Hi. I'm Jim Deeming. Instructor for JamPlay.com
Welcome back for the next installment in phase one of beginning guitar. Today's lesson is going to be titled "right hand revisited."
Up until now we've been going through is learning chords, chord shapes,
how to make transitions, how to fret these things without having dead strings or buzzing these strings.
Up until now the right hand has basically has been a work horse for us that's jus t provided a means to train the left hand in it's job.
Today we are going to talk more in detail about what the right hand is really doing for us and what some of our options are.
Regardless of what chords you are playing down here or what melody notes you're playing with your left hand
the right hand has the biggest job in controlling what the feel of the music is that you're doing.
It controls the tempo. It controls the rhythm.
If there's a particular rhythm pattern that you're doing. It actually drives what I would call the groove.
I've been asking you to tap your foot as we practice, well the foot tapping is a direct connection to what your right hand should be doing.
It can have a lot of effect on the feel of a song and whether or not it stays on time and with the band or with the singer, whatever is going on.
This is important even when you're playing by yourself or with someone else.
Try to play your guitar keeping in mind the perspective of the person who's listening to you.
If you listen to someone else play an instrument and the tempo is wandering around and not steady it's actually distracting.
It takes away from the music in a pretty substantial way.
So we tap our foot and that keeps that right hand going at a tempo at a driving tempo if necessary.
Some songs are more flowing
but for right now we are learning to count, we're working on our rhythm and we want a pretty steady metronome feel out of this right hand.
Just doing the strumming like we've been working on can get a little old pretty quickly and by now you should be wanting some variety.
So today we are going to get the variety from the right hand.
Alright real quickly, first let's make sure that you're with me on our chords.
This is the G chord, root note here is the G note and that's a G chord, plays all six strings.
The next one not very far away is the C chord, a five string chord.
Underneath that is a four string chord, the D chord.
Today we are going to look at what we can do to put a little bit of feeling, some life into those three simple chords.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to jump over to a flat pick for a minute.
Partially just to demonstrate to you that what I'm about to teach you even though it's right hand specific still holds true regardless of your style.
If you're playing finger style with no pick, if you're playing with a thumb pick like I do, or a flat pick.
What we're going to talk about next applies to all styles.
I guess first we can talk a little bit about at this point in your guitar journey what should you be doing.
It has a little bit to do with where you are going, what style you want to play.
If you're going to play more of a softer, flowing, folk style you probably don't need a pick and you'll want to be using your fingers.
If you have aspirations to be rhythm style guitar player, a more aggressive strumming style you're going to want some kind of a pick.
Either a thumb pick or a flat pick, probably a flat pick like this
and maybe you're headed for finger style greatness in which case the thumb pick is the obvious choice.
What we're going to do, whichever pick you use or lack of pick you use we're going to break this down.
Again, thinking in terms of how many strings we're using for each chord and where our root note is.
So let's deal with the G chord first and that's a big one it uses all six and remember the root note is down here on the bottom like it should be.
Now think about this, rather than counting out four. One, two, three, four.
On the same tempo and on the same timing, 4/4 we call that we'll put a little bit of life into this by breaking up what the right hand is doing.
We're going to start by only picking that bottom note and then strumming the other five and it would sound like this.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
That gets a little more interesting to the ear than just repetitively strumming.
This has a ringing drone to it which is fine in the right situation but you probably don't want a song full of that.
So by breaking it up there's half as many rings to it but we're doing something on every beat.
One, two, three, four.
You're going to get a little bit of drive to this without overwhelming the listener and that's a good thing.
We can do the same thing now on our old friend the five string C chord.
Remember again, this is the root note, it's also the lowest note we play in this chord so let's start there on the five on that C note and strum the rest.
You can probably guess where we're going. With the D chord you can do the same thing.
It's a four string chord at this point and the root note that we're playing
the lowest note we're allowing to be hit here, the fourth string is a D note so there's our root. So here we go.
Here we go. We got them all now. Try this with me if you can.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
C, two, three, four.
