in the description below to download it for free. If you require for the assistance and feedback on your playing, feel free to let me know in the comments section or through the link provided. I'm here to help you succeed and improve your finger style guitar skates. I'll see you in my next advanced finger style guitar course. Keep practicing and stay motivated.