Lesson #055, Continuation of Vamping Discussion I

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Lesson #055, Continuation of Vamping Discussion I

Hi Everyone,

First let me say that when you are doing these vamping techniques, that your fingers are not coming off the strings. Your fingers remain on the strings.

Vamping occurs when we deaden the strings. Thats how we are creating the percussive sound, by deadening the strings. This first method of deadening the strings comes from lifting our left hand positions slightly off the fingerboard. Let me say again that our fingers are not coming off the strings.

The first example comes from forming a 4th string position closed chord. Remember that when using this formation we are associating whatever chord we want to play with the fretted note on the 4th string(or the first string) because the 4th and 1st strings are the same note in this open G tuning, they are just an octave apart in pitch. Going back to the lesson of naming notes on the fingerboard we know that the note fretted on the 4th string at the fifth fret is a G note, so playing this formation gives us a G chord.

Playing the rhythm pattern as in the video gives us our count of 4. Remember we are concentrating on the 4/4 time signature. We are using 1/4 notes to start this example out. thumb, pinch, thumb, pinch. Thumb 1, pinch 2, thumb 3, pinch 4. That is our count of 4.

Now when we play our Vamp using the pinch, it creates the percussive sound. That sound can now be considered an 1/8 note count. The sound of the initial pinch also has the count of an 1/8 note. Remember going back to the counting series that an 1/8 note has 1/2 beat associated with it. Two 1/2 beats make 1 beat.

We can now count this rhythm pattern like this using this first vamping technique. 1 2and 3 4and............... remember the intial sound of the pinch is 2 and the sound right after it by raising our fingers off the fingerboard is "and".

Remember........ the combination of pinch/vamp is starting on the off beats of 2 and 4.

Rock On,

David