Fingerstyle Guitar For Beginners

1. Introduction: hi and welcome to the course. I'm so glad to have you join the ranks of successful guitar players that got their start the very same way you're about. My name is Kurt Melber, your instructor for this course. I played guitar for 13 years and still love it to this day. Over this time, I've taught hundreds of students and played in front of thousands of people. I still play guitar daily and love seeing new students appreciate the beauty of guitar and music in general. Finger style guitar, specifically, is an absolutely beautiful styling attire. My goal for this course is to get you hooked on the guitar and comfortable playing finger style songs. You come to this course confident in your ability to play guitar. Also model mention Right now. If you ever got any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to message me. I love getting responses from students because it makes online teaching much more personal than it usually is. Okay, enough talk already. Let's get to learn it 2. Getting Ready To Play: holding the guitar is pretty simple. Both electric and acoustic are the same. They've got a curve on the bottom that you rest on your right leg. The right arm goes over top of the guitar body and your left hand goes around the neck in the front board near the end. 3. Your First Notes!: we'll get another trial set up. It's time to play our first notes. Take your right hand and pick the thinnest string with your thumb. The most common mistake here is picking too hard. You don't need to kill it. Just a nice, easy pick. We call this the top string. It's technically on the bottom, but it's got the notes with the highest pitch, so we call it the top stir. You just played a note. A note is just a specific sound. Whenever you play a different string, you play a different note. We named the notes Different letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, f and G. Okay, now try playing the second string, which is string just on top of the one you just played. Not really. The third string, which is the one just on top of that and that. And simplest forms high play guitar by playing a bunch of different notes in a specific order to make a melody 4. Fretting Notes: Now let's get you playing some more notes. There two ways to change the note you're playing on the guitar. The first is just playing a different strict like we did in the other video. The second is by fretting a different fret on the same strip. If you remember from the last video threats of the metal bars that run across the fretboard by pushing down the stream, we wanna play just before fret, we could make the string play a different note like this. Now it's your turn. Well, use your index finger, which we call your first finger. If you played piano before, you might get a little confused here because we don't use the thumb to play guitar. So we counter fingers starting indexing using the tip of your finger. Place your finger just behind the first fret, not touching it. Not over here. Were you out there? You gonna make sure your fingers nice and curled and then play that if you get a buzzing like this, E means you're pressing almost hard enough, but you need to press a little harder if you get a muted click. Either you're on the front or you're pressing way too lightly, and you need to press a lot hurt. Remember, if it's not quite working right, pause or replay the video and try this as many times as it takes as many times as it takes as many times as it takes as many times as it takes until you can get a nice sound most of the time. Once you get him good sound. Move on to the next section. 5. Changing Notes: The next step is how we make melodies or songs by playing multiple notes in a specific order. Once you can smoothly play multiple notes, you can combine them to play simple tunes. Let's try it. Using the tip of your finger, place your finger just behind the first fret not touching it. Not over here, right about there. You gonna make sure your fingers nice and curled and then play that. So let's play Jingle Bells now. It's pretty simple. You're gonna start and play the open first string three times. Then you're gonna do that exact same thing again. And then once you go that you're gonna play the open first string. Then the third front of the first string thin the first fret of the second string and then the third fret of the second string and on back to the open first string. So what that's gonna sound like so far is this. Oh, nice and simple. Try that one a few times, then add in the second half. So now we're gonna go to the first fret of the first string and play this one of five times and then go back to the open string for three times and then go to the third floor of the first string and play that twice thing to the first front thing to the third floor of the second string and and then end on the first fret of the second string. So that second half is going to sound like this way. Let's try the whole thing. 6. Reading Diagrams: so you may have noticed the diagrams in the bottom corner of the screen in the last video. These air fingering diagrams will use them throughout this course to show you what you need to play. Reading them is pretty simple. The layout is meant to represent the fretboard of the guitar standing upright. The vertical lines represent each of the strings, and the horizontal lines represent each of the frets. Above those, there's either an X or an O for each string. Those indicated String You play and X is indicated string. You don't play if what you're playing requires a finger. This will be indicated by a circle with a number where the circles located shows the front you play in this case is the first fret on the first string, and the number inside tells you it's finger to use. Remember your index finger, our first fingers, one middle fingers to rain, fingers three and pinky is for 7. Tuning The Guitar: If you can already tune a guitar, feel free to skip the next to videos. Otherwise, let's get to it. So remember the tuning pegs? We looked at the guitar parts video. We'll be using them now. To get started, you need to download an APP search guitar tuner on the APP store. They're dozens of free ones for any phone, and they'll do basically the same thing, so it doesn't matter which one you use. My guitar is a built in tuner, but I download an app called G strings to show you how it's done. I'm just using on my tablet here. This one's really simple, which I like, but any of them work the same, so don't feel the need to use the same one. Go in stolen now, and I'll show you how to use it in the next lesson. 8. Tuning The Guitar Pt. 2: got it. Okay, so the tuner will have some sort of a measurement bar with a center line. Pluck the thickest string. Remember, this is the sixth string, and your turnover will move to a location. That's not your strings plan. By turning the tuning pegs that's attached to your string, you can change the pitch of the string, your goals to get the strings to B E, A, D, G, B and E and right on the center line of your at meter. This app shows these notes on the top bar so you don't have to remember yourself. We'll start with six. String guitar will be in a different place than mine, though, so you'll have to listen to figure out which way you need to go on this app. If the box with the desired strings name is on the left, it means your string is too high and if it's on the right, your strings too low. So we'll start with the sixth stream. So this one's low, so we've got to go up a decent amount to get to it. Okay, that one's good. The white means we're good. Then we can move on to the next one. Through this time, we're a little bit high. There you go, moving on to the D String way. Now the next one, we're very high. It's time todo onto the next drink and finally the first trip. There we go. Your guitar should be all tuned up. Now play each string along with me. Now you're should sound the same if it doesn't that strings on the wrong note and you should go back and figure out how to fix it before you continue. If your strings also on the same as mine, you're ready to move on. You should to new guitar before you play every day. If you got a guitar goes out of tune, no matter how good a player you are, it'll still sound awful. You also want to get used to hearing the correct sounds because it'll help your ears get used to the way it should sound. And developing a goody ear is very useful for a musician wants to get the hang of it. You only take about a minute to tune a guitar, and you only have to turn the pegs a little bit to make them perfect, because they won't change that much from day to day. 9. More Notes!: previously, we played two notes on the first string. Theo Open first string on the first fret of the restaurant. Now let's add on third note still stand on the first string. This time we're gonna place our third finger or the ring finger just before the third fret . Sam technique is the first finger to put the finger plays just before the front with your thumb gently on the back of the neck. Try this and taking a clean sound. Remember, if you get a buzzing, you need to press a little bit harder. If you got a click, you need to cross a lot harder. Once you get this down, let's try the same exercise before start by playing the open string gently and then switched to the third finger on the third. Fret and then back again. Try this again until you can play along with me. - Great ones you gonna do this fluently were well on your way to playing songs. Doesn't sound like much at this point, but this is the most crucial step of learning to play guitar. Once you can smoothly switch between notes, everything