Our latest Guitar Noise Podcast picks up right where GN Podcast #26 left off. Having gotten the basics of this song under our belts, it’s time to explore what to do when (notice I didn’t say “if”) we get around to playing with another guitarist. So here we start out with a simple arrangement for two guitars.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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For this Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll work on getting the basics down, plus have a little fun with the bass line. Next time out, we’ll add the challenge of playing along with a second guitarist.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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In our latest Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll finish our look at “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by looking at a slightly more complicated strumming pattern as well as learning about a new voicing of the G7 chord. This particular use of the G7 will be turning up again in the upcoming Guitar Noise Intermediate Songs lesson on “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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In our latest Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll continue to explore how to sing and play at the same time, using “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” as our example.

This time out, we’ll look at a new strumming pattern and the begin to add fills, working with a cool D to G bass run very much in the style of the Beatles’ “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.” And it’s a lot easier to play than it sounds. No lie.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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In our latest Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll take a look at getting comfortable with strumming with an eye toward being able to sing and play at the same time. We start with a new song, the iconic “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and we even have a cheat sheet for you:

We’ll spend most of this podcast getting good at a couple of strumming patterns so that we can tackle it in earnest next week.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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With many apologies for it taking so long, let me welcome you to the latest Guitar Noise Podcast,the second part of our look at the old Irish folksong, “The Star of the County Down.” Here we’ll make an arrangement for the last half of the verse and also do something fun with the chorus. When you’ve finished with this podcast, you’ll have a complete song for your repertoire.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

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First we go over the basic structure of the song and then work on creating a cool introduction for it, which is always a good thing as a good introduction can also serve as a nice interlude between the verses.

And speaking of the verses, we also start to look at how to come up with some interesting strumming ideas, fills and bass lines for the basic verse of this song.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun.

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As always, I’ll be walking you through the process step by step. Hope you enjoy it!

Peace

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Our nineteenth Guitar Noise Podcast, just up online a few days now, gives us an introduction to some very important strumming techniques – anticipation, dynamics, and (believe it or not) using rests as part of a strumming pattern.

We begin with an explanation of anticipation and how using it easily fits in with all that we’ve learned about strumming so far. Then we add rests and dynamics to a basic pattern to make it sound a lot less generic and a lot more like “real music.”

Finally, we follow a very simple exercise of emphasizing the upstrokes when we play to make our use of anticipation more natural and, hopefully, get you through all the problem points.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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Today, we’ll wrap up our work with the traditional song, “Streets of Laredo,” one that some of you may recognize from Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings IV.” We’ll pick up where we left off and then take a little side journey into modulations, which are basically temporary shifts of key, In this particular song, this means using a D major scale to create a walking bass line even though we’re in the key of G.

We’ll also take a quick look at using a “walking chord pattern” in place of a walking bass line. We’ve seen this specific pattern before in our Guitar Noise song lessons on Imagine and Babylon, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to pick up on. And it sounds terrific.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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Let’s get right on with our work with the traditional song, ”Streets of Laredo,” one that some of you may recognize from Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings IV.” In this Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll look at creating walking bass lines from D to G chords. We’ll also start to tackle the “chorus” section of this song.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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We’ll continue with our “using the stuff we’ve learned so far” by looking at “Streets of Laredo,” a traditional song that some of you may recognize from Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings IV.”

In this, our sixteenth Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll start with a basic ”bass / strum” in 3/4 timing and then add some fancier work to both the bass and the strumming.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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Guitar Noise Podcast #15 takes up right on the heels of #14 – we’ll still be using “Handsome Molly” as an exercise to incorporate the various lessons we’ve picked up in our podcasts thus far. The emphasis here will be on combining measures (or half measures) of strumming with measures (or half measures) of crosspicking. Plus, we’ll add a couple of riffs to make the change from our G to D chord a little more interesting.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

For our fourteenth Guitar Noise Podcast, let’s take stock of the many things we’ve learned so far and, over the course of the next number of GN Podcasts, put them to use in song. After all, that’s why we’re practicing, right? For starters, we’ll use the traditional tune, “Handsome Molly” (also known to many as “I Wish I Was in London”), which has a nice, simple chord progression of G, D and C.

In our thirteenth Guitar Noise Podcast, we move into the realm of swing. First, we’ll look at the feel of swing and of how “swing eighths” differ from the “straight eighth” notes that we’ve been using in our strumming up to this point.

And, since swing eighths are the basis of blues shuffles and rhythms, we’ll use our new strumming style in the “twelve bar blues” format as a way to get ourselves comfortable with the use of swing eighths in strumming. Then, as we have in past lessons, we’ll explore this rhythm further by combining it with a very cool walking bass line. You’ll be sounding like a Texas blue legend before you’re done!

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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We’re going to try something a little different with our twelfth Guitar Noise Podcast. I’m not even sure it’s got a “technical” name!

Basically, and for lack of a better way of putting it, we’ll be “stretching out” our downstrum – turning it from a typcial downstroke to something that’s more of a musical punctuation mark. It’s easy to do and allows us to vary a typical strumming pattern in an interesting way while practically changing nothing in what we’re doing.

As before, we’ll examine this technique and then combine it with different patterns as well as with other techniques learned from our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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Let’s continue with examination of percussive rhythmic strumming techniques and move from palm muting to string muting. Just as with our last GN Podcast, our eleventh one will take us from the basic elements of string muting and then work on integrating this new technique into the strumming patterns and techniques we’ve covered thus far.

For the most part, we’ll be focusing on the G chord, throwing in a short G to C to D progression as we gain more confidence in our string muting abilities.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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After some initial exercises, we’ll be using the Am chord a lot, first doing an Am to G to F (or Fmaj7) to E chord progression where using palm muting allows us to create an interesting walking descending bass line.

