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With finger style jazz, you’re still using your fingers to play. One of the biggest difference is just, you’re playing more complex chords. So as an intro into playing finger-style in jazz, I’d like to show you how to play a blues using more jazzy chords.

So we’re going to start off with a blues in the key of G, and I’m going to start it off with what’s called a G13 chord. It’s a G7 chord, a dominant 7 chord, but it has a couple other notes thrown in for more color.

So, just to describe the voicing to you, I’m playing a G on the sixth string, third fret. My second finger’s reaching around and grabbing an F on the fourth string, third fret. My third finger’s grabbing a B on the third string, fourth fret. And now, with my fourth finger, my pinky, I’m grabbing two notes, an E and an A. And all those notes together make a G13 chord.

Now when we’re talking chord progressions, we give those Roman numerals, so our B chord is going to be Roman numeral one. Our C chord, which is going to be called C9, is going to be Roman numeral four, that’s our four chord. How you find that out, if you count up four notes from G, you’re going to find C, so G, A, B, C. Four chord. And we’ll go back to G13. Then we head back to the four chord, C9, back to G13 again.

Now if something comes up it’s going to be our sixth chord, if you count up six notes from G, I’ll let you do that, you get E. So we’re going to play an E7 chord, but here I’m adding the sharp 9, and a sharp 5.

So if you look close at my fingering, I’m playing an E, a G sharp, a D, a G natural, and a C natural. That creates an E7 sharp 9, sharp 5 chord.

Then our next chord is going to be the two chord. This is a nice little voicing to play, a minor 7. This happens to be A minor 7. So you can think of it as a C major chord. Take your first finger off, plunk your second finger down on the sixth string and now you get A minor 7. And then that’s our two chord. Now back to the 5 chord again. I’m playing D7 sharp 9. This time I just decided, “I’m not going to play a sharp 5,” and then back to G13.

So I’ll run through this again. I’ll just do a four-on-the-floor Freddie Green style for you for now, just to mark out where the chords are.

[playing guitar]

And there we have our basic blues form of 12 bars, 12 measures.

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My name’s Adam Smale. I’ve been playing guitar since 7 years old and I’m 45 now, so I’ll let you do the math. And I’ve been playing professionally for around 33 years, since the age of 12. I wrote a book, called “New Approach to Scales” for guitars. Basically, this book really is a new approach to playing scales. It’s not, sort of regurgitation of scales that have come before, the same old thing. I’ve developed a new approach to mapping out the guitar neck and playing scales in a completely different way.
If you’re more interested in checking this book out, you can go to newapproachtoscales.com. This here, is a guitar that I designed and had someone in Toronto, by the name of Brian Mascarin build for me. It’s a seven string guitar, but it’s a little bit different. It’s a low E, on the sixth string. And matter of fact, I consider this the sixth string, but the seventh string is a high string. So, I think of it as six, five, four, three, two, one, seven, because that’s the one that’s different.
Aside from gigging around the New York area, I also compose my own music and I have a CD coming out, sometime in the New Year. And, so be on the lookout for that. If you’d like to learn more about me and what I do, you can visit my website, its adamsmale-jazz.com.

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I want to take this time right now to show you just a very simple, yet effective lick that you can play intros and outros, or by means to get back to the top of the song again. It’s really, really simple. I’m using my thumb, middle. and index finger in that kind of a pattern. And the notes
that I’m playing, starting with my second finger on the third string, is a B. First finger is on the second string playing a D, the third fret, and then my third finger is playing a G sharp on the first string at the fourth fret.

[plays a guitar tune]

That’s a great little intro that you can do. I’ll do it again. I’ll do it nice and slow. So this first position that I’m in right here, you’re gonna want to play that twice. That’s once. That’s twice then slide down a fret, then another fret and then I’m using the G string open, hammering on to the G sharp at the first fret, and then two hammer ons right there on the fifth string. Hammering on to the first fret then to the second fret. And that gets you ready to come back into the top of the form. So what I’ll do, I’ll show you that lick and I’ll start playing the top of the song.