else comes much easier. So again, take your time on the section and get it right before moving on 10. Basics Of Timing: their two main parts to making a song or melody. The first is the notes to use as we've explored in the last few videos, and the second is timing. Timing is how long you play a note for and when you play it. If I play. The exact same notes is Jingle Bells, but hold them for different lengths of time. Sounds like a completely different song, so timing is almost as important as the notes they're hitting tell. But with timing, it's useful to tap your foot and a constant, steady pace. In the last video, we got an introduction to timing when he played along with me in the note changing exercises. This time we're going to the same thing. But now we're aware of the time again. So to count Jingle Bells, what you're gonna do is use one beat for almost every note. There's just a few notes that change when we play the open first string, the six times at the beginning. The 1st 2 are one beat, then the 3rd 1 is two beats and then the fourth and fifth or one beat on the sixth is to beat. So if I count that That's 12341234 And then when we move on, the next four notes are going to be just one beat. And then when we moved back to the open first string, that's gonna be four beats. So that's gonna be 12341234 And then from that on, every single note of the song or for the rest of the song is just one beat. 1234123412341234 So you can try that out on your own or with me tapping your foot and I'll count along. 1234 1234123412341234123 412 34! 1234! 1234 11. How To Succeed: guitars like learning any other physical skill, like basketball hockey painting, which unfortunately cries lots of time and practice to get good at. But you can reduce this time by practicing smart, you get much better results. If you could focus, I think about what you're learning and, most importantly, learned from your mistakes quickly. Here's some strategies for getting the most out of this course. Practice regularly. Make it a goal to play every day for 10 to 20 minutes. There are very few people who don't have just 20 minutes in a day to put into practice. Writes intelligently. Doesn't help if you put a halfhearted effort, and while you do practice, you should focus completely on the guitar. Well, practicing. Really Think about what you're doing versus what you should be doing and figuring out your mistakes. Play along with the videos. When I show you how to do something, you should either play along with me or listen. Pause the video and try yourself. You should always have a guitar in your hands while watching these videos go back to the videos multiple times a refresher. These videos are all pretty short and usually only teach you one or two things. This is done on purpose so that you can go back and look at a specific thing if you didn't quite get it right the first time. But don't get stuck on something. You don't have to be totally perfect before moving on. We watched videos and read You exercise until you understand everything and a comfortable playing the exercises and then move on. I still many mistakes when I played now, so you shouldn't expect yourself to be absolutely perfect before moving on. Finally, if you've got any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact me. Is at any time. As long as I got an Internet connection and not sleeping a usual apply pretty quickly. 12. Introduction To Exercises: Okay, that's it. For concepts to this section, we're starting off slowly but the fundamentals of changing notes and timing of the most important parts of playing guitar. If you can take the time to get good at these fundamentals, you'll be in a great place. This section contains multiple different exercises for you. You should spend as long as it takes to be able to play all of these exercise. Well, don't expect to master them all in a single day. Go back to any of the previous videos if you need a refresher on anything and move on to the next section on Lee. Once you can play with me on all of these exercise, they may not be the most interesting exercise in the world, but I promise if you get good at this stuff, the exercise in the coming sections will be much more interesting and much easier thing. If you tried to skip ahead, there's some common issues that players often have questions on. At this point, the first is finger soreness. The tips of your fingers will probably start to hurt at some point during the exercises. If they haven't started. Hurting already was totally normal and overtime your finger finger tips will get used to it . If your fingertips start to hurt, just stop playing for that day and come back the next day or the day after, and they'll be finding it. There's no need to push through the pain. Do the same thing. If your hands get tired, your probably not used to using these specific hand muscles so they'll get sore the same way any other muscle does. When you take a workout, just take a break and come back when you're not sore anymore. The third thing is fingernails. As a guitarist, you've got to keep your fingernails short. Sorry, girls. You'll make it 10 times harder on yourself to play anything with long fingernails. I honestly cut my fingernails at least twice a week. It just makes it that much easier to play. Okay, time to get to the exercise 13. Sec 1 Love yourself Pt 1: Now let's try putting what we learned in this section to use in a real song. Let's Play It Love Yourself by Justin Bieber. The song is pretty simple, so it's a nice and easy introduction to riel finger picked songs. If you don't know the song, he should check it out now will be playing the main riff that's playing right in the beginning of the song. Now, in this song, we're going to jump around the fretboard a lot, but the technique is the same as we've done so far. Start by placing your first finger on the seventh fret of the fifth string. Then slide your first finger down the six Threat Um, then go down to the fourth threat. Still with the first finger. Try this a few times. 12 three, four Uh oh. Now start with your first finger on the ninth. Fret then, just like last time. Move your first finger down this time of the seventh fret and then end on the six friends. One, 23 four. Once you can do that, try playing both together with the 1st 1 and then the 2nd 1 one to three four. Oh, uh and it doesn't sound like the song yet, so we'll fill it in the next video 14. Sec 1 Love Yourself pt 2: So this song does something called pinching. It's where you use your thumb and another finger on your right hand at the same time. Place basically play a bass note and a trouble note or a low note and a high note at the same time. We did the baseline in the last video, so now we'll try the trouble line. So place your third finger on the ninth fret of the second string. If you get are as dots on it, these dots will be on the third, the fifth, the seventh, the ninth and the 12th frets. So that kind of makes it an easier way to reference where you are instead of counting up from one each time. This time, you're going to use your first finger on the right hand player notes. This is the first time you've done this, so just try playing the open string a few times to get used to it. Okay, so back to the night front with your third finger on the second string, play that thing move down to the seven Threat, still on the same string, still, with the same finger on finally moved down to the fifth fret still on the second string. Still, with the third finger, try playing these three one to three four. Awesome Now will do the second half of the riff, which follows a similar pattern just with different frets. Start on the 10th Fret still, with the same finger stolen the same strength, then moved to the ninth front and then end on the seven. Threat tried that a few times. One, 23 four. The last step is to put it all together. Play the first part. We just did then play the second part. We just did one to three four. Sweet. Tried that a few times to get used to it. And in the next video, we'll put the baseline and the trouble line together. 15. Sec 1 Love Yourself Pt 3: although it's left to do now is put the two things we already know how to play together. It's gonna be tricky at first, but you've already played everything we're doing here. All we're doing is playing the first riff in the second riff at the same time, I'll play it first so you can hear it full speed, and then I'll go really slowly so you can really see what's going on. - UH , one to three four. Ah, if you notice both your left and right hand, basically play the same finger shaped the entire riff. The only thing that changes is your left hand sliding up and down the fretboard. Try it really slowly with start on, work on getting it a little faster when uncomfortable, really slowly. You don't have to play this at full speed if you don't want to work up to it, but you should at least be able to play it slowly before moving on. We'll get lots of practice with this later in the course, so don't worry if it's not totally perfect right now, you're playing well. Get smoother with practice 16. Intro To Section 2: Hi there. Welcome to Section two. Last section. You got oriented with the guitar and learned all the foundations to move forward. In this next section, we're going to dive headfirst into arguably the most important part of playing guitar courts. Music Accord is simply playing more than one note at the same time on the guitar. We do this by playing multiple strings at once. We're gonna focus mainly on the left hand. In the section your right hand still gets used. But left hand is by far the hardest part of playing guitar playing chords and the part beginners struggled the most with Don't worry, it will split plenty of time on the right hand in the next sections. Remember to make sure you don't rush through the course and progressive drawn pace and stuff. You learn much better by going at whatever speed works for you. Everyone's got a different learning styles. Some students like to rush through and get everything done as fast as possible, while other students prefer to really take their time and master each concept before moving on. I'd recommend taking the time needed to play each exercise comfortably, but as I said before. Don't worry about being absolutely perfect before moving on. We covered some good ground on theory. The last section so in this section is more exercise than the last section on that note. Grab your guitar playing. 