Hi, welcome to another episode of Webcam Sessions
This week we're going to be
continuing with our practice routines
aiming for a more advanced player's
practice session, and just like the other
two videos we're sort of using the meal
analogy to you know talk about practice.
You know when you have a good meal
you've got a good spread of things and
you're not just eating chocolate ice
cream, ideally you're getting some you
know good vitamins and nutrients from it
but at the same time you want to make
sure that you're eating things that you
like, much like you want to be practicing
things that helped contribute to where
you want to be as a player, so if you're
more interested in picking, strumming is
not as important as picking is right.
So with this (a more advanced session)
we're going to be looking at somebody
who wants to work more in a fingerstyle
way and wants to do more with chord
melodies. So to start here, we're going to
start with a starter salad right which
is my worst you know least favorite part
of the meal (not really). Again I love
salad and salad lovers. #SALADLOVERS2
But anyways we're going to
look at the caterpillar exercise which
is something we worked on really early
on here in webcam sessions because it's
a really great exercise to get crystal
clear tone on individual notes as you're
moving up and down the fret board. So if
you haven't checked out that video, be
sure to check out the link below where
you can watch that its entirety and see
the whole exercise, I'm just gonna show
it on the A string here today.
Essentially what we want to do with the
caterpillar exercise is, we want to
practice with our fretting hand fretting
each one of the frets moving upward and
with our playing hand we're actually
going to use our thumb and middle finger
to do an alternate picking technique,
which means my thumb is going to play
then my middle finger will come up to
play, and they'll kind of go back and
forth so that I can build more speed.
Notice how the thumb's about a 45 degree
angle to the string and the middle
finger is closer to perpendicular to it
right. So to start I'm gonna play my open
A and then I'm going to play one with my
index on my playing hand, fretting hand
rather and two with the middle, three
with the ring, and four with the pinky,
and each time I'm just alternating
between these two. So we have a 0 - 1 - 2 -
3 - 4 now from here I'm going to
move up one fret with my index and play
2 - 3 - 4 - 5 and then I'm going to move up
again 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 continue
moving up as I go.
Notice as I'm making these movements up
I'm going to be maintaining contact on
the frets until I have to move them, and
I'm going to make sure that I'm fretting
the wire right up to it so I'm not
falling back because I'll get a buzz, a bad
sound versus being right up to it and
the most important exercise here is
crystal clear tone, so if it sounds
something like this, maybe I want to go
really fast but it's like this, that's
not so great right? you can hear how
I'm getting a lot of buzzing, not good
fretting. It's really important to slow
it way down, get that crystal clear tone
and you want to go all the way up to
fret 12 with your pinky.
Notice how I get that clear tone all the
way up. Now to descend what you do is you
go 12 - 11 - 10 - 9 and then you put your
pinky on 11, so go to one down 11 - 10 - 9 - 8
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 9 - 8 - 7 - 6
8 - 7 - 6 - 5 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 all the
way down to open. But again if I'm
getting buzzing it doesn't matter how
fast I'm going because that's not
reinforcing it. That's sort of like if
you know if this is the starter
salad, that's like putting blue cheese
and bacon all over it and then taking
away the vegetables right. In some ways I
mean I prefer that, but you won't get the
stuff that you need from it right, and
that's kind of the whole reason for a
starter salad is to get some greens so
you feel better about what comes next,
same sort of example here with the
caterpillar, it's the thing that's going
to build good habits and allow you to
get really good tone and more comfort
using these two hands together. And if
you're more interested in chord melodies,
it's really critical that these hands
work in perfect harmony (pun intended). So
that's the caterpillar exercise, I think
it's a great warm-up routine, do that on
each one of the 4 strings going all the
way up and down as you build speed . Maybe
you do it twice on each, but a great way
to start a practice routine when you're
looking for more of that chord melody
type of sound. So from here from our
starter salad we're going to go to our
main course. So our main course
here will be an example piece from a
song, again we're looking at more of a
chord melody advanced players practice
routine, so maybe they're working on a
solo arrangement of a song like "While My
Guitar Gently Weeps" now this isn't the
awesome Jake Shimabukuro version, this is
actually in the original key and it's a
lesson video that I made, so if you'd
like to check out the full video there
check out the link below. The video is
totally free to watch and learn through
the song, but we're going to be looking
at a specific section of it and that's
when it goes to the main chorus of the
song. We're going to be looking at a 2
measure spread and what it is is a
really difficult fretting exercise. So if
we look here we'll see that we've start
with an A chord
it just took me to kind of fish for all those fingers to go
up right. So the the exercise here
that's really important for practice
routines is really methodical perfect
practice and making sure that you're
making no wasted efforts.
Now what's really interesting here
is the next part that comes is adding
the other fingers and knowing what
fingers should be placed where is
difficult too, but in this particular
exercise you'll notice that we're going
to play the nine and the eight together
this style of practice is reinforcing
muscle memory. Whenever you play
something you have to make sure that you
consistently reinforce it correctly
because if I do this
With a meal analogy, this is like taking your
whole plate of food and shoving it your
mouth at once, as opposed to what we're
doing now which is cutting it into
pieces that are more manageable and
easily chewed right. You don't want to
take your steak all in one bite, kind of
cut it up into little pieces to be able
to you know properly eat it.
