"THE Guitar Principles Path:
                      Level One "

Well, see if you understand the rhythm to this song.......

Reaction To "The Path" from long-time teacher/player Byron Santo..... Received Jamie’s new book yesterday, WOW! I must say he has done it again, explained the unexplainable.  I wish that I had this book when I was learning how to read music. Would have saved teachers and myself allot of time and headaches. Just the chapters on rhythm are worth the cost of the book! Oh, and the chord chapters. I could have saved a few years of practicing chords just with those pages. It is defiantly a first to have information like that in print! With Jamie’s books aiding musicians in learning, a “new breed of musicians” is being born; the level of musicianship even from beginners in the next few years will be extraordinary. Great Book Jamie, Byron Santo

"I received my copy of "The Path" yesterday 
(haven't put it down yet). Brilliant - years of 
confusion cleared up in easy to understand English. 
     I don't know why but I just could not get my head 
around rhythm notation- maybe I'm not the 
brightest bulb on the tree but at last I understand it.
    You would not believe some of the corny 
explanations I got over the years.
     Cheers and Thanks!"

Bobby -
Dublin, Ireland
 

Learning How To Strum & Sing

As I have stated repeatedly, one of the biggest obstacles to learning how to strum and sing is the fact that we are required to keep one rhythm with our strum, and sing another rhythm, the melody of the song, which is often quite complex and full of syncopation. This is a hurdle many people never get over.

This point was brought home recently in a lesson with my student Jim, who has so much trouble with this he has convinced himself he only wants to play "notes", not strum chords and sing as well! Well, first of all, I never believe that one, every guitar player wants to sing and play their favorite songs, and second, I never allow a student to get away with that, I tell them "what good are you to anybody if you can't whip your guitar out and sing Happy Birthday for a friend!?."

After some investigation, it became clear what Jim's problems were, and what we had to do about them. You see, Jim has gotten to the point where is chord changes are smooth, and he can sing along also, as long as the plays a quarter note strum, and sings all the words on the beat. Unfortunately, that just doesn't cut it when doing most songs! Listening to that is like watching the tin man dance before he got oiled!

No, we must learn to have the coordination to strum one rhythm, while singing along with the melody, which usually contains much syncopation (notes on the upbeat).

Jim was working on an early Beatle tune, from the "Beatles Made Easy For Guitar". These type of books simplify songs to make them accessible for beginners, which is fine. The only problem is, many students never learn how to make the leap from the simplified version to the "real" way the song is done. And so, they are left playing and sounding very amateurish, which is not what we want.

In books of this type, syncopated melodies are often simplified to quarter notes, and this creates a very stiff feel when sung this way. However, it is quite difficult to make the leap from playing and singing all quarter notes to singing the syncopated melody. It is even more difficult to sing the syncopated melody and play a melody that uses a constant rhythm of eighth or sixteenth notes.

So, let's take a look at how I got Jim started on meeting these challenges, and on the Path to sounding professional and musical.

As you can see, all the notes are quarters, and all the strums are on the beat.

Here is the more rhythmic strum I wanted Jim to use:

This rhythm requires a Down-Down-DownUp-DownUp action of the right hand.

In order to build the skill we need, it is necessary to take the song and write in the rhythm and strum arrows underneath the words, spacing it out so that we can see where the strums fall in relation to the syllables of each word, as well as the beats as they go by. We did that and got this:

As you can see, many of the notes that were falling on the 1st beat of a measure are now falling on the upbeat of the measure before (when the foot is up). The tricky part is to sing this note on the upbeat, and then have the foot go down on the next downbeat WITHOUT singing. It creates a "hole" on the beat; if the metronome is clicking, it will fill that hole with a click.

Another tricky thing is the fact that two notes must be sung on some beats where there will be only one strum, as in the 2nd measure with "you know" all on the 2nd beat with one strum, followed by the 3rd beat which has a DOWN-UP, but no words sung!

A Working Method

After writing the song out in this way, the way to go about this is to take one measure at a time, playing from the 1st beat of measure one to the 1st beat of measure 2. Sing the word "me", and then follow with the down strum, and the foot as it goes down on the "empty" beat.

Do this over and over, in sets of 5 in a row, as many times as you need to get comfortable (which can take a few days of repetitions). Then, do the same with each measure. Keep that foot tapping, and take it one measure at a time. You will soon have it all together, just like Jim! He never thought he would be able to do this, and in fact was trying to avoid it!

Now that he knows how to go about dealing with the demands of learning these skills, I doubt he will avoid it again.

click to order