Description
Now let's break down and practice a song that uses our new drony open string chords.
For our intro we'll use our faux Flamenco sound by doing a dramatic strum with an upstroke of our open E-chord. You can do it by the bridge to get it extra dramatic sounding. Then we'll do a downstroke, and now we'll move our fretted notes up one fret. Go back to E and repeat.
It's a little tricky starting with an upstroke, followed by a downstroke, because it's opposite of what you're used to doing. But eventually we have to break those habits and use whichever type of picking or strumming motion suits the music, instead of having the physical motions tied to a certain order or a certain rhythm. And this is a good early exercise in that!
Next we have the main section of our song, and for that we'll use our new strumming pattern and start out on E major for 2 bars. Then we'll move our fretted notes up two frets, which I can now reveal is basically an F# major chord. A very colorful F# Major chord, but an F# major chord nonetheless. Strum that for 2 bars as well.
Next we'll move up to our A-chord up to the 6th and 7th fret. Strum that for 2 bars as well! Finally we'll move up to our B-chord in the 9th and 8th fret and strum that for 2 bars as well.
After that we'll repeat the whole section.
For the chord transitions I don't do the open strings, I just release fretting pressure on our three fretted notes and then I move them on the last upstroke of the strumming pattern. Just like I would if I was doing the usual open string version, only now I keep touching the strings so they don't ring while I'm moving.
And after the second repeat, we'll reuse our intro for the outro, and since we're starting that with an upstroke it helps to end the strumming pattern on the last B-chord a little earlier. Then we can comfortably start the outro with the upstroke. And then we just end on one last last dramatic up-strum of the open E-chord.
Lesson Info