Only five strings. D, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four and back home to the G.
Alright, I bet that sounds a little more interesting to you than this.
It's the same tempo, it's the same chords the left hand doing the exact same thing but the right hand is completely changing the feel of the music.
Ok, alright, now let's work a little bit more on that.
We're going to change this up just a little bit, I want you to work on the transition faster, in other words spend less time on each chord.
We'll do four beats on each chord. One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
This may be a tough touch for you because what's probably going to need to happen by now is this guy's in training now.
Boot camp for the right hand.
Hopefully your left hand is getting far enough along that maybe you can fret those notes without looking at the left hand.
Or maybe you need to go over for a little peek while you make the transition then come back over and focus on our right hand.
Alright, peek, keep that chord and focus on what strings you're hitting.
Alright, how's this feeling? People have varying results over here so don't be discouraged.
If you're using a flat pick like I am right now. Let's talk a little bit about the grip, the position and what the strum looks like.
First of all
most people will play with the sharpest point of the pick typically shaped like this, most of them are tear dropped instead of this little flat head on
here but the main idea is there's the relatively sharpest point out here and generally the assumption is that's what you're going to play with.
However, there are a lot of, especially high speed flat pickers, bluegrass flat pickers, have started using one of the more rounded shoulders of it.
It's not particularly too important which one you do but try them both if you like, see what feels more comfortable to you.
They'll both get the job done.
Just because of old habit and the way I started to learn I still use the sharp point.
The next thing to talk about is exactly how you hold it.
You're curling up your first finger here to provide a flat spot that's going to roughly run at a right angle to your hand.
So it's got a place to sit and now we're simply pinching it down with the thumb.
Now how hard you pinch it is another question.
Again, if it hurts you're doing it too hard, you should not be cramping over this
and in fact at a normal playing grip somebody should be able to walk up and pull that pick right out of your hand.
Obviously you don't want to drop the pick while you're playing but experiment with and find out how light of a grip you can get away with.
Without dropping the pick and what's actually going on in the hood is that pick is coming up just a little bit, he's snapping up off of my finger.
For strumming now is what I'm talking about.
This is not for high speed flat picking yet but for strumming how hard you pinch that pick
is another one of those subtle details down here that drastically effects what the sound is that you get.
Typically you can assume that the tighter you grip the pick and the more rigid the pick becomes the louder it is.
In fact ease up and do that exact same strum and I let it flop a little bit, it's a little softer.
So part of how hard you grip is determined by what you want to hear.
Volume in particular is what's affected by that but also it's going to feel a lot different on the strings.
You can imagine that if you are gripping it tight it holds that pick more perpendicular, strikes the string harder which is why we get
the louder volume but then it requires more push of your hand to get it across the strings.
That's great if you're trying to play over the top of a banjo player and you want to drown him out.
That's fine if that's what you need to do but when you're learning accuracy and trying to get the feel of how do I separate a bass note from a strum.
We don't need big volume right now and we're probably better off with a little bit more relaxed grip.
Focus on accuracy for right now, we'll go kill those banjo players later.
Now what you also might not be able to see without looking up close is what's happening as I strum down.
I am very deliberately allowing the pick to tilt down at an angle.
Again, remember when I talked about if we grip it hard that pick is rigid and sticking in there, by loosening my grip and letting that pick flap,
you can see what is happening is that picks tipping and it's coming across the strings at an angle.
It's easier to push it across the strings, there's less resistance and less volume but you're not fighting it and that's ok because when you get done
and you get down to the bottom you have enough grip to where it comes back, it's a pointer.
Think of your pick as a pointer.
I've got to dive in here on the right string for the bass note
but say it's the D, I actually have to come in with enough accuracy to land above the D string, hit it
and then stop for one beat and then follow across the rest of them.
So think accuracy for a little bit not hard attack and it is ok then for your pick to be just a little bit loose in your fingers, going for accuracy.
It's ok to look right now and because of that let's briefly talk about posture.