rapsidy just breathe guitar lesson review upload

rapsidy
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:12 am



Forgive the buzzy strings a missed notes a lot was nerves trying to do a good copy, i didnt succeed :( but its a dream to play this song and i have all the bits just need to polish it,

My question is how should i practice this song to get it right is there any structure i should follow.

I know it is not correct as far as intro, verse, chorus bridge etc... i just wanted to show where i was at on each part. All you great finger pickers please HELP :)


thanks
Brad


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neverfoundthetime
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:31 am

Nice going Brad! You've obviously been working on that. I'm sure there will be many helpful tips coming your way in a moment. Maybe slow down to an even tempo which you can carry through especially when you are changing chords. At the moment you are faster on the bits you can do better and slow down where it's not so automatic. We've all done that!
PS: Sorry about the Ashes! :-)


rapsidy
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:36 am

Thanks Chris

ooohhh you snuck that one in :laugh: yes its all very depressing, but you cant win all the time they have a lot of hard work to do now. I give credit where its due England bowled brilliantly and alistair cook was awesome, well done.


willem
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:37 am

Hi Brad,,glad you pickin again too,,when i read ''just breathe'' i thought which song it was,,when you start playing it i recognice it at ones,,ALcoustic started it ones,,,but i recognice it so i think you are on the right way...goodluck..see you in 2011..


tovo
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:54 am

Don't be concerned about the ashes Brad. We have so much and all the poor poms have is their once every 20 years or so victory. They will all get knighthoods and get fat and lazy. We will be back. (Truth is they were by far the better team and deserved their win).

Now to the tune. It's a cracker for sure, definitely on my very long list. I know I am boring but it just needs more work mate, very simple. Play it and play it and play it some more and the speed and accuracy will come. I don't see anything really wrong, just needs more practice.

So get to it!


sws626
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 8:30 am

Hi Brad,

Nice to see you tackling this song. I spent some time on it a while back after seeing Acoustic Al's initial post, but can't say I've mastered it yet.

If you are not used to Travis picking (as I am not), the tempo of this song makes it a very tough one to learn, so don't despair that it's taking a while. You are definitely on the right track and making good progress. I do have some suggestions that might help you move forward more quickly. Bear in mind that this is not the sage advice of an expert, but just a few thoughts from the experience of a fellow struggler.

First, as Chris has suggested, take it slow. Work on it at the tempo at which you are comfortable with the most difficult parts. Not only does this sound more musical and thus more satisfying to practice, but it will also help you to coordinate the right hand work with chord changes. As Neil often says, there's a clear and simple route from playing cleanly at a slow pace to playing cleanly quickly; but there's no route to anywhere nice from playing roughly at a fast pace. So, my first suggestion is go slow.

Secondly, break it down. The intro is by far the toughest part of the song and also the most satisfying once you've mastered it. The rest of the song follows the same picking pattern and will come naturally once you've got the intro down well. So I'd suggest starting with the first few measures on the C chord, then add the transition and next few on the G chord and just cycle through that intro over and over again (at a slow pace) until you can do it without thinking. I didn't even try to move on to the next section until I was pretty comfortable with the intro at about 80% of full speed.

The transition from C to G took me many, many hours of practice to get smooth. When you slow this down, I think it will flow well for you and you can gradually build up speed. My only suggestion there is to experiment with ways of doing this that involve the minimum amount of left hand movement.

The pinky stretch to the high E (2d string, 5th fret) can be a tough reach, but your hand placement looks very good and this doesn't seem to be giving you any trouble at all. So I'm sure that once the picking pattern becomes second nature this will sound great.

As I mentioned above, I wouldn't encourage you to move on to the next section until you can do the introduction in your sleep. I'm sure this will all come naturally when you get to that point, but I do have a couple of suggestions about the chorus that might be helpful. When you move from G to the Dm, you wisely keep your pinky planted; but you let it go when you move back from Dm to G -- try to keep that pinky in place as your pivot point.

It looks to me like you are well on your way with this one. And thanks for posting it as a work in progress.

-Stuart


Lavallee
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:28 am

Hi Brad, great take at a challenging song. I agree with the others about slowing it down. I would actually add to slow it down even more , almost to a halt and work on establishing the fluidity of the picking pattern. Right now it sounds as you pick 2 or 3 notes, then pause a little, then 2-3 more notes. The pause turns out to be at a different place each time breaking the rhythm. If you play it so ever slow that you can count 1 between notes until there is no hesitation, then move just a bit faster . The difficulty with quick patterns (or any patterns I guess) is that they have to be burnt in you brain , so that you can focus on the chords and not look at your right hand what so ever.

Great work


Marc


MarkM
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 11:40 am

Hi Brad!

You're being really busy practicing the guitar have you? That's great and thanks for sharing it with us!

I can see you've already had a lot of good advice from everyone, so what's more to say here?!

I'd say, like the others, just get the travispicking-pattern down first, that's really the most important thing. And if you don't master this pattern yet, then I think this song is maybe a little bit to difficult. Dust in the wind might be a better choice, but that's just a suggestion...concentrating on just one chord playing this pattern over and over again and maybe even shift to another chord and back would be even better (it's boring, I know, but really affective), because as Marc already said, it has to be burnt in your brain. But really if you can do that, you can play loads of other great songs easily!

Keep at it Brad and let us know how it's going!

Cheers

Vanessa


Chasplaya
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 1:09 pm

Ashes to ashes ...dust to dust...

Challenging tune for you, good points made so far about slowing down, I note that the stutters occur every time you look up to view your right hand , as such I think you need to get more comfortable with your chord placement so maybe strum through the chords sequence repeatedly till you can do that with out looking at your right hand so much slowly as advised then once happier with that change the strum to the picking a few measures at a time. YOu will get there just take time.

Good on ya for trying out the tune though, your confidence is growing all the time.


Must say your pinky seems to work better than Pontings...


michelew
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Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:10 pm

Brad,

This is a great song and it's good to see you tackling it.

You need to get the timing of the picking pattern right before you go any further, you're rushing some notes. It is the same picking patter as 'Dust in the Wind' so learning it first has suggested by Vanessa is a good idea.

I suggest that you use a program that will allow you to play the tune at a much lower speed (PM me if you need advice on a program). That way you can slow the recording right down to a speed where you can clearly hear the picking pattern and then emulate it yourself.

Once you get the pattern right and it's automatic, you'll be a few huge steps closer to your goal.

Keep it up.

Thanks for sharing.

Michele


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