I'm going to go ahead right now and talk a little bit about upstroke with the pick.
We've strummed down whether we're doing a bass note or a strum
and remember that I told you if you keep that grip a little bit easy, a little bit light it allows that pick to lay down.
Imagine now what's going to happen if I want to come up.
First of all when a guitar is picked in upward stroke there's a definite difference in the way it sounds
and this is true whether it's an acoustic guitar, on electric this is a different attack on the instrument that changes how the string sounds.
You could say it's a little bit more abrupt, a little bit more aggressive. That's not necessarily always true but typically is.
It's also very often used in what we would call syncopation where we're doing some things that are not quite on the beat.
Remember here's our beat, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. How about this?
What I'm doing there to get that little syncopated upstroke
is giving it a little bit of a sassy punch is throwing an upstroke right in front of a regular down beat.
I can tell from the expressions on the forums that this sometimes throws people for a loop
because their pick is pointed down, they get used to doing this and trying to come back up, I can tell what happens.
That pick is already at an angle, it hooks on that string and just won't come up until you've got a lot of pressure and then it's not right.
It just doesn't feel good.
Keep the same thing in mind for the upstroke that we talked about with the down stroke.
That is don't have death grip on this thing, allow the pick to sweep across in the direction it's traveling
which means coming up you're going to let it flap the other way.
Flap is a bad choice of word, it's going to lay over a little bit. We won't be sloppy about this necessarily
and again the same principle applies, if you hold that pick straight in there as you're coming up it's just as rough as if you're going down.
So to exaggerate to come down the strings you're laying across a little bit with the pick this way, coming up you're laying it this way a little bit.
Alright, you'll have to experiment with that and what you may find is that your intensity on the first few tries is to not hit all of the strings.
That's going to feel a little bit differently there after we’ve been doing a few downstrokes.
So we’ll roll across all six smoothly. And then you can do…
All I’m doing there is what we were doing before. Bass, then all of those strings and then letting it drag just a little bit up on the last stroke.
Now pay attention to the rhythm of that because its not just One, Two, Three, Four. We’ve added an off beat or an eighth note in there.
And the way that is typically counted out is this:
Instead of going One, Two, Three, Four. What we would say out loud is One, Two, Three, Four AND
One, Two, Three, Four AND One, Two, Three, Four, AND
And is an eighth note and they’re all fractions, folks.
They’re all fitting in there, you’re dividing a measure into four equal parts so those are quarter notes. That's what we’re giving the whole
One, Two, Three, Four, those are quarter notes, the four beats that make up a measure.
Now we’re sticking notes in between every quarter note so you have to divide one of those quarter notes, you have an eighth then
One, Two, Three, Four AND One, Two, Three, Four AND
When you hear that AND, and you feel that little sandwiched note in between there, that's an eighth note, its double time I guess you could say.
And it naturally falls into learning an upstroke because what's going on over here, we’ve got
One, Two, Three, Four One, Two, Three, Four
So it naturally works out, in between each one of those, your hand has to travel back up here anyway to do it again. Well, double your pleasure.
Hit the strings on your way back.
Now did you hear what I just did? I left that bass note thing out of there and we still had a little bit of fun with it.
Alright, instead of doing One, Two, Three, Four.
We went back to that, whole thing but we made it interesting with a little syncopated eighth note.
Watch what can happen here, I’m going to pick up the tempo just a little bit but what I’m going to do is what we call a little bit of muting in here.
That's another right hand technique and I’m not going to go into it a lot other than I want to stimulate your thought process for even how much more
your right hand can feed how this guitar sounds.
Very simply what's going on here, right there One, Two.
I left off the three beat and hit it on the three AND upbeat. Sneaky little things but really this hand looks to you like its just going up and down
but under the covers I’m choosing when I hit the strings and when I don’t, I’m laying down every once in a while to mute the strings.
We’re going to get to more of this later, so don’t feel like that was an entire right hand lesson
but pay attention to the fact that this hand has got a lot of power over here and has a lot to do with how things sound.
Okay, another way you can think of it, another term you will hear is it's the groove. What I’ve been saying is tap your foot and get that…
This is the groove. This is what makes you feel the music. Okay.
When your foot is tied to your right hand and your right hand is staying on rhythm, you can make people feel that.
If you’re just over here doing this, unless you’re doing a lullaby, people won’t want to hear you.
Especially if you're not on a steady tempo. Be a clock, be a metronome, be steady, tap your foot so that your body is getting into it instead of just your fingers and hands.
Its really, really critical. You can get so mentally engaged into trying to make all of this work that you forget its supposed to be music or it stops feeling like music.
I promise if you keep that foot going, even if its hard to do right now, I can tell you from personal experience, the times that I have let that go and stopped doing this.
I’ll go back and listen to what I did and say "Man, you were all over the map on tempo and I can tell because it doesn’t sound as good."
If you’re feeling it, all of the way through you instead of in your wrists and hand, it sounds better and it feels better.
Music does have a feeling to it if its played well and that's the goal.
I want you to enjoy it while you're playing and you want the people who are listening to it to enjoy it also and this is one of the most fundamental building blocks of doing that.
We’re going to go on and do some other things other than just rhythm guitar but let me just give you another tip for further on down the road in your guitar journey.
You will be a better, I think, no matter what style of guitarist you decide to be, I think if you have a solid foundation of rhythm guitar
and you understand rhythm and beat and staying on beat. First of all you’ll be in demand.
Every one wants and needs a good rhythm guitar player, there are a lot of bad ones out there and they can carry a band or not and its a good skill to have on your resume.
But I think even if you go off and want to be a lead rock and roll guitar player, a guitar hero master or if you want to play finger style guitar or classical guitar,
the more its wired into your foundation to play on time, to play with a beat and feel that beat you will be a much better player on down the road.
And again, you will enjoy it a lot more.
Okay, we’re going to wrap up here. After this tape stops, take some time, play with your three chords
and play it with downstrokes, upstrokes, play with 4/4 time, 3/4 time and do two things count out loud and tap your foot.