All of you guys talking about muting and power chords: we’re talking about grade 1, lesson 5 here: no power chords, no muting. It’s a picking and fretting exercise. For this lesson, people have to stick by the tab included in the lesson:
@tietanic, at first, don’t try to follow Justin while he plays it. Play it by yourself. Start of with learning which string to pick when, just do it really slowly, even just one bar at a time if you get confused, until you get the structure. Then put it together, use a metronome or drum track to keep you on rhythm, and slow it down to a tempo you can follow. when that goes well, try to play it a little faster, and so on, until you get to the ‘normal’ speed.
Actually, in the lesson, Justin explains the more advanced part of the song (power chords) and @DMWinSD above asked a specific question about that part of the lesson. Hence the talk about muting, etc.
@tbushell, what is the purpose of the connections between pairs of notes, for example the 0-1 just before the repeated part? Why not make them all separate notes like the first one? Now that I look at it more, this tab looks like a cross between tab notation and staff notation, which I haven’t seen before, but looks great since it includes rhythm information as well as notes. But even if it were pure staff notation, I still don’t understand the connectors between notes.
Thanks, but I was referring to notes that are connected at the top with a straight line. Sometimes there are two notes connected, sometimes four notes connected. The connections don’t seem to have anything to do with how the notes are played.
The ties tell you about the note duration and grouping. Not completely in tab, but some, and usually enough to get the feel.
I think it is a combination of standard notation for music and tab.
I did realise where the discussion came (comes) from, but this is actually the topic for the riff as taught in grade 1, module 5, as mentioned at the top of the screen. The topic for the actual song lesson is this:
I didn’t (and don’t) want to be rude, but questions and comments about the song lesson in the comments section of module 5 probably feels quite confusing and discouraging for someone who is at that module 5 stage, seeking help.
In the lesson linked at the top of this topic, the grade 1, module 5 lesson, Justin does indeed discuss the chord progression (see around 4:00 of the video), where he demonstrates the F# power chord, followed by the open A chord (the progression in the chorus).
As he often does, Justin is giving some extra info for potentially more advanced players. No need for the beginners to get discouraged!
@LadyOfTheCastle, I haven’t posted much here and don’t seem to have quite gotten the hang of it yet. There is a lot to learn, and I tend to get bogged down in details, which I was trying to clarify. Others have suggested that some of my questions that aren’t related to the riff itself will be answered in later lessons. I will try to rein myself in and focus on the topic in the future. Do you have a suggestion as to where I should post questions not directly related to the lesson.
No, please, don’t worry - feel free to ask. It isn’t always easy to find your way around here, I sure realise that. It’s just that people when answering don’t always take into account the stage the person who asks a question is in. Everyone means well of course, but sometimes it is quite incomprehensible for someone in grade 1. But apparently, you’re already a step further, so: good on you! Just keep going!
@LadyOfTheCastle, thank you very much for your reply. I started learning guitar decades ago, then set it aside. I’m picking it up again from step 1, but I do remember some things from years ago and am trying to put together the new with what little I remember of the old. I’ll try to not go beyond what Justin (great teacher!) has covered in the course.
Hard to believe that I wrote that post almost 4 years ago…
You are right that this is a tab / staff cross…tab for note pitches, but staff notation for timings. I first saw it in guitar magazines in the 1990s in my earlier - failed - attempts to learn guitar. Learning from paper tabs does not work very well…as least for me, it doesn’t.
I only learned this many years too late, but the upper horizontal bars (can’t remember what they’re called) group notes into a single beat in the measure. In this case, each pair of two 8ths indicates a single beat in 4/4 time. A downbeat and an upbeat.
If this were a 16th note rhythm, the notes would be grouped into sets of four.
And getting the upbeats right is the key to this riff. This is made more difficult because it’s all down 8th strums…which Justin never mentions, IIRC.
Do you understand where the upbeats are? If not, I’ll mark up another pic.
Tab was the best tool I had at the time. But these days, there are much better tools.
For me, the best way to work out rhythms is to use the Moises app to loop, slow down, and add a metronome click to the section I’m struggling with.
Then I use the Walking In Place technique - I mentioned it upthread if you didn’t see it - to really feel the rhythm and identify where the upbeats happen…you can’t miss it - it’s when your foot comes up. Much better than tapping my foot.
It’s still difficult…I’ve spent the better part of three practice session working on two measures of the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes”, working out where the upbeats fall. But it works better than anything else I’ve tried.
Thanks for all of the info. The Moises app sounds incredible - magic. Per a reference from @sequences above, the connectors at the top of the notes are called beams. The groupings help to understand the rhythm.
Actually, in the sample above, some of the 8th notes are connected into groups of 4, so it’s not a single beat. My understanding is that the beams (that’s what they are called) are used to group notes into chunks that are more easily processed by our brains. So, e.g., 2 groups of four 8th notes connected by beams are more easily parsed than eight individual 8th notes, with the little flags.
As a complete beginner, this has been my experience too. This is the first lesson that I am not satisfied with. I don’t know how to read the tab for the life of me either, so truly feeling discouraged. I think I am going to replace this activity with another Chord Perfect exercise instead.
Don’t give up. Tab is not hard to get the basics of.
Justin has everything I have needed to know, starting with no musical background. It is not always easy to find, but the search is pretty good and I haven’t had to ask where something is on the forums yet. He has a lesson on reading tab here. Sometimes you need to jump ahead in the lessons. This is one case where it is probably a good idea.
Justin has another in the PMT group. I THINK that the first two lesson groups in PMT are open to the public. If I am not correct, I have no doubt I’ll hear about it here.
It is also a good skill to grow to be able to hear and see what a guitarist is doing and not need the tab. This is a short enough riff that it is a good choice for working on that skill as well.
Actually, the TAB lesson you linked to is in Module 4, while this lesson on Come as You Are is Module 5. So, you should already know how to read TAB when you get here.
Besides the links @sequences gave you there is also a link to the Reading Tab lesson in the Before You Begin: Guitar Basics which is Module 0 of grade 1.
