Acoustic Rhythms: Creative ways to fill the space -Acoustic rhythm guitar ideas -Guitar Lesson EP509

foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] all right so in this week's guitar lesson we're going to take a look at an acoustic Rhythm that has a lot of fill licks and it's very slow so there's a lot of space in between the notes and what I like about this is that pretty much anyone can follow along with this there's nothing really technical that can hold you back or might hold you back there's not a lot of fast picking or any of that and the whole point of this lesson for me anyway was I wanted to write something that has just some real simple chords so it's got a g an f and then a c and then it goes back to the G chord so G F and C for the first part anyway there's just a couple other chords in the second part but what can you do with basic chords like that to make a song sound interesting if you have an acoustic guitar part with acoustic guitar you don't have the the effects to fall back on or any of that so it's sort of like you're left to just come up with some notes that fill the space in a creative way and that's what we're going to talk about as we break down this lesson just give you some ideas for how to do that so in this video we're going to break down all all of the lesson material if you like to get the extras that come with the lesson so the MP3 Jam track the tablature the on-screen tab viewer all those extra things that will allow you to practice everything we're going to talk about you can get those things by going to activemelody.com go to the weekly lessons page and do a search for EP 509 now I mentioned that there was no effects used I should take that back because I did add a little bit of Reverb to the acoustic track um sort of after the fact obviously not when I'm playing it but when I listened to I thought it just needed to you know fatten up the sound a little bit but it's not necessary so you don't have to you don't have to be thinking about effects or anything just grab whatever guitar you've got even if it's electric guitar you can make it work with this this guitar by the way is a 1948 Martin triple o21 people always ask about that I love this guitar it's set up perfectly the intonation on it is fantastic the action is great it rings forever and that was probably the reason I chose this guitar for this song is I wanted something that just has a lot of sustain and will ring out and so this was this is my go-to guitar for that kind of thing all right let's listen to the first part of this and then we'll talk about it [Music] all right so as I mentioned the chords that we're going to be playing over are a g an f a c and then we go back to the G so what I did for the first two chords anyway was I just played the chord I just went like this for the G chord I just strum the chord now I'm playing the G chord using the E shape here out of the cage system we're going to be repurposing a lot of the cage system as we talk about this uh these chord voicings and I'll be kind of calling those out as we get into them anyway this first one's the E shape then we go down to play the F chord just slide that down two frets and then I went like this [Music] and now remember that that third chord was a c so we played the G we played the F and then that next chord is a c but instead of playing the C I went like this so what is that that is uh is a c sus 4. now I talked about sus chords in a recent lesson I'll put that up on the screen if you're interested in that but basically that's what I'm doing is I'm playing a C sus4 it just it has that sort of unresolved sound and it's perfect these sus chords are great for this kind of slow Spacey sound it's kind of what I like to fall back on now I don't use a lot of other sus chords in this I think that's the only suspended chord I'm using but uh but anyway I did the C sus4 and then I walked down from that third fret fourth string down to here down to the second fret fourth string and played four and three just two notes out of the C chord so that's like your C so it's like a c says four and then you're C but we're only playing strings four three and two right [Music] then I landed on that note which is my open D string or my D note and that's where the song goes back to the G chord why did that note work well it's one of the notes in the G chord your notes in your G chord or G B and D so I just hit the D note so we have three four one two three four and the timing of that I should mention that this little CSUS for it comes in on the and a four so it's like one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and that's where it comes in a little ahead of the beat [Music] foreign [Music] so this next look kind of cracks me up a little bit because it's total Bluegrass like it's the g-run so I just worked it in it's sort of like my fingers naturally go there a lot of times just because I don't know if I hear a G chord I can't help myself I love it so much so I play this and then slid up to that g note up here now the way I'm playing that is ring finger on the third fret sixth string to hit that g note and then your index comes to the first fret fifth string and you do a quick slide up to the second fret so you go like this and then you hit your open fourth string that D note and then second fret fourth string up to your open G note on the third string so and then you match that note on the fourth string by sliding up to the fifth fret so you've got that open G ringing out and then you go seems kind of weird when you're just talking it out like that it doesn't seem like it would work but when you hear it with the Jam track it does kind of fit [Music] it might be a little too bluegrassy for your taste if that's the case then just take some of it out I don't know change it that's what what's great about this is is uh you have the ability to do that but but what I'm thinking about as I kind of as I kind of talk this through is I think about each of these pieces kind of like Legos and so the each cord has its own little piece and so this represents the G chord that's my little piece that I'm plugging in for the G chord that means going forward if you like that sound even on something slow and pretty like this or something driving and fast if there's a G chord that shows up in something you're playing you've got some notes that you can work with and you can plug in that piece and and use that for yourself [Music] oh thank you so after I slide up to that g note I just let it hang out there for a little bit then I played now I played that as the song goes to the F chord so I'm on the fourth fret third string I do a hammer onto the fifth fret third string back to the fourth fret and then the