Lesson #044, Rhythm and Counting VII

Saturday, April 11, 2009


Lesson #044, Rhythm and Counting VII



Hi Everyone,

In this lesson I played a little bit of guitar for you so you can practice your banjo using the whole note, the half note, the quarter note, and the eight note. You'll be using this guitar track for some of the upcoming lessons as well. I will be putting down different guitar tracks from time to time to help you progress as the lessons become more and more involved.

In this lesson I'm using 8 measures in 4/4 time. I'm repeating those 8 measures a number of times as well. Heres how the 8 measures go with the chord changes and the count of 4 beats go.

G 2 3 4 = the first measure
C 2 3 4 = the second measure
G 2 3 4= the third measure
D 2 3 4= the fourth measure
G 2 3 4 = the fifth measure
C 2 3 4 = the sixth measure
G 2 D 4 =the seventh measure
G 2 3 4 = the eight measure

Those are the chord changes we are dealing with in the guitar example. Remember to tap your foot along to the count of 1 2 3 4. Again the down beats being the 1 and 3. The only thing you have to watch out for in these 8 measures is the seventh measure. There is a quick chord change between G and D in the seventh measure. If you look at the seventh measure you can see it happens right in the middle of the measure. There are still 4 beats but we just happen to change chords in the middle of the measure on the count of 3.

So practice using the four notes we discussed... try to get your notes nice and even... just like that pie.

Before long you'll be tapping your foot along unconsciously and wont be counting at all. You'll just be playing! How cool is that!

Rock On

David

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In 2009, at the age of 60, I decided to learn to play the 5-string banjo. I searched the internet for lessons and struck gold when I found David Cavage's free banjo lessons at Musicmoose.org. His video hosting site revver.com was having some serious problems at the time so I downloaded as many of the lessons as I could whenever they became available. Revver.com stopped operating shortly afterwards and, sadly, Musicmoose.org is no more. I contacted David early 2020 and he told me he no longer had the original master videos and feared they may have been lost forever. This amazing course of free banjo lessons, from absolute beginner to advanced player, is too good to be forgotten, so this is my attempt to get David's work back out there again so that he can teach, inspire and spread the joy of banjo pickin' to more generations of budding musicians, just like he did with me. I've rounded up all the Moose stuff I could find and put it here, so start pickin' and enjoy!-------MooseHerder.