AlexisDuprey - March 2022 - Five Grade 1 consolidation songs - Stand By Me, Hey Joe, Mad World, Chocolate Jesus & What's Up

Nice steady rhythm and clean chord changes, good stuff.

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Sounded good to me Alex…nice and steady playing. In Justins original song book he used the chords Em, G, D and A for the verses and Em, A for the pre chorus (“and I find it kind of funny” part)…that wa with a capo on 1…apparently to play along with the original you capo 2.

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I’ve had a new appreciation for Tears for Fears lately. This song definitely sounds better played slow. The original recorded version was just too fast.

This should be a great one to learn to sing with too.

Sounds great, thanks for sharing!

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Nice!
What is the BPM on which your playing?

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Didn’t set a specific BPM for this one since I was playing by myself. I just made sure I tapped my foot to stay consistent. I was going for the slower Gary Jules version of the song. I think I was a little faster than even that one.

Hi All,

Finishing up my consolidation here’s the chord progression for chocolate jesus, at least some of it. I really think this would have turned out better with some sort of backing track. I’m only playing the chord progression for the first ~1 minute of the song and there is like 5 Am chords in a row at some point. I think I’ll revisit this if I find a good backing track to play it with. Any feedback is appreciated.

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That sounded good, Alexis. It’ll be a good song to revisit as you develop your rhythm play, to give it a shuffle feel, once you learn that.

I just commented on What’s Up and noticed the way you ended this recording, which worked well.

In terms of recording over backing, there are options. It depends on how you are making your recordings. Share that and we can make appropriate suggestions.

Consolidating nicely, Alexis. Sounded pretty clean to me. As far as a backing track goes I’m sure that could give you an insight into how it sits within a typical musical context. Is that what you want?

Another goodie Alexis. Keep it up. :slight_smile:

Nicely done Alexis. The consolidation is coming along very well.

Hi all,

This is it, the final song I learned for my grade 1 consolidation! I wanted to end with a song that had something that I didn’t practice/learn during grade 1 and this one had a pretty tricky rhythm. It has a 2 bar pattern so two patterns that you play back to back for the same chord then move on to the next is how I look at it. This was tricky at first but once I got the hang of it I really liked the sound and though it’s not perfect it was really fun to learn. Like my other videos this is just the chord progression for ~1 minute. Any feedback would be great!

Anyway, onward to Grade 2!

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That sounded and looked good, Alexis.

I especially noticed the thumb sneaking into action to mute the low E when playing the Am. A great technique to develop early and ever so useful on an electric since things getting get a bit messy when you turn it up a bit, add some gain, and it the low E when not part of the chord.

One small thing to keep in mind, not a big deal. I noticed you ended the recording with a single G after the final C. In doing so you didn’t play the final G in the G Am C G pattern. Always good to end on the chord that is home, the tonal centre of the song, which in this case is G, so would suggest after the final G in the pattern just one more down strum on the G would sound more complete.

Enjoy grade 2 and I look forward to more recordings as you progress through the grade, now you’ve broken the ice consolidating Grade 1

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Another consolidation piece, Alexis. Think you can be happy with that.

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Kudos to you for giving yourself the target of these consolidation songs - playing and recording.
All show good progress and hopefully the various comments also help you make the improvements needed as you progress.
Now saddle up and ride along to the next town my friend!

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Rhythm good and chord changes clean @alexisduprey. Not sure if you know, if you want to play along to the original recording with this chord progression you need a capo on fret 2.

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Is that how you playa this. I thought that it was one bar of G in the first strumming pattern, a bar of Am in the second strumming pattern, one bar of C in the first strumming pattern and a bar of G in the second strumming pattern to complete. I may well be wrong but would be grateful if someone can confirm.

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@Stuartw Confirmation on its way! :slight_smile:
I have been adding chapters to the videos starting with grade 1 song lessons which are now all done. See pic:
image

As Justin says, it is a good idea to write it down. The strumming pattern is a two bar sequence for each chord.

D - D U D - D U D U D U - U D U

1 - 2 & 3 - 4 & 1 & 2 & - & 4 &

It is better to see those in full alignment:
image

Cheers :smiley:
| Richard_close2u | JustinGuitar Official Guide

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Thanks, but is that one bar of G in the first strumming pattern, a bar of Am in the second strumming pattern, one bar of C in the first strumming pattern and a bar of G in the second strumming pattern to complete. Or is it that you play two bars of G, two bars of Am, two bars of C and two bars of G?

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@Stuartw

That is correct.
Each chord gets two bars.

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Yeah when I first read it in Justin’s song book I was confused too. I ended up listening to the original recording a couple of times and then playing it in the app. In the app in looks like one long measure, but is actually 2 smooshed together.

The way I practiced it was set the metronome app to 4/4 and play the strumming pattern which would take 2 cycle (8 clicks) to play once.