fifth fret fourth string very simple to play and it works perfectly over that F chord as the song goes to the F chord now why do those notes work well I was thinking about G mixolydian scale because when you've got this chord progression a one chord going down two Frets this way you've got mixolydian that's I don't know a better way to say it but you'll kind of learn this stuff as you as you the more of it you do but mixolydian scale is just a major scale but you flat the seven that's the easiest way to say it so it's [Music] hear that flatted seven it gives you a little bit more of a blue sound but when your chords are going from a g to an f and then even the C that's in there that GMA mixolydian scale is kind of the perfect scale for that that's like a mixolydian sound and all all of this comes from just hearing intervals the more of this you do even if you totally don't get it yet you just have to keep doing it because those intervals start to stick in your head and you'll hear those little flat sevens when to do a flat seven versus one not to do a flat seven and your fingers will actually know kind of before your head does that's where it gets kind of weird it's just sort of like they'll just sort of feel their way through it but anyway this little that doesn't seem like a scale but it's coming from that G mixolydian scale that's where my brain was [Music] foreign [Music] goes from the F to the C and then back to the G so when it goes to the C I played and then it goes down to the G and I went [Music] so where do those notes come from they come from G mixolydian look at this right so I wasn't like putting my head totally into it but my fingers kind of knew what to do they knew you know kind of where to go and even what to land on so I landed on this B note that's not a note you might think about landing on when you're playing over G chord but it works because remember the three notes in your G chord are a g a b and a d so you can land on any of those notes and it's going to sound good and if you feel frustrated as I explained some of this stuff like how am I ever going to learn all this stuff the notes to land on and all of that just take it sort of piecemeal as it's fed to you so like as you learn that that you can land on a b note for a G chord file that away somewhere and it'll come back at some point you may not know all the notes you can land on for all the chords but don't try and do that just try and get the little piece that you've learned so for a G chord you've learned a couple of things you've learned the little G run the little Bluegrass thing you've also learned a little piece of mixolydian scale landing on the B note these are little things that sort of add up over time and to me that's where improvising comes from it's all these little nuggets that you sort of you know you learn from somebody or somewhere and you just kind of file them away you'll forget half of them probably forget more than half of them but some of them will stick [Music] thank you [Music] okay so this next run goes [Music] that seems like a lot but you're gonna realize that it's just a few things at play here so when I started [Music] what's going on there remember this is where the song goes back to the G chord so this is just another little G idea another one that you can file away all I'm doing is I'm playing the arpeggio I'm walking up the notes of the G chord so but I'm sliding into that third interval just to give it a little bit of extra character I guess you could slide into any of those notes by the way but I'm just I chose the third one so I walked up the to the G chord that's the G chord out of the E shape here so it's 2 barred on the third fret and then [Music] the slide from the fifth fret second string up to the sixth fret and then we played the fifth fret first string now where is that coming from well that's coming I'll give you two ways to look at this one is it's still mixolydian scale [Music] there's that flat seven so you have hear it so but the other way you can think about it is remember we're playing over the F chord at this point look at these notes oh there's your little F Triad this using that D shape maybe a light bulb went off for somebody but these two notes are just two notes out of that F chord so are they out of g mix lydian yes are they also two notes just that just happen to be in the F chord yes so either way they're going to fit perfectly uh over that F chord so we have this then for the G chord there's our F chord then the Sun goes to the C chord and I went what's that so that's sliding up to the fifth fret second string from a half step down so from fourth fret and then playing the fifth fret third string now what are these two notes well let's think about our chord shapes we're playing the C chord here so I was just thinking about my C chord using the a shape from the cage system which is right here and if I look at strings two and three out of that out of that little Triad there that's all I'm doing so I was just thinking about my chord I wasn't even thinking about a scale I did the same thing for the next note that I played that I play after that which is so then the Sun goes back to the G chord I'm thinking about my G chord again right here using the E shape only strings two and three though I just slid into that why did I choose strings two and three probably because I just played strings two and three for the C chord I'm lazy like that [Music] foreign [Music] chords are going to repeat again we have our g f c and then back to the G so for the G this time I went I came up here and played a G chord using that D shape so that looks like that or your the your G note is on that eighth fret second string so I played this and then I added this little embellishment to it that goes right um and what I'm playing there is it's really just notes from the scale again but I didn't think about scale I just kind of feeling my way around with my pinky there as a embellishment I guess off of that chord shape so the pinky goes to the uh eighth fret first string slide up to the tenth fret first string and then back to the eighth fret so it goes like this that's a little tricky to do to make it sound clean in fact when I did that the first time I think I screwed it up so I had to do that a couple of times to get that right and then I came down to Fred's because we the next chord is an F chord so remember if we look at what's going on here for example G chord F chord it's the same shape we just go down two Frets so there's your Q so in other words if this is a G chord we just go down two Frets so if I'm playing a G chord up here I just go down two frets um so you can you know follow the same logic all the way through so the notes out of it