17. What Is A Chord?: accord is just playing multiple notes at the same time, we do this by playing multiple strings at once. The combination of multiple notes makes a nice full sound that's typically uses the background music or rhythm. Guitar songs are typically made by putting a bunch of single notes together as what should recognize the main melody, which is usually song or played as a guitar riff and other instruments. Playing chords makes up the background of the song if you listen to someone singing with a guitar in their hands, Typically they're playing chords on the guitar and single, singing single notes at a time to make up the melody. If you can remember from Last Section and music, we named the different notes, the different letters of the alphabet A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Certain combinations of notes, some good together and some don't by combining the notes that sound good. Together, we create courts. Cords also get named in a very similar way from a letter from A to G. Naming cords is a little different, though, because we've got some variations. The three main types of chords will come across that actually did dozens of different types , but most of the time we only use the 1st 2 types, and sometimes with you see the third his main types or major chords, minor chords and seventh courts. All I really need to know is major chord sound, happy minor chord sounds sad and seventh chord sound like something's a little off. This is all you really need to know. To be able to correctly identify most courts, staying true to our goal of playing your favorite songs quickly. We won't go into depth on why they sound this way because it won't help you play better, and it will slow your progress down. But if you're interested in the theory behind these cords, feel free to look at it more on your own. It's really interesting stuff. That's the kind of thing you'd enjoy. I also recommend learning a bit more of the theory. If you're interested in song writing little theory, knowledge will help you out a lot 18. Reading Diagrams: So in order to play chords easily, we've got to learn something new here. We've got to learn how to read chord diagrams. Reading them is pretty simple. The layout is meant to represent the fretboard of the guitar standing upright. The vertical lines represent each of the strings, and the horizontal lines represent each of the frets. Above those, there's either an X or an O for each string. Those indicated String You play and X is indicated string. You don't play if what you're playing requires a finger. This will be indicated by a circle with a number where the circles located shows the front you play in this case is the first fret on the first string, and the number inside tells you it's finger to use. Remember your index finger, our first fingers, one middle fingers to brain fingers three and pinky is for guess what cords are displayed the exact same way. The only difference is that there will be multiple circles to indicate fingers and multiple strings to play 19. How Are Chords Displayed?: by this point, you're an expert in fingering diagrams. You saw a lot of them. The los section. Guess what? Cords are displayed the exact same way. The only difference is that there will be multiple circles to indicate fingers and multiple strings to play awesome. You know how to read courts. That was easy. 20. Your First Chord - G: OK, now it's time to actually play your first court. First things first. I hope you've been remembering to tune your guitar before you play each day. I can't stress enough how important it is to tune your guitar each time you play. I didn't when I was learning, and I had a tough time working on my ear a few years later because I learned the wrong note associations Early on. If you've already tuned guitar, great. If not, make sure to tune it before continuing chords sound awful when your guitar isn't into. Now that that's out of the way onto the court, the first court we're gonna play is G major. This is about a simple as we can get with courts, So taking your third finger and we're going to use the same technique is the first finger you're gonna curl it. Use the tip of your finger. Place it just behind the fret on the third fret. Once you've got that, you're gonna play the top three strings and that's your first court. A few important things to keep in mind. First off, make sure playing lightly with the right hat seems the same thing as single notes. If you play too hard, it'll sound rough and choppy. You might break a string also similar to single notes. Make sure you're fretting properly. I want to stress this right here is gonna be extremely important. This lesson. You should be fretting with you on the third fret with your tip of your finger curled on just before the front. Make sure you focus on this because you'll have an incredibly different, difficult time with the next cords. If you don't do proper position, let's try the court again. Make sure you're fretting correctly. Played a few times and see if you can get a nice easy smooths out 1234 Once you can play, that's nice and easy, and the actually like the sound of it. It's time to move on the next video 21. Your Second Chord - G7: time for your second court. This one's very similar. The G major. This one's a G seven. The G seven is really simple. You're just taking your first finger. I'm placing on the first fret. That's it. Then you're gonna play the top three strings. You should get a nice clear sound just like my court. Make sure to front your note properly and strum nice and smoothly with right hand. Try to get a few times until it sounds nice. Just a reminder. I'm moving my other fingers out of the way so you can see the court better. Your other fingers don't need to move the other way when you play 1234 Now remember that seven chord sound? A little strange? This called dissonance. It's 11 of the notes in a chord creates a sound that doesn't seem to quite fit with the court. It seems a bit weird that we'd intentionally use accord. That sounds strange, but in a few videos will come back to. The purpose of this is and it's actually pretty neat. Once you see it 22. Changing Chords: soms would sound pretty boring if we just played one single chord the whole time. So just like notes, we play multiple different cords to make up a song. We're gonna try changing between courts. This is really where the magic happens and when you're playing, starts to sound like actual guitar playing. Once you get it smoothly, I warn you in advance. This is the single hardest skill for beginners to get used to. Changing chords requires you to coordinate a lot of different hand movements very quickly. We'll start out very simply right now, so it should be all right. But take your time on the section because it's not easy. If you can master this section, though, you'll already be 80% of the way to play. In real songs that sound good. We're going to start the same way we did on the first trip. By switching between the G major in the G seven courts, Hold for four B teach. Try this a few times until you can play along with me. One trick that'll help you is to not worry too much about playing the top three strips, and you play the fourth string accidentally. It honestly doesn't make that much of a difference. It will for some chords if there's a really dissonant note. But for the most part, it's not critical that you only play the specifics tricks. Humans can't tell apart low notes nearly as well as higher notes. So for the most part, lower strings kind of get lost in the overall sound. It's also much harder to get used to switching with your left hand, so you should focus on your left hand more than your right hand. Just make sure you're not struggling too hard with that, said well, stress switching between the G major and G seven for four B teach. Remember to focus on your left hand and try and play smoothly and gently with your right hand, making sure your wrist is loose and not tense. Try this exercise until you can play along with me. The most important part of this is timing. You want to try this exercise as many times as it takes to be able to play exactly along with me. Smooth transitions between chords is the biggest difference between beginners and non beginners and playing courts. 