Transcripts
1. Intro to You Are My Sunshine: Hey, welcome, glad
to have you along. We're going to learn a standard. It's called You Are My Sunshine. You're going to need
a six string guitar. Maybe a pic If you
play with the pick, I don't play without one. And if you want, let me show you this. I have a chord
chart that's free. It's printable. It's on my website,
gear gnome.com. It's got the lyrics and Scott, where the chords
change, it makes playing along a lot easier. And I've got a whole load of other songs that
you might like to. Alright, so does
that all we need? You've got your guitar,
got your pick, got your O. You're going to need T, perhaps in a cowboy cocktail
glass. It helps a lot. Alright, here we go.
2. The Strumming Pattern: I'm not expecting you to play alternate base and strumming. We're just going to
look at the strumming and I'll show you how the base works for your information, then you can add it when
you are prepared to. The stroma, is this, I'm going to on beat one. I'm going to pick a single note. I'm going to aim for four or
five strings, four or five. I may not hit it. I may hit a 32. Doesn't matter. It's still sounds
like an ODM doing. So I'm going to beat one. I'm going to pick out
a single string on, and pick out a single
string on beats 13. And then I'm going to strum
on beats 24. So let's do it. 313131312313. Okay. I didn't again, I didn't even hit the
basis and that's okay. Because you're singing, There's
lots of stuff going on. You're singing, the
guitar is playing. There might, if you're jamming, there are certainly
other instruments to fill in the holes. You don't have to do
it all by yourself. My friend, That's
not all you do. It's not you doing all
the heavy lifting. One more thing we're
gonna do on this drum. One, strong, strong, I'm
going to go and so one. And on the end I'm pulling,
I'm strumming upwards. Okay. Get that. Now. Sometimes my
basement perfectly well, I went I got the
three or I got the four and the five and the
four and the five. Just fine. Sometimes I hit the three, sometimes I hit the three, Two or three times in a row. One time I think I hit the six. Again, doesn't matter, but that's the stroma
we're doing, right? So note down and note
down, down, down, down. That might be a
little fast for you, or it might be a little slow. But, you know, work
it in as you can. Let's move on to chords.
3. The Chords: Alright, so let's
look at the chords. We're going to be
in the key of D. Now, key means a
group of chords, just like a chord is
a group of notes. Alright? So no worries about that. We're gonna be in the key of D, which means our chords
are going to be d delta G golf in a alpha. Okay? So delta is shaped like a delta. Delta is a triangle in
the Greek alphabet. So this is actually
just a little triangle. Middle finger are skipped one. So if you're doing this, if
you're going middle finger, first string, second fret, index finger is like two
strings of above that on, I think it's still
a second fret. So I've got a skipped
one in the middle. Is that set? Yes, it's
the second string. Notice this, the third
string and the second fret. But now my ring finger is
gonna go on the third fret, on the second string. I got it. The music
has passed me by. So if you start
thinking D delta as a little triangle,
you practice that. Take it off, put it on, take it off, put it on
the delta as a triangle. Same thing with golf g. Um, you know, you've got your, I'm saying, gee, that guy
flipping me the bird. That's my little mnemonic. How I remember that? G. Are you flipping me the bird? Or am I flipping you
the bird, right? So d is a Delta G. He slipped me the bird and an a, I use three instead
of doing string two with one finger and string
three with another finger, string for with another
finger right here on the second fret, these 123. I just do that with one finger. So I go, Hey, look at that. I'm using one finger for
the a, c What I did there. Hey, look at that.
Just using one finger. Hey, look at that
using one finger. G, I'm flipping you
off and d delta.
4. BONUS: How to Find "Lost" Chords: So the three chords in
the key of D or Delta, or D, delta golf and a alpha. Okay? Now the way you can
do this and this, I'm going to do a whole, another class on how to
find the lost chord. But here we go. I'm going to just show
you this briefly. You've got five fingers.