one two three [Music] and then it goes to the C chord and I just played it like this so that's out of your a shape or your G shape however you're thinking about it but it's the Triad there strings uh two three and four on the fifth fret a little embellishment off of that and then back to my G chord using the E shape only strings two three and four though see I'm matching what I did here strings two three and four two three and four [Music] so when I came down to this G chord here I went played the G sus4 uh so to add another little embellishment basically I was copying what I did for the C chord there's your C with your little C sus4 and then I did the same thing for the G and my pinky goes down on the fifth fret third string to create that now this is where the song changes changes gears and we add some different chords so the next chord set these are basic chords we have a d chord then it goes to an E minor and it goes to a c then back to our G and then we repeat that back to the E minor but then it goes to an A Minor and then to a d which is the five chord of G and brings us back to our G and we can start the cycle over again okay [Music] now let's look at that so we're going to be playing over a d now and then an E minor those are our next two chords so remember we we're on our G here we did our little sus 4 thing and then so the next chord is a d and keeping with this theme of playing strings two three and four like we did here and here I did the same thing here look at this for the D chord so that's my D chord I'm using the C shape from the cage system right but I'm only playing strings two three and four so that's all I need I don't even need to use my pinky but hopefully you can see where that's coming from here's your D chord the way you know it right but we're playing this little this little piece of it so I played that D chord just strummed it once two three four then my E minor just strum that and let it ring out foreign [Music] and then the next little phrase or fill lick that I played as the song goes from a c to a g I played this [Music] let's look at the notes there we're going to do a hammer on between the second fret and the fourth fret on the fourth string and then while that note rings out actually that fourth fret fourth string go ahead and hit the third string which is your open G note and it kind of creates a little dissonance between those two notes and then you walk it back down two or four two open fourth string open fifth string and then the second fret fifth string so now what is going on there now remember in the first part which was g f c g the only scale I mentioned was G mixolydian now for this since the chords have changed we've kind of Switched gears here a little bit we have a d and an E minor C and G so the scale I'm going to use for this would be G major so because those chords are all in the G family the E minor would be your relative minor be your six chord your D chord would be like your V chord your c chord would be your four chord and so forth so so the G Major scale is going to work perfectly in this situation that's why when you hit this note that's your seventh interval right one two three four five six seven but it's it's the correct seventh interval from your major scale versus the flat seven right from mixolydian C that wouldn't have worked that wouldn't have sounded right if I played the the flatted seven verse versus uh so anyway that's what's going on there with those notes [Music] so then it goes back to the D chord and what I played to get back to the D chord note wise was just walked it up two three four on the fifth string and then up to my open D string on the fourth string there and that's really just a chromatic move so I'm just walking it up now once I hit that open fourth string let it ring out and then I go ahead and put my fingers in position to play the D chord but I left the my middle finger out of it so I I let that open E string ring out so so you have that sound that's a d sus two [Music] and again these sus chords sound pretty in something slow like this and it's just sort of has a real pretty chiming sound I actually use more of them than I thought I said at the beginning I only used one but actually I'm seeing that I've used quite a few of these suspended chords so so I played that now the next chord is the E minor I could have went back to the E minor down here but to give you another option [Music] I came up here and hit my E minor here I was thinking about my E minor using that a minor shape [Music] it's a little stair step seventh fret eighth fret second string ninth fret third string seventh Frets on the first string okay now the next chord after that is an A Minor and I played it here you thinking about my E minor shape right so a little embellishment with my pinky seventh fret first string take that off and then eighth fret second string and then watch this I played my D chord there and that's using the same thing we did for the C chord remember that little Triad doing it here now so I'm thinking about my D chord using the a shape or the G shape but it's just the Triad so hit that there and then I can repeat that's where the song Would repeat you go back to your G chord F so forth um there's a lot of information even though this is just a few chords I wanted to give you lots of different options and that's what this is all about it's just I mean you some of these you're going to already know how to do some of these maybe you're looking at it from a different angle some of this stuff maybe you've never even thought about before but the whole idea is just to get you thinking about oh yeah okay so instead of playing a G chord I have that option or I've got right or I've got [Music] that option you've got options to substitute for chords I think that's what this is all about just finding substitutes so that you're not just going like this right that's the whole idea behind improvising all right well I hope you've enjoyed this um if you haven't uh subscribed to my YouTube channel if you're watching this on YouTube and you haven't subscribed hit the Subscribe button click that alert Bell then you can be notified when I put out new lessons which I do every week all right uh make sure you check out active Melody as well if you haven't done that all right we'll see you next week for something new

Channel: Active Melody

Views: 52,846

Keywords: acoustic rhythm guitar, rhythm guitar lesson, rhythm guitar ideas, acoustic guitar lesson, acoustic rhythm, rhythm guitar tutorial, creatively fill the space, activemelody, active melody, brian sherrill, guitar instruction, improvise guitar

Id: ngSS1gOc9f4

Length: 25min 34sec (1534 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023