1234 you can play along with me. That's fantastic. You're now actually changing between courts. If it's still struggle, take your time and work on this until you can play along with me and have it sound nice. 23. Gradually Increasing Speed: This is a new concept and by far the best method for learning a new song on guitar. The best way to get good timing is to practice with and even beat. This is called a Metrodome. All it does is make a sound at a regular interval. We call this interval the number of beats per minute, or BPM. Up to this point, every exercise you've done has been at 60 beats from a or 60 BPM. They're 60 seconds in a minute, so that means that 60 BPM there is a sound exactly every second you can try this out for yourself. If you go to Google and search Metrodome, a little widget pops up. By moving the slider, you can change the number of beats per minute. This is called the Tempo of the song. Try sliding into 60 BPM and press play. If you look oclock that shows seconds, you'll notice that the time between beats is the same as the time for the second hand to move. Once most modern pop songs air at 1:20 p.m. That's the standard tempo. Slow songs will often be around 90 BPM and some particular fast ones made upto 1 40 or higher. So how does this apply to our plan? Up to now, when we've sped up the exercises, we've gone from holding a note for four beats, the holding it for two beats and finally the one beat. But if we change the tempo, weaken still hold for four beats. But make those four beats faster, slower This way, we're not changing the individual timing of the notes in our song or changing the speed of the song itself. Have you ever heard a remix of a popular song? This is what they're doing if the remixes faster than the original, just changing the tempo. I took a pill any easier to show of e g. I was cool. I took a pill, any bees to show a Fiji I was cool. That's also happens to be the single most effective way to learn new songs. It's exactly how I and every other single good guitarist learns a new song. When you're just learning a song, there's no way you can play it full speed. In the beginning. It'll just selling a mess. But it doesn't take much practice to play at 1/4. This original speed, or sometimes even less. By starting out super slow and gradually increasing speed, you learn to play things that are much faster and more accurately than fumbling around at regular speed. They're too easy and free ways to have a metro. No, you can just use a lot on Google or download an app similar to the guitar tuner there, dozens of free ones that all do the same thing. Just search Metrodome on the APP store and pick one. Download a metronome app, and I'll see in the next video we'll try it out. 24. Gradually Increasing Speed Pt. 2: Okay, let's try this out. We're gonna try the same chord change we did earlier from G Major to G seven and back. This time, we're going to start 35 BPM and gradually work our way up to 90. Don't worry. If you can't play at full speed right now, just try your best. That's pretty fast, and this is more to show you how it's done. - Hose that. Hopefully you can see how that makes it much easier to get your speed up. I encourage you to do this for any exercise in the course that are too fast for you to play the start. Watch me to the exercise than pause the video and try it yourself in a slower tempo and then slowly work your speed up to my speed or somewhere around there with the Metro. This is one of the most valuable practice skills you can have. It's by far the best way to play things that are too fast to play right away. We'll do this in a few exercise for the section to get used to it 25. A Third Chord - C: it's time to introduce another court. This court is C major and is definitely harder than the lost ones. So to play this chord, you're gonna take your first finger and front the first fret of the second string. This is where proper positioning really becomes important. Because if you're sloppy, then you're gonna mute strings. So you got to make sure you use the tip of your finger and curlett a lot so that your Onley hitting the second string and the other two strings run open. You're probably gonna be blocking some strings at this point, and that's totally know. Small players have a disadvantage and stretching their fingers, but a major advantage here because bigger fingers make it tougher not to block other strings. A good way to test if records are working right is to place your fingers, then pick each string individually. This way you can see what strings are causing your problems and fix that specific problem 95% of the time. If an open string doesn't make the right sound, it's because another fingers blocking 95% of the time. If a fretted string isn't making the right sound, it's because you're not using your proper finger. He's your fingertip. Call your fingers and press fairly hard, right before the front by playing string individually, you could tell instantly what your problem is and how to fix it. Don't expect this to get it right away. It's totally normal to take a bit of time to get used to this motion. Take some time to figure out what mistakes you're making and fix them. Once you can do that, will try and change from a C major to a G seven to G made. All held for Accounted for. 1234 uh, - move on. Once you can do that, smoothly changing chords is not easy. In fact, it's probably the hardest thing for beginners to learn. Remember to make sure you're getting all of your notes. If you can't play along with me a full speed, now is the time to try starting a slow as you need and work your way up to 60 bpm. I'll leave that as an exercise for you to do on your own. You're gonna need to learn how to do this on your own. At some point 26. Sec 2 Hey There Delilah Pt 1: Okay, let's get some practice with cords by trying another song. Hey there, Delilah By the Plain White T's If you don't know the song, take a listen to it on YouTube before going through this video. I'll start by playing the riff so you can hear what we'll be learning. So this song switches between two courts a variation on the sea court we learned earlier and e minor This time you're C Chord has your first finger on the first fret of the second string on your third finger all the way on the third fret of the fifth string. Now, the good thing about this one is you don't have to worry about blocking the fourth string with your third finger. It's fine if the fourth string doesn't play right now because we don't need it for the song . I know what you're gonna do here is alternate between your thumb on your fingers. Start by playing the fifth string with your thumb, Then play the second string with your second finger and all you're gonna do is alternate Between these two, all they're gonna dio is alternate Between these two. 123 four. Cool. Now moved to the second quarter. Your second chord is an e minor, and it's very easy. Put your second finger on the second fret of the fourth string, and that's it. Now, just like with our C chord, we're gonna alternate between your thumb and your finger. This time, though, your thumb is gonna play the fourth string and your second finger will still play the second straight. Just alternate between these two notes. Ready one to three four. Awesome. Once you can play those two individually, try playing them together. Well, try this out in the next video. 27. Sec 2 Hey There Delilah Pt 2: okay. Time to put it together in our riff. You're gonna alternate four times on each chord before switching. Listen to me. I think you better try. 123 four. - And that's basically how you play. The riff is just one more thing to add in Now. Each time you play the second string with your second finger you're also gonna play the third string with your first finger. Absolutely. Everything else stays the same. Listen to me than try it out. 1234 That's actually everything. You can play a song your own and move on when you're ready again. Don't worry about making it perfect before moving on. Practice this a few times each day And Italy Great, no time. 28. Intro To Section 3: welcome to Section three in the last two sections. We've worked on the fundamentals and we've got some good court changes going on with her left hand. Now, we're gonna take us some time to focus on the right hand and bring it all together to make some really nice sounding, finger picking stuff. This is we're really going to get into the cool, nitty gritty of finger picking, so let's get started. 29. How To Read A TAB: There's one thing we have to learn before diving into the section. How to read Tabs Tabs are simplified way of writing down music for the guitar that make it really easy to figure out new songs and learn new things. These air, displayed as six lines with numbers at different points each line represents, represents a string six on the bottom to first on the top. Each number represents the front to play, and we read left to right. If two or more numbers on top of each other, you play multiple strings at a time. If the records in a song, you may have to figure out which fingers to use because only the frets are shown in taps. Timing is also often not in taps. Some are spaced up properly, but more often it's just the front without time. By listening to the song, you can figure out the time 30. Finger Positioning Pt 1: So now that you've learned a few simple chords, we're gonna get used to using the right hand a bit more this time and standard finger picking position. One finger picking. It's often useful to think as though you're playing to guitar parts, a baseline and a lead part. The baseline is usually played on the bottom strings and is often very similar. A bass guitar player. Our standard positioning is that your thumb plays the 4th 5th and sixth strips. Whenever you play any of those strings, you use your thumb, your index or first finger will play the third string. Middle or second will play the second string and your third thing or ring finger. It will play the first string. Let's try it up. Play the sixth string four times, then the third string four times. Then the second string four times thin end with the first string four times, ready one to three four. - Remember to use your proper fingers and try this exercise a few times until you complaint smoothly. For the most part, each string is dedicated to certain finger. Occasionally you play in a different position to make it easier, but we're almost always gonna play in this position 31. Finger Positioning Pt 2: Let's try another rift. This time, we'll do the same pattern. Thumb index, middle ring. We'll play each string only once, one to three four. How is that? You should try these exercise out for a while until you can play them fairly smoothly about my speed. Move on once you can do that. And don't worry if it takes you all they get the hang of it. Guitar is definitely a skill that comes with practice moving on to the using the six string in the last video On. With that, we should step up record game to include some chords that use more strengths. In the next video, we'll take a look at some more courts. 