Leaning to play the guitar has led me to rediscovering music again. I am listening to all the old guitar music I used to listen to again – Blur, Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Supergrass, The Charlatans, and I am discovering for myself the brilliance of some of the music that I missed out on – Nirvana, R.E.M., Leadbelly and folk music. I am buying music for the first time in nearly a decade, and it’s a great feeling. My most recent purchase is the 10-year anniversary edition of Everything Must Go by Manic Street Preachers.
Originally release in 1996, it was re-released 6 years ago and comes with all the B-sides, demos, alternative recordings and live versions from that album. As far as tunes go, it is by far the best Manics album, and it’s incredible to think that it was released 16 years ago. Someone who was a 16-year old listening to that album in 1996 is now legally old enough to be a grandfather. Where do the years go?
My seventh lesson with Max went quite well. I played Gene Smith fairly cleanly, if albeit slower than the 116bpm of the song. I was then shown a more recent Rock School grade one piece – Gotta Lotta Rosa by Joe Bennet, and went through the A and E minor pentatonic scales. I was then shown Can’t Buy Me Love by The Beatles, as it’s a good song for practising strumming patterns and chord changes. I don’t think it’s possible to really learn the guitar without playing Beatles songs, considering the massive influence Lennon and McCartney’s songs have had on guitar music over the last 60-odd years. It’s like avoiding learning the blues – it’s impossible, and nor would you want to.
Can’t Buy Me Love is a good song for practising strumming a chord changes. Other than D minor, I knew and could play all the chords already – E minor, A minor, D minor, G major, C major, F major. The rhythm – down, down, up, down, up, down, up, is easy to pick up, the hard bit of course is the chord changes. The chord changes on the final and beat of the bar – the final up stroke. I can play the song quite slowly, it sounds quite nice but nothing like the song. It’s good for practising though and I’ll keep at it.
I found Gotta Lotta Rosa easier to play. It’s some simple strumming of A, D, D sus 4, and C chords, plus some simple lead guitar on the bottom three strings – E, A, and D. It’s a rock style song so sounds good plugged in with some gain (distortion) on the amplifier. I’ve played it quite a lot like this and when I play it unplugged it sounds a lot weaker. An unplugged electric guitar is good to start with when you can’t play anything, but when you can play just a little bit, it is much better to be amplified so you can really hear the notes and chords that you’re playing.
VIDEO: Gotta Lotta Rosa. My playing actually sounds very similar to this!
I felt adventurous so got my acoustic out again and played some traditional folk songs. After a couple of hours of playing I found that my fingers really hurt. This is not just because the action of the guitar is higher than my electric, but also because the strings are thicker. The bottom E string on my acoustic looks about twice as thick as the one on my electric. But I didn’t give up this time and I have found that it doesn’t hurt as much when I play my acoustic now. It has also improved my playing – I am plucking notes cleaner and starting to get a real feeling of rhythm when I play. I look at the tab for some traditional songs and find myself adding my own rhythm (up and down strumming) without really thinking about it.
My traditional acoustic folk guitar repertoire now consists of the American National Anthem, Scarborough Fair, When the Saints Go Marching In, Yankee Doodle, Amazing Grace, You are My Sunshine, Camptown Races, Silent Night, and Waltzing Matilda. Add in my previously learnt Three Blind Mice, Twinkle Twinkle, Happy Birthday, Danny Boy, Down in the Valley and Red River Valley, and that’s an album’s worth of traditional songs. I spend about half my practise time playing those 15 songs on my acoustic guitar and the other half playing the last few weeks pieces from Max. Yankee Doodle is really good for rhythm, and as I said, I am now alternate picking without thinking too much about it.
My guitar music re-education has continued with the purchase of the classic Urban Hymns by The Verve and Noel Gallagher’s excellent High Flying Birds solo album. Both are great. All in all, it’s been a good week guitar-wise.
Lessons learnt: D minor chord, better alternate picking, acoustic guitar playing, some folk songs
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