Getting Started Playing Guitar For Dummies by Mark Phillips

Author:Mark Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2011-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

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Alternate picking (0:52)

The reason you can play faster with alternate picking is clear. To play two successive downstrokes, you’d need to bring the pick back up above the E string anyway. But by actually striking the string with the pick on the way back up (using an upstroke) instead of avoiding the string, you can greatly increase your speed.

Check to make sure that you understand the concept of alternate picking by following the next two sets of steps. The symbols for a downstroke and upstroke are the same ones used for strumming in Chapter 3.

To play a downstroke (the symbol above the tab), follow these steps:

1. Start with the pick slightly above the string (on the “ceiling” side).

2. Strike the string in a downward motion (toward the floor).

To play an upstroke (the symbol above the tab), follow these steps:

1. Start with the pick below the string (on the “floor” side).

2. Strike the string in an upward motion (toward the ceiling).

The melody in the tab staff example in Figure 4-1 is actually that of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Try playing that melody to see how it sounds. First, play the tune slowly, using only downstrokes. Then play it faster by using alternate picking, as the symbols above the tab staff indicate. Here a pick, there a pick, everywhere a pick-pick . . .

Playing Simple Melodies

In Chapter 3, all the songs are in 4/4 time. The songs in this chapter, on the other hand, are in various meters. (The meter indicates how many beats per measure: 4, 3, 2, and so on.) You play all these songs in open position. (See the section “Getting a Grip on Left-Hand Fingering,” earlier in this chapter.)

You’ve probably known the songs in this chapter all your life, but never thought about them in a musical sense — what meter they’re in and what rhythms they use — and you almost certainly never thought of “E-I-E-I-O” as alternating downstrokes and upstrokes.

The fact that a bunch of supposedly simple folk songs — tunes you’ve never thought twice about before — now make you feel slow and clumsy as you try to play them may seem a bit deflating. But playing the guitar is a cumulative endeavor. Every technique you pick up, even if you practice it in “Little Brown Jug,” applies to all songs that use those same techniques, from Van Morrison to Beethoven. Hang in there with the technical stuff and the rest follows.

Here is some useful information about the songs to help you along:

Little Brown Jug: To play this song, you need to know how to count two beats per measure; how to finger notes in first position (see the section “Getting a Grip on Left-Hand Fingering,” earlier in this chapter); and how to make a song about getting drunk sound suitable for small children.

This song has only two beats per measure (not four).

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