32. Some New Chords: Now let's take a look at the last missing piece to make your chord progressions complete. Full courts the courts have done so far. All simplified versions does dying to get you playing songs quicker now a lot of the bottom strings of these cores to give them a rich, full warm guitar sound as opposed to the light 20 sound of the current courts. So so we'll revisit two chords we've already looked at on. Add one new one. The first court will expand is a minor we've been playing with the first finger. First fret, second string and second finger. Second fret third string. Keep your first finger where it is. A move, your second finger, one string lower to the second floor of the fourth string. Now place your third finger on the second floor of the third string where your second finger used to be. Okay, once that's set up, play the top five strings. This is the full a minor chord, both how nice it sounds with five strengths. Now let's out on the sea, grab your regular see major first finger, first fret second string and second finger second fret fourth string, keeping that word as add on your third finger at the third fret of the fifth string. This one's a bit of a stretch now, isn't it? Once you've got that set up, play the top five strings again. This one will probably take you a little bit to get used to. But that's the full C major chord and all of its glory. Okay, so now it's time to move on. Move on to the third court. This one is gonna be completely new. What we're gonna do now is a D major. So you place your second finger on the second front of the first trip, you're gonna place your third finger on the third fret of the second string and finally plays your first finger on the second fret of the third string. Once those are all set up play just the top four strings. They're only four strings used in the D major court. And there you have it. Three complete courts notice how it not all of them use the same number of strengths. This does give each corti unique sound that could work nicely with other courts. Some will sound higher than others because they're missing some low strings. This makes for some interesting chord progressions. When you play around with this makes for some interesting chord progressions. When you play around with him, there you have it. Three complete courts notice how not all of them use the same number of strings. This does give each court a unique sound that could work nicely with other courts. Some will sound higher than others because they're missing some low strings. This could make for some interesting chord progressions when you play around with him. 33. Chord Changes: Okay, now that you've got a bunch of full chords to use, the next step is to put them together with some finger picking contents. Using the pattern we learned in a previous lesson. Let's try switching between a minor and see. This is a really easy change because you can grab your A minor and to switch to the sea. You just have to move your third finger from the third string to the third front of the fifth string. We're gonna try changing between a minor and see using the thumb 1st 2nd 3rd pattern. We did previously play that pattern on the A minor, that's what Your left hand to A C and play the same pattern. The one thing that note about this time is that our thumb is going to play in the fifth string, not the sixth for each of these courts. Some chords only used 45 strings in their full form and not six, so we played a thumb on whichever strings. The low note of that court, since both a minor and see only used five strings, will be playing the fifth string with our thoughts. Okay, enough talk. Let's try it out one to three four one to three four e. It's a lot to sort out. So try this exercise for now and play around with this for a bit until you can play it with me smoothly again. Like everybody on this course. You know you're ready to move on when you can play along with me in time and not be struggling with it. If anything still difficult, take that. Your Metrodome slow it down and play it, using the gradual speed increased technique to get your fingers used to the motion. 34. Variation 1: Now that you've got the basic idea, let's try it. A few different variations of finger patterns so you can really get the hang of it. This time we'll play the thumb, then the third finger, then the second and then the first. So the same thing has lost exercise, but your fingers play in reverse order. We'll stick to our same a minor to see switch in this exercise one to three four, - one to three. Four. Work on that and you're ready to move on once you're comfortable playing that last one. 35. Variation 2: this time we're going to use some new cords and a new picking pattern. So this would be tricky. Will switch from the A minor two D on this exercise, and her picking pattern is gonna be thumb, second finger, third finger thing back to second thing. Try this one out and begin slowly if you need to. We're doing some complicated changes here. One to three four. As usual, take a long as you need to get that one down and move on once you can play it comfortably with me. 36. PIMA: We've been referring to them as thumb 1st 2nd and third fingers so far because it's easier . But in a notation, you'll see pretty frequently, and finger picking lessons is Pema. This is just the Latin way to refer to your fingers, their Latin names for them. But frankly, I'm pretty bad at accents and you'll forget the names anyways. The important thing to remember is that P is Thumb Eyes Index, Emma's Middle and A's Ring. For sometimes tabs will have fingering written above them. And if it does, chances are it'll be written and Pema notation and the next exercise. We use the tab with notation. Learn this or sitting from a D to a C in this one, and I've written the P me a notation above so you can follow along. One, 23 four. Oh, uh, like most of music terminology is usually written in Latin, So if you take your musical adventures further, be honest course. You'll certainly run into some Latin terms here and there. I'll use T 123 in this course because more intuitive, but I wanted to mention this so it doesn't look like gibberish if you see it somewhere down the road. 37. Sec 3 Hallelujah: Let's try part of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen as way to show off his skills. Start by grabbing your new C court. We'll start by playing the fifth string, then play the fourth string still with your thumb. After that, play the third string with your first finger Theun, play the second string with your second finger, Then go back to the third string with your first fair and finally and on the fourth string with your thumb again So together that's gonna look like this to try that with me one to three, four way. Once you can play that, you're gonna do the exact same thing on the A Minor Court one to three four. Finally put it all together, switching from the C to the A minor chord. 1234 And if you listen to hallelujah, you can hear what you're doing right now at the very beginning of the song before the voice comes in with just the instrumental. Pretty simple, right? See your finger picking already 38. Alternating Bass Notes: Okay. Now that you've got some basics down, let's move on to some more advanced techniques. The first of these is alternating bass notes. And this you're basically gonna alternate the string. You play with your thumb in each court. So you're playing the full G for this one. Remember how he played the simplified version? The G in section two. The full G court uses all six strings. Place your second finger on the third fret of the six string your first finger on the second fret of the fifth string and your third finger On the third fret of the first strip , this one's gonna be a bit of a stretch. Play each note individually on, then play all strings together. Got it. So now we're gonna play our thumb on the six string, then our first finger thumb on the fifth string And that our first failure like this ready one to three four way So you can see there. My thumb is alternating strings to make the baseline a little more interest. Try this out until you could play along with me, then move on 39. More Chord Changes Pt 1: in the last section, we did a few chord changes. Let's expand on that to start getting used to switching courts. This is the most fundamental part of finger picking. In case you hadn't noticed when finger picking most of the time, we're gonna be holding chords with their left hand and doing some finger patterns with her right hand. Let's try a standard T 123 pattern on a G right now. 123 four. Mm. Now let's do the same thing on a C. Remembering that the low note on the C quarters, the fifth string. So that's going to string. You play with your right hand one to three four. 40. More Chord Changes Pt 2: now try the D chord. You learn to the last section with same T 123 pattern. The fourth strength is alone at this time. If you ever ensure what string is the low note of the cord, Just look at the core diagram and see which string is the lowest one played. That string will be your thumb. Note one to three four. Uh, the final exercise with the section is to bring these three chords together using your T 123 patter start on the G, then moved with C on end on the D ready one to three four. As usual, you're ready to move on once you can play the last exercise along with me comfortably. 