Hopefully. I cut the stem off years
and years ago. Thank you, Dr. Haynes of Vivian, Louisiana for sewing
that back on for me. I've used it a lot in the past 35 or 40 years since
I got that off. Anyway. You've got five fingers
and we're going to start in the key lesson. Let's start with a. We're in the key it, if I
say we're in the key of a, go a, B, C, D, E. So as a 145 songs. So I pointed my first
fourth fifth finger, right? 145, first fourth, fifth. So if I'm in the
key of a, b, c, d, e, So I know the other two
chords in the key of a. First-off, someone says we're
gonna play in the key of a. Well, they've told me
one of the cords right there, a, B, C. And I know the fourth
is going to be delta D and the fifth
is going to be E. Echo, right? Ate. It works the same thing. Now there's no h in the
alphabet, musical alphabet. So if you have to go past Zhe, you have to start
over again with a. So let's just say, let's take G, key of G. There's no eight. So I'm gonna go back to a, G, a, B, C, D. So in the key of G, I know
that g is number one, a, B, C is number four, and d delta is number five. Okay, so now we're in
the key of D delta, delta Echo, foxtrot,
Golf alpha, right? So d, G, and a are
my fourth, fifth. Okay. So I'm going
to make the point. I think so I think
you've got it. Very cool. So, oh, ***** Tonk Women, great song by the Rolling
Stones has a two in it. So what would that be? There's only one spot
in the song, well, as in the verse where
it goes to the two. So if you're gonna
play ***** Tonk Women, it's in the key of
G, G and D and E, or G, a, B, C and D. G, a, B, C, D, or C and D are gonna be the
fourth and the fifth. But if it goes to the two,
you're gonna go to the a. And I'm not going
to play that here. That'll be another lesson. But there you go. Now you, now you got it, Now you got it and you will
never ever get lost again. Sometimes the you've
heard major minor, minor, major, major,
minor diminished. That's 1234567, major minor, minor, major,
major, minor minor. So I know this is not where I shouldn't even be
talking about this. But if you go to a, a two, you can play
a minor chord. If you go to three, you
can play a minor chord. If you go to a sixth, you
can play a minor chord. If you go to a seventh, you can play diminished
coordinate will sound fabulous. Although I think in
***** Tonk Woman, they don't go to the minor. They go to a major. A. Sorry for the tangent.
5. Ways to Kick Off the Song: Let's talk about a couple
of ways to start a song. Now, I can what I
called vamping. Other people have
caught, I've heard it called the idling. Kind of what I was
doing earlier on. I'm not showing you
the strong pattern. If we're all sitting
in a groove located, Dan, it's your turn to do one. Okay, I'm gonna do You are
my sunshine in d, d delta. So we've got people
over there who are tuned in their instruments in somebody's get a piece of pizza. Somebody else is just,
there's something wrong. Am a bluegrass session. The only guy who has an
electric instrument is the bass player generally. Okay, that's a nice bit
of etiquette to follow. So you need another guitar, you need an acoustic and
you need an electric. I gave you permission
to go buy another one. So I'm going to
light a little bit. I'm just going to fan here. Looking around the room. Okay, Everybody's getting ready. And I'm just signing
idling on the first, i'm, I'm vamping on the first
floor to the song, which is on the night that you saw that I stopped it For three beats before
I jumped into it. I could just have easily
a vamp right into it. Everybody is ready. The
other night while I sleep. Okay. That was the
one way to start it. You saw me do the other and
I'll show that to you. Okay. So I'm I'm vamping and now I'm getting
ready to start. Well, the first four beats of that song,
bom, bom, bom, bom. I'm not coming on
for the other night. The other night, I'm going to come in on the
word knight, the fourth beat. Okay, so I'm going to vamp, I'm going to stop because that gets everybody's attention. And then I'm going to do the lyrics and I'm
going to talk, I'm going to sing my way
up to that first hit. Here we go. Let's do it again. The other nine. Okay, you got that? That's a that's a second
way to start that. And a third way some people
will start it is they'll, everybody is kind of attentive
already in this group. I'll hit the chord one time just so I know where my
starting note is. The lie. So that's three ways you
can start that song. Okay? You can vamp all
the way through it. You can vamp and then break, stop, hard, stop for three beats and then come
in on the fourth beat. Or you can get your note and hit the fourth beat
with coming in like that. Okay, I think we
got it. That's it. I think that's pretty
good for the intros. Alright, we'll do, alright. That's it for the interests.
6. Ways to End the Song: We're going to end
with the chorus. And I'm going to in the song a couple of times and you
will see how that happens. So we're doing the course ready. You are my son. My own son. Make the sky is gray. You never know how
much I love you. Please don't take my son. Shine away. Please don't say mice. Shy. Know. That was a tag. Now let's
do a stinger or turnaround. Please don't shine. Oh way. I put that other chord in there. I put that, that G and the fourth right there
between the fifth, which is the a and the root, or the tonic or the, the one that's the word
I was looking for, which is the d Delta, which is the key is n. So mess around with
that and you'll be amazed at how good that sounds
and how easy it is to do.
