Ok, now let's spice things up a little bit by changing what we're doing on the right hand.
We'll slow down again, remember a while back when we talked about a playing a bass note and then a strum.
That's what we're repeating but you may also remember a while back, lesson seven I believe when I showed you how to do an upstroke.
Let's do it that way. One, two and three, four. One, two and three, four.
That also works with the JamPlay song.
If I play a song this way, let me switch picks here for you.
You're going to be going this way.
It does work if you've timed it out right. One, two, three, four and One, two, three, four and…
Now what this is going to do as you can see, switching back and forth it will give you good practice on accuracy and transitions.
Hitting that…
And by way of review on the upstroke you want to remember that our goal is definitely to hit our root note correctly and a full strum on the first one.
That sets it up.
On the upstroke one though we slough a little bit, we come up and we don't necessarily hit all the strings and it's still ok.
Remember we're going…
What's typically happening you're at least hitting the first two, probably three but you're also letting up and almost kind of picking out a little bit.
And lifting off. It may help you to just practice this.
You could do the JamPlay song that way to. One, two and three, four…
Or one, two, three, four…
Ok, so at that tempo let's do two different patterns. One, two, three, four and one, two, three, four and…
Then this one…
Alright here's a little note about making transitions, your right hand is helping your left hand get a transition done
and what I mean by that is let's look at one of these in slow motion.
Just play the bass note, down strum. While we're doing the upstroke we can actually be moving.
It's ok sometimes if you're not real loud about it you can get away with lifting that left hand and starting moving to the next chord.
You'll want to slow down and experiment with what works, both right hand a left hand need to cooperate here to get a transition done.
Now also if you watch my left hand during that transition and listen to what my right hand has done.
You'll hear that very often times I'm hitting the root note of a chord before I've fully fretted it.
That's probably the best thing you can get down to help improve your speed.
Look at this, if we go D note, strum, our next one is going to be a G. I got to be there no matter what else happens, on time.
No matter what else happens and while I'm picking that one these other two can land.
Now what's next?
The A and that's an easy one I don't have to fret anything to get the right bass note I have that much time to get those lined up and in there.
If you experiment with that at a lower speed I think you'll find that there are some things you can do to get those transitions smoothed out
and one of them is hitting the bass note even before you've fretted it, obviously it has to be on time
but if you know that in advance this doesn't have to be just a snap shot fast transition over here, you have a little bit of time where your right hand is
covering for you by playing a bass.
Watch the lag between when I play a bass note and when I actually fret the rest of the chord.
Playing a one beat like this might help you see that.
Also not thrashing around a lot here helps you build speed also.
One thing that some beginning students tend to do is after they've completed one chord and they've got to go somewhere else
it's like they've got to reboot the computer down here and start over again and the fingers will wing way off of the neck.
That won't do anything except slow you down and it also hurts your accuracy so when we've talked about looking for minimal movement down here,
when we've plotted, ok from this chord where is everybody going?
These two guys are roughly in the shape they need to be, you've got to drop down to the G.
That works pretty good unless after this chord I'm just completely letting go. Then I'm starting over again to build the chord.
Lift your fingers up off of the strings only a minimal amount and start moving smoothly to each next chord.
That might not be a bad drill for you to try, it's not going to sound terribly musical to you but just watch your left hand
and watch those chord pictures as they flow together, how smooth can you make that happen?
The smoother it is and the less lifting that you do the faster your transitions and that's what you want smooth, clean, well executed chords.
Then your right hand can do the group.
While you're doing that for me I can play the lead. There we go.
Let's do it again.
Ok, hopefully that's giving you something to work on and maybe have a little bit of fun playing with that song with me.
Again make good use of your rewind button, get those down, take your time and have fun with it. Thank You.