41. Alternating Bass Chord Changes Pt 1: Okay, Now, let's put these last two things we've learned together. Chord changes with alternating bass notes. This exercise is gonna be a tough one. So don't worry if it takes you some time to get, as always, one in doubt start really slowly and gradually increased speed. I still use the gradual increase speed method for every song I learned. We're gonna start on the G on player T 123 pattern. Then you're gonna play the T 123 again. But this time your thumb is gonna play the fifth string. Let's try it out. One to three. Four one to three. Four. Once you've got that, let's try it on another court. First, grab a C chord on a T 123 pattern, then played a second time with your thumb playing the fourth trip one to three four one to three four. Ah, 42. Alternating Bass Chord Changes Pt 2: Okay, now we'll bring it together. Start on the G with the alternating base and then switch to the sea with same alternating base one to three four. - If you find any exercise difficult, in addition to the gradual speed increased method, if it's often useful to separate the different parts to get used to them individually and that previous exercise If you just play the bass notes, it'll sound like this. Uh huh, Uh huh. That's during the alternating bass notes on the G than alternating bass notes on the seat. If you then try just the finger pattern, you'll end up with something like this. Oh, you can practice them separately, and once you can play them both separately, it becomes much easier to put them together afterwards. Piano players will often do this with their left and right hands as well. So then putting that together you're left with their original exercise. One to three four. - Practice . This one starts slowly and learned the parts separately. Take your time on this exercise because it's pretty challenging. Give that a try. I don't see in the next section 43. Walking Bass Pt 1: Another common technique is called walking bass. It's when you add an extra notes on your baseline to move from one base note to the next. We're gonna be using the G and the E minor for this technique. The miners in New Chord And the good thing is, it's a pretty easy court. You have your second finger on the second front of the fifth string and your third finger on the second floor of the fourth string. Then you're gonna play all six strings. The bass note for the G is the third fret on the six trip, and the bass note for the E minor is the open six string. So if I play a T 123 pattern on a chord change from G to E minor, it sounds like this. Give that a try. We can just leave that court change, as is if we want. But we can also make it a bit more interesting by adding a note in between our bass notes. By switching to the second front on the six string and between our chord change, it gives you what's known as a base run. Kind of like you're running along the front board to your next note, ready one to three four. What you're doing here is playing your T 123 pattern. Then play a bass note again that moved to the second front and move to your T. 123 on the record. Let's try it again, but we'll go back up to the geek or this time play the same pattern, I think this time adding the thumb picks to go back to the G as well one to three four. 44. Walking Bass Pt 2: kind of fun, right? Based runs on my favorite sonnet techniques. Let's try another one. We'll go from the C to the A minor and back again. On this exercise, you'll play t 123 on the sea thing. Play the third fret of the fifth string and then to the second front of the fifth string Thin T 123 on a minor finish off by playing the open fifth string. Think back to the second fret of the fifth string and you're back to see. Sounds complicated, but the exact same thing is the last exercise. Just different courts. One to three four. Your final challenge for this lesson is to put those to exercise together. Start with the base run from G D Minor, go to the base run from CTO to make it easier. We're gonna leave off the base, runs from E minor, back up to G and from a minor back up to see in this one. Let's try it out. One to three four 45. Walking Bass Pt 3: one other thing I'll mention here that will make your life easier is that when finger picking, you don't always have to hold the entire court. If you look at the e minor on this riff, were playing the 6/3 2nd and first strings. Interesting enough. He might only has left hand fingers on the fifth and fourth strings, but we don't play at all in this room. So for the e minor, we can play it without actually fretting anything with the left hand. You can do this with the G two. We never actually play the fifth string, so there's no need to hold in the fifth string finger. Do you wanna be careful with us and make sure you don't remember any fingers that you actually do play? But thinking about this might make your life easier in certain sauce. Once you get used to the chord shapes, though, you'll often just grab the full court anyways, because your fingers no, the courtship so well, it's easier just to grab the full court. Just be aware that in any exercise, if it's tough for your left hand, another strategy to making it easier is to see if there's any strings, you don't actually play and see if you get a room of those fingers. Okay, that does it for this lesson. Practice that made exercise until you can play along with me and then I'll see in the next lesson. 46. Sec 4 The Boxer Pt 1: Let's try using our alternating bass notes to play the intro of the Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel. You can hear it will be playing in the very beginning of the song. After the first few notes, I'll play it first so you can hear it. This one should be pretty easy for you. Now start by grabbing your C court. You're going to use alternating base here. Pick the fifth string with your thumb. Then the second string with your second finger. Thin the fourth string with your thumb Theun third string with your first fair ready one to three four way. 47. Sec 4 The Boxer Pt 2: when you can play that, keep the same C chord, but move your third finger down to the third fret of the sixth string. Then we're gonna do a very similar pattern. Start with your thumb playing the sixth string, Then play the second string with your second finger. Then play the fourth string with your thumb and then lastly, play the third string with your first finger, ready one to three four. 48. Sec 4 The Boxer Pt 3: finally to finish off this riff at both, with last two parts together alternating from one to the other. Listen to me and try it up. One, 23 four. Believe it as an exercise for you. If you want to work your way up to full speed like the actual song, this is optional. And if you want to move forward, that's fine. As long as you can play along with me in the last one I did. 49. Sec 4 The Boxer Pt 4: as a fun exercise. Let's try adding some walking bass, Tarbox, or if from before first, let's play the roof again to refresh your memory. When you can play that again, you're gonna play it three times normally. And on the fourth time we're gonna Adams walking bass on the fourth time you want to play the first chord or the 1st 4 North's normally Theun, when you'd move down to the third foot of the six string, you're gonna play that twice, then play the open fifth string with your thumb and take off your other fingers. Then put your second finger of your left hand on the second fret and play that, and then you repeat the whole rough. That's pretty cool, because it adds a kind of transition before starting the riff again, which makes it a lot more interesting. Often when finger picking, you'll add an interesting little bits to make things more interesting. A few notes can go a long way. Try it out with me one to three four 50. Finger Patterns Pt 1: in the last section, we looked at a bunch of different some patterns, like the alternating bass notes, based runs and bass notes on different core districts. Now we're going to use this section to look into different finger techniques with the other three fingers. Let's begin by going through a few different exercises with finger variations to get warmed up. The first pattern will try is T 231 on a D Chord. Remember that your thumb will be on the fourth string for the D Chord. One, 234 Now let's try something a little harder on a G play a T 332 pattern. You're gonna be playing the third finger twice in this one, which is trickier to keep in time. It's much tougher to use the same finger twice them to switch fingers one to three four 51. Finger Patterns Pt 2: How is that? It shouldn't be too bad, but it might be a little tricky at the start. Okay, What about something even tougher? Now try a T 1232 pattern. This time, though, the 1st 2 on the three are gonna be twice as fast. So we're introducing some more complicated timing here. The technique is the same. You just have to play two of the notes twice as fast. One to three. Four. You can see now how different patterns can make very different melodies. And this next exercise, I'll play it, but fall along on the tab on