7. Learn the Lead Guitar Break: Now, the leads are all, are built very much off of
the chord you're playing. So I've got my d delta. I'm going to start here, string three. And go to string two. Doesn't go to string one, but I'm not going to play
that. I'm not playing that. I'm going to play
that open first. I'm going to hammer it on. That's called a ham a hammer on. And this is a pull off. A hammer on, pull off. Okay, you probably
know that already. So at the beginning
of the song is okay. So I have not moved off the D chord
at all yet, right? I'm just doing just notes how that D chord then undergo something
called open 23775. And that ends on that D again. So it's gonna go
something like this. Someone to do something similar. I'm going to start
on to this time. Open again and then hammer. Back up seven, a late at finger down, so I can catch that last string. The vector d. All right, you got
that from the top.
8. BONUS: Four Super Secret Tricks: These four things will improve your playing
exponentially, okay? And they're real easy. And these are for things that I've learned over the years, and I've shown them to students. And they absolutely
work if you use them. Number one, never, ever,
ever, never, never. Never put your
guitar in this case. I should say, Don't store
your guitar in this case. Because what happens
is you put it in your case and then it's
bigger and it's clunky. And so you put it in a closet, you slide it under the bed, you go, well, I
know where it is. Well, now to play your guitar,
what do you have to do? You have to pull the case out. You have to put it on a chair or a table or on the bed
or someplace else. And you've got to
undo the latches and you've got to
pull the guitar out. And you then you've got to close the case backup and
you leave the case out or do you put
the case back under the bed for now or
whatever you're doing. And then now it's
been in the case, It's been laying
down and it's not a position where you might
be wanting to play it. So now it's out of tune. Now you gotta tune. It. Hurts my tuner. Well, I'll just go
on the Internet and I'll find a tuner on there. I'll use app on my
phone or whatever. Okay, now I have a garden tune. Holy smokes. By the time you finally
get to play your guitar, you've been jacking with it
for six or seven minutes. That might have been all
the time that you had. Now, if your sister's kids are coming over and
there are a bunch of little Helens and undisciplined and you're disappointed in him? Well, okay. Yeah. I'd I'd put it in
the case and I'd put it away so they
don't mess it up. But other than that, don't put it in the case or
if you go into a gig yeah. Put it in the case and take
it while it's in the case. But when you're at home, don't have to be
turned in the case, or your banjo or your
violin or anything else. Have it out. Okay, number two. And forgive my French. You know, a lot of people
will call these guitars. I'll say mostly kids and mostly electric guitar
players will call us and ask, Where's your axe man
and get your acts. Okay? So I used to say park, park your guitar where
you park your bottom. So I used to say, but a
student of mine said, park your acts where
you park your ***. Right? It's a rack thingy that you can just I've got this and I
just put it right here. What you do is you put this on that rack right where you sit where you're going
to sit for the evening, when you're done with
everything and you're just going to relax your place. Put this on a rack within
arm's reach of that place. Because now you're
sitting there, you can look over and
go, oh, you know what? I'm going to play that
you can pick it up and you can play it
because it's right there. Number three, I want
you to commit to play two minutes every day. Just two minutes. Don't don't plan on five, don't plan on nine or ten. Don't plan on 15 or a half-hour. Certainly not an hour. You get a lot better, a lot faster if you
play every day, even if it's only two
minutes a day for a week, that's 14 minutes, right? You you make more progress
playing two minutes a day than you would if you
played 30 minutes a day, once a week, or 15 minutes
a day twice a week. If you do it every day, you're reinforcing those little neurotic paths and your brain. And pretty soon what
happens is you realize that you're getting better because
you're not really learning. You already learned the last
time you played because it's still fresh in your brain
from yesterday, right? So two minutes a day. And the added benefit of this is you'll pick it up for two minutes because everybody
has got two minutes. If you're like me, man, I'll get up in the morning
and I'm already late. And I do stuff all day long. And I go to bed
and I dream about the stuff that I didn't
get done. Right. But I got two minutes. Sure. I got two minutes. So I'll pick it up
and I'll play for two minutes and you know what, sometimes that two minutes, I'll stretch into
five-minutes or seven minutes or 12
minutes or whatever. The fourth thing,
play in the dark. When I was a kid, we had a bathroom in our house that
didn't have any windows. It was an old house and it
was in the middle of a house. And you could go
in that bathroom, a drag a chair in. And because I like sitting on hard straight back
chairs when I play, I drag a chair in there, close the door, turn out the lights like in a
cave and you know what? At that point you
can't go first string, second fret, or you
can kinda count. But man, that will jumpstart, kickstart and boot
your learning in the, but you will, you
will pick it up quickly if you play in the dark.