[plays guitar tune]

That’s a really good intro/outro that you can use to spice up your blues playing.

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[playing guitar]
Now that technique that I’m doing right there, is called trills. And basically it’s just a series of quick hammer ons and pull offs. So I’ll lead you through what I just played.
[playing guitar]
If you want something to sound really flashy, and a big flourish of notes, then trills is the way to go.
[playing guitar]
Another way to get trills is to actually use your right hand. So since you’re a finger style guitarist, you can do this with your right hand, a la Jeff Beck. So that’s some good examples of trills and finger tapping for you.

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I’m going to show you some more advanced techniques that come from the flamenco world that maybe, possibly, some of you might not know about. The first one is called Rasgeuado, and what it is, is a raking of the strings or a fast flourish of notes coming from your hand. Basically like that. You can curl your hand up, and what you want to think about is having each finger explode out of your hand. [playing guitar] And when you speed it up, [playing guitar] it gives you this very thick sort of sound.

Now, once again, the flamenco guys group things in five. So what they do is you let your pinky explode first, your third finger, middle finger, first finger and then you come back up on an upstroke with your index finger. [playing guitar] Great little technique.

This next technique is spelled Alzapua in flamenco, but you pronounce it ‘Alfapua.’ And basically it’s using the whole thumb. Now, mind you flamenco players wouldn’t be using a thumb pick like I have. I’ve studied flamenco guitar and I’ve just incorporated this into my bag of tricks, so I’m gonna show you this. This is really cool. What you do is it’s in a triplet form, so three notes. You play the first note that you want to play, and you rest on the next string below that, and then you come on a downward direction on those strings, and then your thumb hits the strings again on the way up. [playing guitar]

It’s a great little technique. It’s actually not as hard as it sounds. It sounds very impressive but not really that hard to pull off with a little bit of practice.

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Now we’re going to talk about a walking bass line. We’re going to add some extra notes to make it sound interesting, kind of more of a jazz approach, jazz walking bass line.

So, let’s change the key back to the key G. We’re going to add some chromatic notes. And so what I’m going to do, start off with our G. I’m going to move up to A, play a B flat or A sharp, if you prefer. Go up to B here. I’ve got to play four notes, because I’m playing four beats to a measure.

So I’ve got to play one, two, three, four and then as soon as I land on the C, I’m now in the C chord. So, as you can tell, that’s a little bit more interesting than going [playing notes] because we’re walking up [playing notes].

Now, let me explain what I’m doing there. I’m kind of just improvising, so it’s going to be hard for me to explain. I didn’t pre-plan this to know exactly what I’m playing. That’s the beauty of this. Once you get this kind of technique down, you can improvise your bass line. One way to get used to improvising is to practice how to get from chord to chord. So, [playing notes] as we did that one to get to C, maybe practice how to get back to the G chord [playing notes].

So, I’m climbing my way up to C [playing notes], maybe I’ll do that to get to a G chord [playing notes] and I’m playing a G9. So, I’ll do that again [playing notes]. C9 [playing notes], climbing up [playing notes], now I’m climbing back down.

I just felt, “Oh, I’m going to go back down now,” so [playing notes]. Back to the C [playing notes], back to G [playing notes], there’s my A minor chord [playing notes]. Same approach that I did from G, but now I’m doing it from A [playing notes]. I’m going up a tone [playing notes], a semi-tone [playing notes], another semi-tone, these are chromatic notes to climb up to the D [playing notes].

Now, that’s a really neat, easy way to create a bass line, a walking bass line, by approaching your chord tone, your root note, from either a fret below or a fret above [playing notes].

Hopefully that will get you started on learning how to do walking bass lines in a finger-style approach.

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Bluegrass music kind of infuses a lot of different things into it, including some African-American sounds. So you kind of have some blues mixed in with the country feel. One way to do that is to pick out blues notes, as well as using chromatic notes.

So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to show you a classic bluegrass run that involves all that stuff. Here we go.

I’m going to start with, this is based around a G chord, and it is a great way to end a bluegrass solo or to end the end of a section.

Here we go in the key of G. I’m going to start with the G note with my second finger. I’m going to pick that note, then I’m going to pick the A open on the fifth string. I’m going to hammer onto the B flat. That’s our blues note right there. I’m going to hammer onto the B natural on the second fret.

Then I’m going to pull that note off so that the A string’s open, and then pluck the fourth string open. Hammer on, on the second fret, pull off to the fourth string again. Then finally end up on the G string open. I’ll do it slowly.

[playing guitar]

When you do it really fast, it sounds bluegrass. So I’ll do a little chord progression.

[playing guitar]

It’s a nice little bluegrass fill-in for you there.

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Folk finger style basically comes from a lot of the same background. It’s country music, bluegrass music, but it’s a little more subtle. So a lot of the same techniques that we’ve already explored, you can use. But when you think about folk, usually there’s not any flashy playing, you’re not playing super fast, super loud. It’s always in support of vocals. Usually you have a singer/songwriter who’s accompanying themselves, so you’re always underneath the vocal. So you don’t want to play too loud, or too flashy. So let’s explore some of the same finger patterns, but just apply it to a more folk-y type of thing. I’m going to use the C chord here again. And kind of like the Travis picking, you can move your thumb around, but usually you’re not doing that alternating thing. [playing guitar] I guess you could say it’s kind of like in between classical and the Travis picking. [playing guitar] So you can explore different patterns, but usually it’s a repetitive pattern over and over again. Again, not too flashy, and stay under the radar of the vocals, keep yourself nice and quiet, and in a nutshell, that is finger style for folk.

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I want to just quickly show you a little cool technique here, called drop D tuning. All that really means is you’re taking your low E string, and you’re simply tuning it down to a D. So, what I’ll do is I’ll quickly match it to the open D string, an octave lower. Wow, I nailed it, first time.

Now, when you’re tuning down, it could go out of tune a little bit, so what I like to do is just give the string a couple of tugs, just to make sure it stays in tune. That sounds quite nice and solid.

So now we have a low D instead of a low E, which enables you get more of a lonelier sound. It’s a little more haunting, having your guitar tuned down like that. It works great for a kind of a swampy blues thing.

[playing guitar]

That kind of a vibe. Try exploring different songs with your drop D tuning.

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Slash chords have two symbols. There’s one on the top, and one on the bottom, usually with a slash separating the two. Sometimes you can have a forward slash, almost like a fraction, or you can have a horizontal slash with a chord symbol on top and another chord symbol on the bottom.

The top one, to keep in mind, is the actual chord. So if you have a C on top and an E on the bottom, what it’s telling you is to play a C chord, but with an E bass note. So therefore, it won’t sound like this [playing chord], it will sound like this [playing chord]. So, I’m playing my low E on the bottom.

That just happens to be the example that I gave you, just happens to be an inversion of the C chord. We have one of the chord tones on the bottom. It’s not always one of the chord tones on the bottom, it can be a non-chord tone on the bottom.

So, let’s say we have C over F [playing chord]. This would be a great way to play the C major chord, but have the F as the bass note.

One really good way to explore slash chords, is to try picking a scale and using the scale tones on the bottom as your bass notes.

So, let’s try this. Let’s go C [plays note], C over C you could say, even though that would be an incorrect way to write it out, but let’s just call it C over C for now. C over D [plays chord], a very different sound. C over E [plays chord], C over F [plays chord], you can also play C over F like that [plays chord], C over G [plays chord], C over A [plays chord] which is really just A minor 7, but for all intents and purposes of this lesson we’ll just call it C over A, C over B [plays chord], back to our C major chord [plays chord].

Now to get some more creative sounds out of it, let’s explore some chromatic notes. Some of these might not sound so pretty, but let’s explore them anyway. So, we’ll go C over C [plays chord], C over D flat [plays chord], back to our C over D like we did before [plays chord], C over E flat [plays chord], C over E [plays chord], C over F [plays chord], C over F sharp [plays chord], C over G [plays chord], C over G sharp, or A flat if you prefer [plays chord], C over A [plays chord], C over B flat [plays chord], C over B [plays chord] and C [plays chord].