the street. I mean, use three different courts A, c, e, minor and D, and I'm going to use three different finger powers. This one will probably take you a while. The master, take your time. Starts slowly and gradually working for speed. One, 23 four. - Work on this exercise until you can play it comfortably before moving on 52. Longer Sequences & Advanced Timing: We've mostly been playing a bass note than a three note sequence up to now, but there's no reason that the house to be three notes. We saw it a little bit in the last section, but you can have different pattern lengths and different lengths of notes within patterns. In the next exercises, try to fall along with the tab and work on these different patterns. This first pattern has some longer in some shorter notes. Listen to my timing and pay attention to how long each notice help. Some will be twice as long as they're typical notes and some will be half is long. 1234 This exercise uses longer patterns between Bass notes. Nothing new to learn for this. It's just so that you're aware that patterns could be different. Lengths. One to three four. Now we've been lost to exercise together for some very timing and some longer sequences. Spend some time mastering this exercise and you'll be playing pretty called blocks. Melody 1234 53. Pinching: pinching is playing a bass note and a trouble note at the same time. It's pretty straightforward to do, but it does take some coordination to get used to. We'll start off really simply for this one step by grabbing a C chord from here on single beats. We're gonna play the fifth string with her thumb and the second string with their second finger. You'll notice that your hands sort of looks like it's pinching together like a clock. Hence, where the term pension comes in. Now let's try something a bit tougher staying on your C chord. Pinch the tea and one, then pinch the tea and to then the TM three on back to T into, oh one to three four way. You can combine pension with standard single note patterns to make something really interesting. This time, we'll try a combination of both of them. Start on C with a T and one pitch, then play 312 So it's to a G after that and play the same pattern, remembering that the six string is your base note for the G one to three four 54. Bringing It All Together: So now you can see how all of these elements could be brought together to make some interesting melodies. You're Homer for this section is just to experiment and play around with the techniques you've learned to make your own patterns. Making your own patterns isn't nearly as tough as you might think. Here's an easy formula to follow. To do this process, pick a cord. Start with the bass note of that court. Play a pattern of ones, twos and threes that's either 35 or seven notes long pick a new chord and play the exact same pattern on that chord, making sure to change a bass note. If you follow that four step process, you should be able to make some pretty nice sounding melodies. You should use this process and make it least three different patterns on your own before moving up. If you want to get really creative, add in some of our more advanced techniques, like pinching, alternating bass, bass runs and notes with different timing. To make some really interesting melodies, try making at least one of your three patterns have one or more of the techniques I just listed. Move on. Once you've created and can play each of your melodies comfortably 55. Sec 5 Free Fallin Pt 1: Now it's time for a song of the section. We're gonna play a really interesting one right now We're gonna play free Falling Now This song is originally by Tom Petty, but John Mayer does a really interesting finger style version of the song. So we're gonna play that here. If you hadn't heard this song for Go listen to free Falling by John Mayer and you see what I mean. It's a pretty interesting song. Come back here once you've heard the song. So to start, we'll try switching between the three chords In this song, these cords air G A and D slash f sharp de slash f sharp sounds really complicated, but is actually pretty easy. The slash f sharp just means that the bass note or lowest note is an f sharp. If you've ever seen a chord that slash something the note after the slashes your low note. Okay, so look at the cord I chord diagrams on the screen and try and play this chord changes with I'm gonna play d slash f sharp g g d slash f sharp A. You should hear freefalling when you play This chord progression is basically what Tom Petty's version does 1234 Once you can play that chord progression with me, move on in the next video and I'll show you how to make it interesting by adding finger style stuff like John Mayer does. 56. Sec 5 Free Fallin Pt 2: when you're comfortable with that, try playing the same corporation for the last video. Just pinched this time instead of strummed. Okay, now let's place this up a bit. This time, instead of strumming are cords we're gonna pinch them. Stood on the d slash f sharp. You're gonna play the sixth string with your thumb. The fourth string with your first finger Third string with your second finger on the second string with your third finger one to three four. Then you're gonna try the same thing on the G chord. Finally do almost the same thing on the a chord. The only difference is that this one you play the fifth string with your thumb instead of the sixth one to three, four, 1234 Nice. So you can see this is a different way to play court progressions. There's some advantages to both methods. You tend to get fuller sounding chords if you strum them. But often pinching cords is a better method for adding in other finger style techniques. It really depends on the song for what you want to do. Sometimes strumming is too intense for the rest of the song. If everything else is figure picked, so we're most the way they're now head on. The next lesson when you're ready and will make this corporate Russian really interesting. 57. Sec 5 Free Fallin Pt 3: let's finish off this chord progression with some finger picking this time, instead of starting by pinching the d slash f sharp, we're gonna pick it up individually so you don't play the sixth string with your thumb. Then the fourth string with your first finger. Thin the third string with your second finger on the second string with your third finger on Finally, go back to the third string with your second finger. Try this out a few times, one to three four. We'll leave everything else the same. The first chord is the only one you're picking right now. Listen to me than try it out yourself. One, 23 four That sounds pretty good, right? So to finish off this chord progression, we're going to the same thing on the second core as well. The G The timing is slightly different, but the pickings the same. So just listen to me than try it out yourself one to three four, - and that's all there is to it. This isn't exactly what John's playing, but it's a variation that works the same way. He's playing slightly different notes, but a very similar kind of ref feel free to work your way up to the speed of the actual song over time. As always, don't expect mastered in single day. Just play it for a few minutes each day and it'll sound great no time. 58. Intro: Welcome to the final section. Of course. Congratulations on making this far. You're already pretty good at finger picking. If you've been following along in this section, we're going to go through a few final advanced techniques and then I'll leave you with some tips and pointers on where to go from here. You leave the section being confident. Finger picker ready to go out on your own. 59. Travis Picking Pt 1: We've already taken a look at Travis picking without knowing it. And Section four Travis Picking is just alternating your base notes on the same court. Let's play a few exercises to get comfortable with this. This one is on a G will alternate between the 6th 5th and fourth strings on a thumb in this pattern. Watch me and then fall along with the tab to figure this one out one to 34 Next up will do the same kind of exercise on an E minor court again. Watch me, then fall along with the time and try and play yourself one to three, four, uh 60. Travis Picking Pt 2: Now let's try to bring this together with a chord change. This was gonna be pretty confusing at first because we're jumping all over the place with their fingers and a thumb. If you need to make sure to try just playing the baseline first, then play the trouble line, then put them together once you're comfortable with them alone. 1234 way. How are those? Chances are it'll take you a while. You used to those patterns, and no, I'm beating a dead horse here by how many times I've said that these exercises will take you a while to get. But guitar is one of those things where people underestimate how long it takes for your fingers to get used to the movements. Ask any guitarist and they'll be able to tell you what the countless hours they spent alone in their room practicing exercises to get where they are Now. There's nothing magic about learning the guitar. You just have to give it time, be realistic about your progress and enjoy the fact that you're getting better even if it is slowly 61. Travis Picking Chord Changes: we covered, pinching or playing multiple strings at a time in a previous section. Let's try a few more advanced exercises on this idea Now. First, let's try a slow combination of pinching and picking. Look at the top on the screen and fall along with me. We're gonna start with a pinch, then go to regular notes, then thrown another pinch and then go back to a few regular notes. 