9. Planning The Performance: The course is in green and
it's got four versus, right. Let's now, if you
look up at the top, it says, You Are My
Sunshine. We start on. The song, starts on the chorus. You Are My Sunshine would do that one time and then we go. So it's gonna be a long
version because our friends, our learning to play it. We're gonna do it many times. So we're going to make this
song as long as possible. So we're going to
start in the chorus, go to the first verse, then go to the chorus. Go to the second verse,
go to the course. Third verse, go to the chorus. Fourth verse, go to the chorus. Now, right after this
chorus on the fourth verse. You might want to make a note
there at the, this course. We're going to give them
a solo so they can either sing the solo or play the solo. Alright, so you got that. After we get to
the fourth verse, we're gonna do the course. And then after the chorus, we're going to go
instrumental only. And you're going to either
sing or you're going to play a featured
play, right? Okay. Then after we've gone
through the chorus, the verse and the
chorus one more time without singing so
that you can practice. Then what we'll do
is we will go to the chorus again
to end the song. We've talked about outros. We're going to do
the course the final time and we're going
to outro this. Penny, would you take the pen? And on the chorus, on the left side make a bracket around
the last two lines. Just make a bracket and
right tag outside of that. So what she's doing
is show that she's written tag around
the last two lines. So now I know that
we're going to go around one more time and do that as a tag. And
that'll end the song. But wait, there's more. Okay, now on the right side, big would you make a bracket
just for the last line, just for the last single line. Then write stinger on that. I usually use the
term stinger if I'm going to throw that
extra cord in there. So yeah, shown the word
Stinger. See how I did that? We did tag on the left,
stinger on the right. And now between that last
AND on the last line, just write a small
g in parentheses so that I know that
that's the cord to go to when I
played the stinger. On the right side of
the word stinger. No, no. Right here between the a
and the d on the last line, just a little g and maybe parentheses
around it for stinger. So this is the planning session. You do this in a jam
session to some degree in every jam session because everybody needs to know
how the song is gonna go. So I know that when
I do the stinger, you can see how she wrote that. I'm going to on the stinger
when I go only the last line, you know what, put a small
d in parentheses over the word, pleased to smile. D, yeah, D delta. That way I don't mess
it up to your screen, but you're not pointing to
the rewards on here, right? Okay. So there you go. So now when I look at this, when I look at this, you can see that I've got
my tag marked out. I know that we're going
to do the whole course. We're gonna do the tag
for those two lines. Then I'm going to
do a stinger or some people would
call it a turnaround. And I'll do that with
that time on the stinger, I'm going to throw
in that d delta, which you're going to
do on the tag as well. But on the stinger, mostly I'm going to play
that G. Okay, and now, and that'll give it that, that dang it, this song is
really over feel to it, right.
10. Full Song Performance: Okay, So you're ready to start. I'm going to vamp
it a little bit. I'm going to give it that
break like I like to do. And coming on beat four
with the chord again. You Are My Sunshine. You make me had the
sky is dark gray. Never know. Please don't shine away. The other night. I sleep. I dream die. But when I was Miss day. And I said, You are my son, make me happy. Skies are gray. Shy. Please don't be shy. Don't always make you happy. But if you really me and you know, someday, you are my son. Make me happy. When skies are gray. Please don't say my shying away. You told me you really love
me and no one else good. But now you me, too loud. My dreams are my
sunshine, my side. You make me happy. When skies are gray. You never know. And how much I don't
pay my shied away. And all my dreams seem
to me when i o way for so long to get me there, I'll take all the blame. You are my son. My own way. Make me much I Law. Please don't say My Sunshine. You are my son. Shall shine. You make me guys are great. Never know how much I love. These. Don't say my son dying away. Tag it. You'll never
know how much. John. Please don't
shine or stinger. Please don't shine.
11. The Class Project: You are my son. Shall shine. You make me have you
guys aren't gray. Never know how much I love. Please don't say My
Sunshine away, tag it. You'll never know
how much, John. Please don't be shy. No way stinger. Please don't shine.
12. My Final Remarks: We all do. Okay. I know I made a mistake to
several mistakes. I'm just saying wrong notes
saying, Hey, it's a jam. That's that's the beauty of it. Thank you so much for
doing this with me. With us. We we did
you have good time? I had a great time.
I love doing this. This is what I love to do. Practice, practice, practice. That's how you get to
Carnegie Hall in it. Is that how you get to the
Grand Ole Opry? Don't know. I've never been to
either, but yeah, I mean, you know, to
get to Sage practice. Practice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Remember the four
secret tips I told you? Alright, hey, let's do
this again sometime soon.
Dan Harville, Life is Good!