So the main thing is, when you see a slash chord is play that chord on top, and find the bass note on the bottom, and there’s your slash chords.

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So I’m going to show you how to play funk almost like you would on bass, using your thumb. So a bass player would thump with their thumb like this so you got it, almost like you’re out to hitchhike, and you’re going rotate your thumb towards the string, like that. So I’m taking my thumb pick off and I’m hitting the string right on top of a fret. You want to hit that large knuckle right on top of the fret. And I’m playing the open E string. I’m plucking the D string open, nice and hard with my first finger that’s curled around, lifting it, really lifting it up hard. And I’m hammering on with my first finger. And then I’m moving up to the fifth position with my first finger at the fifth fret, playing the D note, hammering on to the E. And to finish it off, I’m going G on the fourth string with my first finger back to the E with my third finger. And you put it all together.

[playing guitar]

Now there’s lots of other little tiny things in between what I explained to you already that you’re probably hearing that I’m just kind of doing naturally that I can’t really show you that you’ll probably end up doing too once you really get into this style. And it’s very personal so I can’t really show you that. It’s just something that I’m feeling and I can’t really explain it to you. But have another listen and I’ll play this out and you can try it at home.

[playing guitar]

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I’d like to talk to you about the major scale now. The major scale has seven notes. All major scales have seven notes, and we usually number them from one to seven. If you think of the eighth note, you get the repeated note you started with, but an octave higher.

So let me explain. I’ll start with a very simple major scale. Let’s start with a key of C, and I am going to play it one octave. So C, D, E, F,G, A, B, and then a repeated root note at the top, C. Every one knows this sound. An case you don’t really actually understand what a major scale is, everyone knows do, re, me, fa, so, la, te, do. That’s what a major scale is. Do, re, me, fa, so, la, te, do. You get to hear me singing too. So that, essentially, is a major scale.

Now, let’s expand the range of the major scale. Instead of just playing it from our fifth string to our second string, let’s learn how to play it on all six strings. So I’m going to start on C, it’s a good place to start, but I’m going to go past this other C on my second string, and I’ll wind up here on a G. [playing guitar] When I get to that point, I’m going to come back down, [playing guitar] and I’m going to go past my C, keep going all the way to my open E, climb back up, and land on the C. And then I’ll do it one more time. [playing guitar] There is the C major scale.

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Bluegrass music is typically played with a flat pick, but there are a few players around that do play finger style. Even though sometimes you’ll see people using finger picks, and probably they were banjo players at one point. If you ever look at banjo players they actually use metal picks on these two fingers and it’s usually these three fingers that you use in bluegrass technique as well. kind of borrowing from that banjo tradition.

But let’s talk about just some basic bluegrass strumming. In bluegrass you kind of really need to get that country lilt to it from the baseline. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, so that’s what you’re sort of simulating on the guitar. [playing guitar] Now I’m using my thumb pick, I play the base note, strum down, I come back up and then strum down on the fourth string. So, if you know anything about country baselines, you play the root and the fifth of the scale or the chord. In this case G is the root, D is the fifth. So I’m alternating back and forth between root, five, root, five. [playing guitar] When I go to the C chord I’m going to alternate C as the root, G as the five. Then if I go to the D chord, the open D string is the root note and the open A is the five.

Now I should also mention now that you can also use your first finger for the strumming of the chords and just use your thumb for the bass notes. [playing guitar] That’s a little bit more subtle approach. If you want to play quieter, that’s great. If you need to play a little bit louder just use your thumb. [playing guitar] And that, in a nutshell, is bluegrass.

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[music]

A lot of people might not know this, but you can play some really cool reggae grooves in a finger style manner. Your thumb is going to take care of the bass line. And what you’re going to do is use your pinkie this time, actually. You’re going to use your middle finger, your ring finger, and your pinkie.