So that's a little riff
from "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and
you can correlate this to any song that
you're working on where there's maybe a
section that's too difficult, trying to
break it up and look at
each individual note. So that's sort of
our main course for this, so now from
here we're going to go to our side dish
and the side dish is well in chord
melody stuff they're still strumming
that's involved and we haven't done any
strumming yet, so we're going to work on
an example ghost note pattern and now
ghost note strumming is this really rich
technique that's I just love to do on
the ukulele, and we actually did a course
with Ukulele Underground that covers
ghost note strumming in its entirety and
gives a lot of example patterns and
chords. We're gonna work on something
similar from that course but if you want
more information on it be sure to check
that out in the description below, but
we're going to practice a ghost note
strumming with a really cool chord the
chord. The chord we're going to use is called an Emadd9
and the way we play that
is bar with our index finger here on two
of the E and the A string then add our
ring finger up to the fourth fret of the
C string. Now this technique is much more
advanced than some of the other things
we've done in Webcam Sessions but again
this is intended to be a practice
session for a more advanced player so if
you feel like you're falling behind as
you're playing it, that's okay. It's a
technique that takes some practice but
with this I'm gonna practice a really
basic ghost note pattern that's tricky
to master, and what that's going to be is
I'm going to practice going down up ghost up
ghost up down up ghost up ghost up down up
ghost up and all that the ghosts note is, is
taking the thumb and striking just the
G-string in a downward strum. This works
best when you have a high G ukulele as
you'll get that sort of drone effect.
Right hand is still strumming very
normally with its strum, you'll notice
that it's not going to be trying to do
any kind of weird manipulations, the hand
looks very natural
just like what we've talked about with
strumming before in Webcam Sessions only
now with that open G being implemented.
So again here's that pattern again nice
and slow down up ghost up ghost up
down up ghost up, again down up ghost up ghost up down up
ghost up ghost up down up ghost up whenever you're
working on patterns especially ones that
are as long and difficult as this one
it's critical that you always repeat it,
because usually really cool rhythms
sound good when they're played
consecutively. In this case you'll notice
it goes down up ghost up ghost up down
up ghost up ghost up and then the last
one is just down up ghost up right, sort
of set of three, three and then two and
that's what creates the really, really
cool sound. So let's go and try it again
we're gonna gradually speed it up here
so go down up ghost up ghost
up down up ghost up again down up ghost
up ghost up down up ghost up ghost up down up
ghost up. Now the trick to practicing this
is always maintaining a speed that you
can play along with so pushing it to
that limit where your hand starts to
give and then backing off just a little
bit is ideal, so to show an example of this I'm
just gonna start playing it and then
gradually speed up to what I think is a
full speed for this. Now again with a
practice session you don't need to start
and get to full speed in one session.
It's designed over time, so the fastest
speed I play here, it's probably not the
fastest speed that you'll want to try
right away but rather the speed that you
want to aspire to and work towards, so
it will sound something like this.
You'll hear at this source speed, this pattern
really starts to take flight and sound
really cool. And if there's any point during
that where I start to hiccup, the trick
is to slow back down positively
reinforce it because every time you play
it wrong, you gotta play at least twice
right. We'll talk more about that in
another Webcam Sessions but that's our
side dish is some sweet ghost note
strumming and then the desert, the
most important part right, and I mean this it
is the most important part, play
something fun and just like the beginner
episode where we talked about play
whatever you want, it's the same with an
advanced episode. If you're an advanced
player but there's this beginner song or
what you would qualify as beginner song
that you just love to play, play it. Don't
feel ever like you're too good for a
song, some of the most fun things for me
to play are very simple melodies and
very simple songs and you're going to
get a lot more of the nuances to tone
and control with your ukulele playing
simple things like that and playing them
from memory and just because you enjoy
playing them, so make sure that the
desert is something that you really
enjoy so that you can end your practice
session on a very positive note so that
you want to pick it up the next time. So
there's our four-course meal for the
more advanced player. We have our salad
starter which is a caterpillar exercise,
our main course steak which is working
on the "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
arrangement with that specific slide and
getting the fingers comfortable, and then
the closing is the ghost note strumming
which is this crazy strum or excuse me
the side dish is our ghost note
strumming, this crazy strum that's really
fun and takes some practice to get fast
and finally we close with the dessert,
which is whatever you want it to be,
anything that's fun. So next week we'll
have another episode of Webcam Sessions
where I'll be talking about more
techniques that are important while
practicing. We're gonna keep on kind of a
practice vibe for the next few weeks.
I've got a lot of stuff and ideas thanks
to you guys and your comments, and on
that note if you have any questions or
comments for this, please feel free to
leave them down below. I read every one
of them and take them into consideration
when creating new sessions and
everything else so never hesitate to do
that.
And I look forward to seeing you guys
next week for another episode of Webcam Sessions. Thanks!
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét