Ok, what we've been doing up until now is typically called 4/4 time and here's your little main music theory lesson for the day.
What 4/4 time means is that there are four beats to a measure and each beat gets one fourth of a note.
So, one, two, three, four. Those are quarter notes.
Ok, you have the whole measure is four.
One, two, three, four and you notice that's when I started counting over again.
That's four beats and each one of those beats we call a quarter note that's a quarter of a measure if you want to think of it that way.
At it's simplest sound it's just a boom, chick.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
Now when you hit the bass and where you put an emphasis can change the feel a little bit.
So what if you did one, bass note and three strums? You still end up with four in a measure but it sounds a little different.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
I would say that's a little softer maybe or a little bit more of a sustaining ringing sound than what we were doing.
That might be more country than you like.
The point is if both of those even though they feel a little bit different those are 4/4 time quarter note and 4/4 time songs.
You can make a change here that you're probably familiar with by ear
and maybe you've never learned what it is and it's one that we call 3/4 time.
Some people would call it "waltz time."
Think about this, now there's going to be only three beats to a measure but every beat still gets the one tick.
So what we're going to do is count to three
One, two, three. One, two, three.
and start over at three instead of four.
What that sounds like musically is this. One, two, three.
One, two, three.
So that's a little bit different feel again but what we're doing is just getting right hand practice here.
Bass, strum but we're varying when we hit the bass and how many strums we do.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
Or maybe we do one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
Or maybe we do this.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
The point of this and what I'd like you to try is not going to last very long in terms of being interesting but think through.
This right hand has a lot of control over what this guitar sounds like
even though the left hand has now started to look like he's at the back of the class.
He only knows three chords that's all we've done but we're starting to get a lot of different sounds out of this.