What I’m going to do is, I’m going to use those fingers, pinkie on the first string, my ring finger on the second string, and my middle finger on the third string, and I’m going to use those to play the sharp, short chords that you do in reggae. And in reggae, it’s always on the up beats. So, if you want to count it out, it’s one, and two, and three, and four, and one, and two, and three, and four, and one, and two, and three, and four, and one, and two, and three, and four.

So the chord shapes, I’ll explain those. It’s just a simple C triad that I’m using fingers, three on the C, an E with my fourth finger on the second string, and then a G, my first finger’s taking care of, on the first string.

Then, I’m moving to a G major triad which is from bottom to top, a B on the third, a D on the second, and a G on the first. Both notes are going to be taken care of with my first finger.

And I take that same shape and I move it down here for an F. [playing guitar] So, it’s C, G, and F. In order to get those chords to be short, I’m lifting my fingers off, almost right after I’ve played the chord, but not pulling my fingers right off. What you do is, just lift your fingers and leave your fingers resting on the strings, so that it remains muted and you’re not hearing open strings ringing.

So, now I’m going to use these fingers and really let it happen. [playing guitar] Now, my thumb I’ll play the bass line. [playing guitar] And I’ll explain what I’m doing with the bass line. I’m actually using my index and thumb, because the notes that I have to play are too quick to do just with my thumb. So, because I’m using fingers A or the pinkie, the ring and the middle finger for the chords, it frees up my index finger to be able to play the bass line. [playing guitar] If I do it slow.

[playing guitar]

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The first thing that I’d like to mention about modes is, is that they don’t really exist, sort of. Really if you already know your major scales, you already know your modes. They’re one and the same. It’s all in how you’re looking at it or hearing it. I’ll try to demonstrate.

So I’m going to stick with a C major scale to demonstrate. So I’ll play a C major scale first. So that sounds like a C major scale. Now if I take the exact same notes of a C major scale, but I play it from D to D instead of from C to C, you’re now hearing the C major scale in a new mode.

So believe it or not, it sounds different, but it is all the same note from a C major scale. So the notes I played for D, this new mode which happens to be D Dorian, is D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D. It doesn’t sound like C major, but it’s the same notes as C major. You can do the same thing from the next note of the scale.

So I’m going to play a C major scale from E to E and that’s called Phrygian. The third mode in major. There we go, so now that’s Phrygian. The next mode is Lydian. That’s starting on the fourth note of the scale, so in this case it’ll be F to F. The next mode is Mixolydian. That’s playing in this case in the key of C, from G to G. That’s the fifth mode.

So there we have Mixolydian. There are two more modes left. We have Aeolian, which is the sixth mode, from A to A in the key of C, and then lastly Locrian, from B to B. So every single mode that I played is just notes of a C major scale. So if you really want to think about it, it’s just C major, but it’s how you’re hearing it and one way to actually hear it, is to understand that there are cords that match each mode.

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I’m going to talk about some Bluegrass runs now. Now, what is a run? A run is basically some bass notes to get from one chord to the next. Instead of just some simple strumming [guitar music], and then you switch to the next chord [guitar music] you can make it a little more interesting by throwing some notes that get you to climb up to the next chord. You’re going to have to almost think like a bass player here.

What I’m going to do is I’m going to climb [guitar sound] up from the G note here that I’m holding down with my second finger [guitar sound] to the A string open to the B [guitar sound] to the C [guitar sound], and I’m going to use that simple run to get from a G chord to a C chord. Kind of like I’m using stepping stone, those notes as stepping points to get to the C chord [ guitar music]. Just like that.

Now if I need to get, say, from a C to a D chord what I’ll do is I’ll use some chromatic notes [guitar sound]. I’ll start with a C [guitar sound], I’ll go down to the B, [guitar sound] back to the C, climb up to a C sharp and then I’ve got my [guitar sound] D string open.

So that one’s a little more tricky. I’ll do that again. C,B, C sharp, D, and then I can strum my chord. I’ll use an example now. [guitar music]

You’ll notice I did a little run to come back to the G. I used the open E string [guitar sound], F sharp [guitar sound], to G [guitar sound]. I’ll do the whole thing again, just to show you. [guitar music]

Bluegrass runs.

