Play the Guitar: Lesson 18

   In the previous part we've talked about barre chords. Now we will learn a new song.

   My Third Guitar Song

   Turkey Day just ended, signaling the start of the holiday season. "It's the season to be jolly, fa la la la, la la la la". So... let's learn Jingle Bells!

   It is a very simple song, the chords and the lyrics are here (Link to UltimageGuitar.com, opens in a new tab). I couldn't find a reasonable video so I guess I'll have to make one but... not now.

   So. As you can see from the tab, we will need to learn two more chords: A7 and D7. We could just skip them but... let's not. They're simple enough.



   See? Veeery simple. What does the 7 stand for? I have no idea. Something about some music theory stuff I was never really curious about. All I know is they sound moodier; they have more color than the regular ones.

   Next: how do we play the song. But not so fast. There is something else we need to do, first.

   When we talked about strumming, in lesson... err... lesson 12 plus, we saw that every song has a structure -  yes!, there is structure behind all that madness - and it is usualy made up of four beats: one, two, three and four. The same is true with this song. But. If we look at the chords and lyrics, as they are shown in the link I provided, we will see that the structure is... well... not very structured. So... what do we doooo? We fix it!, of course. Don't be afraid to take things and make them your own (by adding and/or improving I mean, not by stealling, no). Just like I did in the next image.

   All I did was to press the print screen button and then open the Windows Paint application and paste it in. See? Then I updated the structure as I needed to. The result is a little messy but that's by design, I wanted it to be quick and simple, not pretty or anything. So. Now that our song has a much  improved structure, what do we do next?

   Next we do what we always do:

   - play the song one chord at the time
   - then, when we get the hang of it, we play the song repeating each chord four times. But there is a catch: in this song there are some chord switches right in the middle of our four beats, so some of the chords repeat only two times. Or even once! We will have to watch out for those. It is a very common way to do things, so we will have to get used to it.
   - then, if we feel like it, we apply a strumming pattern to it. It is still a little difficult, but we could apply any pattern we've learned in lesson 12 plus: pattern 1 we did above, 2 is a very easy way to get things going, 3 is better. Still a better pattern would be this, I think: du d_ du du. Try them all. See what happens.

   And... that's it! See you next time. "Fa la la la, la la la la."

To be continued...