1234 way. How is that now? Let's try combining that with some Travis picking to make a slightly more complicated version. Again, we'll be starting with a pinch and then moving to single notes. The difference this time is that the bass note changes throughout the single notes. 1234 Alan's not easy. Take your time before moving on the next one. We're only getting a tougher from here in this last exercise. Let's combine everything we've got so far with some interesting time. 1234 If you can get that last one, you're in a great shape. Move on. Uncomfortable of us. Don't worry if it takes a few days to get through this lesson. 62. Pinching & Picking: a final technique we haven't gone through yet is just plain old strumming. Sometimes you just want to strung along to a song, and some strong's have strums in between pick nuts. While I'd recommend getting a pick where you can, because it's much easier, sometimes you will have to, or just want a strong with your fingers to do this. Even without a pick, I find it easiest to pretend I'm holding a pen. Put your thumb holer horizontal and put your index finger 90 degrees to it, extending just a little bit below your thumb. The negatives. Your index finger as the pick. Well, try this in a few exercises. Now there's a new concept unlike anything we've done in the course, so it might be difficult. Start with just single beats on a G court one to three four her. That's out. Try and get it so that you're happy with next. Let's try switching between G on D on single beats one to three four. Now we'll get really fancy following the tab. We're gonna combine strumming with single note picking. This time, this one might take you a lot of practice. 1234 The final stages to learn up strumming, which will cover in the next video 63. Strumming Pt 1: When you pick downward, you have to move your hand back up anyways to pick again. We can take advantage of this upward motion and pick or strum on the way up to if we pick down, end up and said it just down becomes pretty easy to start strumming a lot faster that it introduced a new timing to play upwards. Nice. Until now, most of our exercises have had four beats and have been counting them as 1234 and repeat. Sometimes you want to play faster than a single beat, though, and this is where half beats coming. We've explored this in a few exercises in this course. Ah, half beat is just half the length of a single bee to counter we use and a single beat counting will go 1234 Where is half beat coming? We'll go one and two and three and four by using, and it makes it easy to keep track of your plan. Let's try it up. Using our G chord will play half beats. Your left hand will move, but your right hand well alternating, strumming up and down and nice, smooth, even rhythm as usual, Watch rate than try and play along one and two and three and four and 64. Strumming Pt 2: How is that pretty awkward. And, yes, try the exercise a few times, either on your own or playing with me. Keep your wrist loose and gentle. Pick gently and most importantly, try and plan a smooth, even rhythm down on the beats and up on ants. Let's do it again with our seek or this time, don't worry too much about playing extra strings. At this point, it's not that important. Your focus should be a smoothness and timing right now. One to three. Four cool. That's about all there is to it. With up strong. As with everything, don't expect to master right away the new movement and might take you a while to get the hang. Let's try one final exercise to get used to it, moving from a G two A c to a D play a pattern of one two and three four. And on each court that's a single beat than to half beats than another single beat and then two more Happy's. Start slowly if you need to and practice this final exercise until you're comfortable. One to three four 65. Upstrumming: And with that, you've made it to the end of the course. I hope you've really loved it. And even more importantly, I hope you learn to time. Here's some final pointers before you go off into the world and finger pick away. Start slow. When in doubt, try plan a storm slowly and gradually increase speed. Go slowly as you need to, even if it seems almost silly. It's so slow, increased speed on Lee when you're comfortable at the current speed, I promise. If you do this, you'll believe it'll play things that are way harder than you thought. You could break songs and departs work on just one part of the time, bringing them together once you're comfortable playing them on their own. This applies to both, Um versus finger parts and different sections in a song, work on one small part of a song at a time and bring it all together. Once you're comfortable playing each section on its own, be patient. It can sometimes take me a month to learn a song that's challenging for me. Some things take time and practice to get it down. Have fun. Guitar is supposed to be fun not a chore. So play the songs you love. Learn whatever sounds cool to you. Play in front of people, enjoy it. 66. Upstrumming Exercises: you're now officially ready to spread your wings and fly. Congratulations on making it all the way to the end of the course you solve to practice new songs, but with the techniques you've learned in this course, you should be ready for just about anything that comes at you. The next step is to go learn how to play your favorite songs and get involved in the world of guitar. Check out ultimate guitar dot com to find out how to play just about any song you could ever want. There are also plenty guitar tutorials on YouTube. Feel free to reach out to me at any time if you still have any questions and I'll see you on the other side. 67. Sec 6 Thinking Out Loud Pt 1: turn for a final song. This one combines a bunch of different techniques we've learned throughout the course, and it's pretty fun to play. We'll try thinking out loud by Ed here. This also adds, in a few new techniques you haven't seen before, so I'll leave you with that to practice and give you an idea of what else is out there. First, I'll play the riff. Then I'll show you how to do it. As always, listen to the song. If you don't know I already know it. You can see the tab on the screen here, and what you'll notice is that it's basically a chord progression with a few notes Here there. We've seen this before, and this is one of the heads favorite things to do. You'll see this kind of pattern in many of ed songs, so let's start with the court progression. So you're gonna start on a D d slash f sharp to a G six, which you can see in the diagram above, and I like to play this with my second finger, but you might want to play it with your third finger. Instead, it's up to you and then Finally, you're gonna end on a You can see the cords on the screen, deposits video and try them out a few times to get usedto. And when you're ready, play along with me one to three four when you can play that move on in the next video, where we'll play the timing of the song. 68. Sec 6 Thinking Out Loud Pt 2: So now we'll play the same chord progression. But in the timing of the actual song, one to three, four, not too hard, right this time we're gonna pinch the cords instead of strumming. I'll leave it to you to figure out exactly which fingers go where. So look at the town to figure it out. Each chord only plays four strings and your thumb plays the notice note. First finger plays the second lowest note, and then so on one to three four you. 69. Sec 6 Thinking Out Loud Pt 3: once you can play that what's left is toe, adding the interesting bits. This is a good method for learning. Finger style songs get the main parts good, so the cords in general timing and then adding the interesting little bits that are tougher but really add to the progression. So you see, those exes will add those. And now the exes are percussive sounds. So all you have to do to play those is hit the strings of your fingers. It's a pretty simple technique, and you don't have to move your finger placement all. You just hit the strings so you get a nice click. That's it. Start by playing your chord progression. Play the chords on the one and the three and play the percussive hits on the two and the four one to three four a little unique but manageable. I think your next step is to add back our time. Now you're playing the chords on the one and the end of two, and you're playing the percussive hits on the two and the four one to three four 70. Sec 6 Thinking Out Loud Pt 4: And with that, you can play pretty much the entire ref. I'll leave you with one more technique that you can try on your own if you want. Definitely not a beginner technique, but I want to show you how to do it because you'll see it in a bunch of different places. So leave this lesson optional and feel free to skip it. If you don't want to do it right now, it's called a hammer on, and we will use it at the end of the riff where you can see the two h four. So what this means is you're gonna play the second fret and on, then hammer onto the fourth fret. So you're gonna play the Fred but not pick it with the right hand. So you have to hit the fret pretty hard to make the sound. Hence the name Hammer. So in this riff you'll play the a Theun, pick the fourth string with your first finger and then take your other fingers off the frets and leave just the first finger. Then you're gonna play the third string with your second finger on the right hand, and then we're gonna use your third finger on the left hand and hammer on the fourth front . You have to hit it pretty hard and hold it there. Try this out with me a few times, one to three four and when you feel ready added into our full progression and you'll have something that sounds pretty fancy one to three four.