Lesson 79A – chord embellishing practice with musical examples – 11:20 min

In this lesson David Taub teaches a fun new chord progression where you will learn some new strum patterns as well as various chord variations and embellishments. David uses 4 basic chords in this lesson – C major, Aminor, D minor, and G major all in the key of C major. Learn how to use hammer-ons and arpeggiating to add interest and color to your playing. These devices also add melody and you want to get rock solid at adding these embellishments and practice them in your other progressions and songs – YOU CAN DO IT! 

Lesson 79  Practice your artistic discression with embellishments – 7:34 minutes

In this lesson David Taub teaches how to start spicing up your strumming and rhythm will rhythmic embellishments. He discusses artistic discretion and the importance of making your playing more interesting and sophisticated sounding using these techniques. Rock on! 

Lesson 78 – Learn a NEW STRUM PATTERN with Megan – another one for the strum arsenal! 3:55 min 

In this lesson Megan will teach you another strum pattern. It is so critical at this point in your guitra journey to keep adding new strum patterns and continue work on your rhythm and timing. This is a little longer pattern, but Megan breaks the pattern down into sections and you will be rocking out with this one very soon. Then tune into the next lesson as Megan teaches you how to embellish your strumming to spice things up a bit! Rock on!

Lesson 77 more SONG SUGGESTIONS to utilize as vehicles while practicing – 10:10 min 

In this module we suggest different popular songs that you can now try and utilize as vehicles to practice all the techniques, chords, and strumming that you have learned to date. David suggests a bunch of songs to utilize as vehicles to practice your strumming, timing, rhythm, and chord changes. David also gives you a review on where you should be at by now in your guitar journey. Remember even if you are not particularly fond of a certain song – you can learn something from all songs, and then apply what you learned to songs you do like. So you can perhaps learn a new strum pattern, a new chord, a new melody line or rhythm. So don’t close yourself off to certain songs at this point – try to take something from every song. Remember to think of songs as song lessons, so the goal is not just to learn the song – but use it as a vehicle for practice purposes – a nice perk is that you also learn a song – what could beat that! David also suggests to push yourself and to continually try harder and harder songs that are more challenging – learn a hard song and it makes the easy songs like butter.

Lesson 76 Practice Routine 4A – 3:15 minutes 

In this lesson David discusses where you should be at by now in your guitar journey. You should be pecking away at that F chord and also be utilizing shared fingers and cluster techniques. You also should have your first batch of suspended and add chords down and be able to start peppering them intoc hanges. Keep working on those tougher chord changes also. He also talks about the chords that you should have added to your chord catalogue – keep learning those chords and embellishments good people! As well as continue to use songs as vehicles to propel your playing to the next level.

Lesson 75 Basic FINGERPICKING – try a new technique for a totally different sound! 6:00 minutes

 In this lesson Megan will teach you the basics of fingerpicking. You will not need a pick as you will be plucking the strings with your fingers. This technique will give you a very different sound – much softer and lighter. Megan breaks it down and shows you a few progression very slow and also you will see tight shots on the pick hand so you can see exactly how the technique works. Megan starts slow just fingerpicking one chord then goes into changing chords. You will learn what finger to place on what string with a close up camera angle on the pick hand. This is just the basics to gibve you a little taste and so you can try it out – so much fun! If you like the sound and want to explore fingerpicking further try working on all your changes that you have been doing, but now do them fingerpicked. Keep on practicing the right things and rock on!

Lesson 74 Learn a new STRUM PATTERN – FUN AND EASY STRUM – 3:42 minutes

In this lesson you will learn another strum pattern to add to your arsenal. Marty takes you through the strum slow and he also breaks it into three parts. Practice the strum parts separately, then put them all together. Remember, think rhythmicaly, tap your foot, and play in time. Take care and rock on!

Lesson 73 Learn all about 16th notes and 16th NOTE STRUMMING – 7:12 minutes

In this module you will learn about 16th note strumming and then how to commingle 16th notes with 8th notes and quarter notes. This is the next step in your strumming and rhythm evolution and will add much interest to your playing. SO now we will start attacking more complex strum patterns – and YOU CAN DO IT!. You want to get real proficient at 16th note strumming. Remember, think rhythmicaly, tap your foot, and play in time. Take care and rock on!

Lesson 72 LONG PROGRESSION practice routine with suspended  & add chords – 11:27 min 

In this lesson we will tackle another long progression and use it in our practice routines. This time the progression will be laden with the suspended and add chords that you have been learning in previous modules. These LONG PROGRESSION exercises will really help with your chord changing, strumming, rhythm, and timing. They are excellent practice tools that will really push your playing to the next level. Incorporate these into your practice regimens and note in your practice logs what changes need work. You will see more of these long progressions that get more challenging as your chord changing gets more proficient. Here we put lots of chord changes together in a long string so it really works your ryhthm and chord changing techniques. On screen text shows you the long string of chords and you will want to write them down in your practice log. David goes over the string of chords and then different ways to use the long progression to practice. You want to get good at the progression with quester notes, eighth notes, strum patterns, varying the measure length, and more. Remember you can do it and these will take time so set some goals to get through the progression without stopping as per this lesson! ROCK ON!

 Lesson 71 – Differences between SUSPENDED chords and ADD chords – 12:53 minutes

In this lesson we will discuss the differences between a suspended chord and an add chord. They can be very similar, but there are important differences. Remember that all major theory is compared back to the major scale. To understand the differences between chords and their relationships and intervals its important to understand a little bit of music theory. In this lesson David explains some theory on chord building and how to look at the chord intervals to determine what chord you are playing. David uses some chord examples of what you have learned in the past few lessons like D, Dsus2, Dsus4, A, Asus2, Asus4, C, Cadd2, and Cadd4.

To learn a bit more music theory on this topic or to solidify this lesson read the written lessons on chord construction in the “written lessons” section of the site and also watch the chord construction video lessons in the “music theory” video lessons section of the site. Remember knowing some music theory is very important and will make you a better player and more well rounded musician – rock on!