Then we’ll focus again on the Am chord (along with the F or Fmaj7) in order to add hammer-ons and little fills to our basic palm muting strum. You’ll sound like a Seventies singer/songwriter in no time!

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

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Here, we’re going to take ideas from many of our past GN Podcasts and use them to create fills that will make our basic strumming sound even better. We use one of our earliest strumming patterns, not to mention one of our earliest chord progressions (G to D to Am, G to D to C) and then work out a couple of interesting fills to spice things up a bit.

While we will work with some specific fills, the object is ultimately going to be coming up with your own fills. So you might want to read up on ideas with an old Guitar Noise Guitar Column, called Tricks of the Trade. You might find some very helpful tips there.

As always, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

As you might guess from its title, this GN Podcast combines elements that we’ve been working on since our series of podcasts began. We’ll take one of our earliest strumming patterns and add a bit of crosspicking to it, giving us even more choices of variations and embellishments to the original strumming pattern.

Most of the work in the first two-thirds of this lesson involves a chord progression of G to Bm to C and back to G. In the final third of the podcast, we’ll add a second progression of C to G to A7 to D (or D7) to the first – making the whole thing sound a lot more like a typical song.

As in our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. So put down your painted wings and giant rings and get your guitar and come along and play! And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

Our seventh GN Podcast picks up right on the heels of the sixth, working with the Am to G to D progression in 3 /4 timing that closed our last podcast. This time out, though, we add the technique of crosspicking (using individual notes instead of strumming or partial chords) to give some variation and interest that basic strumming wouldn’t cover. Finally, we also work in the walking bass lines from GN Podcast #6 to our crosspicking, making things even more interesting!

As in our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. So don’t think that you ain’t going nowhere, get your guitar, get down on that easy chair and come along and play! And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

Is this really the sixth GN Podcast? Amazing how time flies, especially when it’s spent doing something this enjoyable! I hope you’re all having fun with these podcasts as well.

This time out, we begin looking at 3/4 timing. First, using the chord progression G – Em – C – Am, we will employ a “bass/strum” pattern and then add in a bit of a walking bass line to move things along. We’ll then tackle a “straight eighth note” approach to the bass strum, using alternate picking to create a more flowing strumming pattern. For this part of the podcast, we’ll be using a G to D chord progression and then switch to Am – G – D. And if this sounds at all familiar, just consider yourself a lucky man (or woman) to have good ears!

Finally, we’ll combine both this straight eighth note strum with a walking bass line to have an impressive sounding bit of music!

As in our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. So don’t think that you ain’t going nowhere, get your guitar, get down on that easy chair and come along and play! And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

In this, our fifth GN Podcast, we’ll continue to make our playing more interesting by adding walking bass lines into our chord progression strumming. We’ll first work on a generic exercise to get ourselves geared to the task of adding a bass line. This involves altering our basic “bass / strum” pattern very simply.

From there we’ll use a progression of G to Am to C and back to G and work up to the following strumming pattern:

As in our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. So don’t think that you ain’t going nowhere, get your guitar, get down on that easy chair and come along and play! And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

In this GN Podcast, we’ll work on two specific topics. First up will be a quick look at sixteenth notes and a smart little rhythm fill that you can use as an accent when strumming a chord. We’ll also see how you can use it to spice up (and cover up!) a chord change.

From there we’ll begin work with “partial chord strumming,” in other words, just using some of the strings to strum with. And rather than examine a specific pattern, we’ll focus on developing a feel for your guitar. Hopefully you’ll start to feel more confident that you can strum where you want to without thinking twice about it. If not the specific string than at least the general area

Both of these general topics will be coming up soon when we focus on ways to create strumming that is more “organic” rather than something that sounds like it came from a sampler.

As in our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts, I’ll be walking you step by step through the lesson. So get your guitar, get yourself comfortable and come play! And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

In this GN Podcast, we’re going to start with looking at the differences between strumming various note values, in terms of timing, and try a very simple exercise to help you work out the strumming of quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes and triplets.

We’ll then focus on the “generic” strumming pattern from the end of the second podcast and work up ways of making it more interesting and fun by applying ideas from the first two podcasts (hammer-ons and alternate bass lines) to the pattern.

As in our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts, I’ll be talking you through the process. So get your guitar and get comfortable and come play! And, as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

Our second GN Podcast picks up where the first left off – we’ll take a “basic” strumming pattern from the first podcast and then spice it up by means of adding simple hammer-ons to the chord being strummed. By changing the timing of the hammer-on or by using it on different notes of the chord, you multiply the number of strumming patterns you can create. We’ll be working with both Em and Am chords for this task.

We’ll also discuss a few practice tips concerning muscle memory and speed (not to mention magic and life!) as well as try out a new strumming pattern that is used in more songs than you can imagine. In fact, you can use it with many of the Easy Songs for Beginners lessons at Guitar Noise, such as Nowhere Man.

As before, I’ll be talking you through the process, and I hope that I do as good a job as last time. Let us know what you think!

Peace

Our first series of Guitar Noise Podcasts will cover strumming – moving step by step from the very basics to alternate bass picking, to adding hammer-ons and pull-offs to spice up simple patterns to crosspicking and partial chord playing to incorporating other playing techniques, such as palm muting and choking, to bring even more excitement to our strumming. Plus we’ll look at how to listen to patterns so that you can readily replicate complicated patterns you hear on recordings.

I’ll do my best to walk you through things step by step, just as we do in the many song lessons at Guitar Noise. So pull up a chair and let’s have some fun!

Peace