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If I’m playing a C major scale and I play a C major scale on top of that chord, you hear it as C major or if you want to call it one of the modes, it’s called C Ionian.

If I play a D minor chord and I play the same scale, it’s not going to sound major anymore. It completely changes the sound and you can do that for each mode. Each mode has its own chord.

Maybe what I’d like to do is to show you what chords match each mode. Let’s start again with
Ionian in the key of C. If I play a C major scale that we consider that the Ionian mode that matches the C major chord. D Dorian matches the D minor chord. E Phrygian matches the E minor chord. F Lydian matches the F major chord. G Mixolydian matches the G major chord. A Aeolian matches the A minor chord.

And then lastly, B diminished, which is maybe a chord a lot of you don’t know, The fingering I’m playing for a B diminished chord right here is E with my second finger on the fifth string and F with my third finger on the fourth string and then finally a D with my fourth finger. And
I’m just playing those three notes. Those notes spell out a B diminished chord and the scale that matches that B diminished chord is B Locrian. And there you have the modes. One thing that I want to add about the modes is, since there’s seven notes in a major scale, there’s gonna be seven
different modes.

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So when you’re playing jazz in a fingerstyle manner, it’s a really good thing to think of each finger as a member of a band or an orchestra. Your thumb is the bass player. Maybe your first finger is part of the trombone section and maybe your second finger is part of the other section or maybe the tenor saxophone section. Maybe you have your alto section here, which maybe might be playing the melody or maybe you can even use your pinkie for the trumpet section, let’s say to play the melody on top.

Think of it like a small big band. So the cool thing about it, is that instead of strumming like you would normally a guitar as I’m doing with my thumb pick, the cook thing about fingerstyle jazz is you can make your whole guitar sound like a mini-orchestra by playing chord jabs or chord shots or hits. Where everybody is playing at the same time or you can separate it. So on that time, that pass-through, you could hear me kind of separating things out and then it starts to sound more interesting. Another way to make it sound more interesting is to walk a bass line, while you’re playing the chords.

Now this is a little bit harder thing to do, but let’s see if we can try to show you how to do that. Let’s try to use – think of the scale. So we’re going to use a G scale to go up the notes to get to the next chord and I’m going to play. So now I’m using my thumb to just play a bass line and then I can use my other fingers to play the chords. Now it makes it sound more interesting, if I don’t play all my chords with the bass line, if I separate it. So if I play on the upbeats with my hands it gives the music more of a forward motion. So have fun trying to put bass lines to your chord progressions in the jazz style.

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I’d like to talk to you about some classical techniques. Being able to explore the classical realm is great to bring into your own playing. The whole thing about classical guitar playing is all about tone, expression, and dynamics.

Dynamics means loud and soft. So, traditionally, classical guitarists would play their guitar on the opposite leg, like this. Now, that feels odd to me, but I thought I would bring that up. You can try this if you’d like. It does help with your left hand, because it helps with your left hand position better, as well as your right hand in order to get good tone, how your fingers come across the strings. But myself, I still prefer this way of playing, and we’ll just talk about those techniques.

Let’s talk about tone. You definitely don’t want to come underneath the string and play it like that. It’s not a very appealing sound. You want to make sure your finger comes over the top of the string. Most of the motion that your finger’s making is coming form the large knuckle here. [plucks guitar string] And you also want to, [plucks guitar string] almost as if you’re pushing the string down, kind of, and you get a nice, round sound as opposed to a sharp sound.

So, once you get better at playing different chord progressions and stuff, you can add some expression to your playing. Expression can be many things. You can slow down, speed up a little bit, play louder and softer. So maybe something like [plays guitar] will bring some depth into your playing by playing expressively and using some dynamics.

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One really good way to understand and build a major scale is to play it on one string. So I’m going to stick with the C Major scale again, just to make it simple, and I’m going to start on the second string, first fret, on that C.

