Happy Birthday Finger Style

This is taking me FOR-frikkin’-EVER to learn and get right. I’ve been on it three weeks and still can’t get my datgum fingers to do what looks so easy on paper. Very frustrating. I think I’m just gonna dedicate a few practices to this and maybe one other thing, until I get it right. I can’t even begin to think about doing this with a metronome. The very thought makes my skin crawl

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my birthday is tomorrow! perfect timing with this lesson :slight_smile:

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Happy birthday!:tada:

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Hello @artja and welcome to the Community.

The G7 is an ‘implied’ chord.
If you just played simple, single chords and strummed them once each time you would hear the underlying harmonic structure (chord movement in other words) is moving between a C-chord and a G-chord at that moment. It is actually a G7 because of the note F.
G = G, B, D
G7 = G, B, D, F
The implied G7 contains two of its notes.
Also, G7 is the best interpretation of those two notes as it is the dominant 7th chord in the key of C, the chord that pushed and resolves back to the tonic (root) chord.

Hope that helps.
Cheers :smiley:
| Richard_close2u | Community Moderator, Official Guide, JustinGuitar Approved Teacher

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:dizzy_face: Cheers Richard, made my brain overheat for a few minutes! But actually your explanation makes perfect sense and is really helpful, Thanks​:+1:

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OMG! I just watched the first half of this then skipped to the part where Justin is talking because I felt overwhelmed! gonna have to try it again when its not late at night! It FEELS like theres a whole ton of new things all at once but I’m probably just overthinking? Anyhow. WOW it’s just so different than what we did before if you are going through in order.

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Thank you! Happy Birthday will be the end of me. I’m going to try this because playing it as arranged is eluding me. Everyday, I think I’ve got it learned and then the next day half of it’s gone. But it’s always the bass notes that stump me. This will get me over the hump. Can’t believe I didn’t think of it.

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This is taking weeks!!! Wasn’t expecting that. Probably another 2 to get it down. :face_exhaling::face_with_raised_eyebrow::face_with_spiral_eyes::woozy_face::dizzy_face:

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The tab in the description still has the error.
Here is a corrected version:

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Like most others on this thread, I found this song harder to learn than I was expecting. It took a lot of repetitions to get this sounding OK and memorised, but I think I’m finally there.

Here’s a playthrough I recorded this morning.

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I also found this to be much, much harder than I expected. TBH, I gave up on it after a few days…just wasn’t motivated enough to put in the effort.

But I see that Greensleeves is in Grade 3, and think I’ll be much more motivated to learn that - even if it’s more difficult.

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I can understand giving up. I came pretty close to losing interest on it too, but I’m glad I pushed through.

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That’s good that you pushed through as you will have learned a lot from it. The trick is to learn it in blocks.

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@Tbushell Hi Tom was it the difficulty or the song that demotivated you?

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A mix of both, I think. But mainly, I think it was that I just wasn’t interested in learning that song.

I’ll work pretty hard on a song that excites me!

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Sticking to the things we love is the best strategy ever. I love to practice more fingerpicking than strumming and I can see progress, but it’s very slow, it makes sense, especially with melodies, it requires that we start building a connection with the fretboard, it does take time. Last week I nailed Happy Birthday, I need to find sometime to understand how to post the video here. I didn’t work on the musicsheet, but worked it out from the C Chord Explorer Lesson. I’m all over the place because I didn’t expect it to learn it in only in a few days…I mean I’ m the same person who started and gave up with frustration the ear training course about 4 or 5 times in 2 years now…and I still haven’t finished it!

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Hi Silvia, if you upload the video to YouTube, you can then just paste the link to the video in here, and it will show up as an embedded video. If you need help with any of of that let me know, DM is fine.

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https://youtube.com/shorts/AlMs7k7CSgM?feature=share

This is my take on Happy Birthday. As I wrote before I didn’t work on the lesson, but I worked it out by myself starting from the C Chord Explorer lesson. I start feeling that connection with the fretboard Justin often refers to…but performing is still challenging.
Any feedback and criticism very welcome :blush::blush::blush: @direvus

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Well done, Silvia, sounds really nice and you seem to be very relaxed. You did it with a smile on your face, nice to see! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Well done @SILVIA that sounded lovely. You ear training and connection with the fretboard is coming along well. That’s great that you took the C Chord Explorer Lesson and applied it to work out Happy Birthday. Keep doing what you’re doing, it’s working for you.

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