Now before I do that I should explain how the Major scale is constructed. Let’s talk about tones and semi-tones. A tone is a distance of two frets. If I move from this C to that D, that is a distance of one tone, or a full tone. A semi-tone is a distance of one fret. So if I move from this C to this D flat, that’s a semitone. So the scale is built up of tones and semi-tones. And this is what you have to remember, it goes tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, tone, semi-tone.

Let me explain, so you can actually see this on the guitar. So we can’t call this a tone yet because we haven’t moved anywhere. Remember, we have to move one or two frets for you to be a tone or a semi-tone. So if I start off with C I’m going to move up my first tone to D, then my second tone to E. Now comes the semi-tone to F, a tone to G, a tone to A, another tone to B, and then, finally, a semi-tone to the end. So let’s do that again. Tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, tone, semi-tone.

That’s a really great way to understand how to create major scales, playing them on one string.

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Here’s another great little bluegrass run that I’d like to show you. You can come up with your own, but often in bluegrass music they use open strings. So here’s a little lick I’d like to show you involving open strings.

I’m going to start with my first finger on the D, on the second string. Going to a C, with my third finger on my third string and then there’s my open string right there, the second string open. So I’ll review those first three notes.

D on the second, C on the third and then a B, back to the second string open. Then I’m going to play another blues note here the B flat, with my first finger. Then my fourth finger grabs the A natural, on the fourth string at the seventh fret and then the G string open.

Then I’m going to do F with my first finger, E with my fourth finger to the fourth string open, and then I’m going to do some pull offs from C to B. Then the B open to the G, that I can actually use as a G chord as well, too. So let’s go through that slowly. A little bit faster and that’s a really cool open string bluegrass run that you can work into your playing.

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I’d like to show you now, a classical vibrato. Now, some of you might already be doing a sort of a walk or a blues vibrato that’s very quick. That doesn’t really work so good in classical music. Everything’s a little more subtle. How a classical vibrato came about, I’m assuming, is probably from the same technique that they use in violin, which is…I don’t know if you can see my fingers here, but you kind of roll on the pad of your fingers like this, back and forth.

If you ever see a violinist when they’re doing vibrato, their hand’s up here, and their fingers are rolling. So, it’s the same concept that you use. [strumming guitar] If you can hear, it’s very subtle. It’s not [strumming guitar] like a blues player would do.

So, what you can do is, start picking some chords. [playing guitar] It’s just a very nice little subtle technique that you can work into your playing.

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Golpe technique. The golpe technique, basically you’re tapping the top of your guitar for a percussive sound to add in with your playing. This comes again from the flamenco world. What the flamenco guys might do is something like this. [playing guitar]

Just to add little accent spots here and there, it helps to have fingernail on there, because you’re actually tapping, but you don’t want to tap really hard or you’re going to wreck your fingernail. You don’t have to tap loud to get a loud sound. [tapping guitar] I’m slightly using my fingernail and tapping on the guitar. You can practice finding your favorite spot that gets the loudest sound. But the thing is practice, maybe finding different spots that work for you, even if it’s not truly accurate flamenco, it’s a really good technique to get into your playing.

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Triad inversions. Let’s first explore strings one, two and three. I’m going to start with, here at the third position, with my finger on C on the third string, E with my fourth finger on the second string fifth fret, and then a G with my first finger on the first string.

Now, inversions are when you flip the notes around in different order. So, you keep the same three notes, you just flip them around. So the easiest way to do this is to move up to a new position where you can find all three notes. So, start with your lowest note in your voicing. That’s going to be C. We move up to the next note in the scale, that’s going to be E. So we have two notes missing. We still need a G and a C. So that, I’m gonna play my E here at the ninth fret, and here’s my G at the eighth fret, and my C happens to be right there at the eighth fret as well. So now we have our first inversion. Root position, first inversion. And because there’s three notes, you can move them around two more times.

So let’s put the G on the bottom, that’s the second inversion. So, I moved up to the twelfth fret and found my G and now I still need notes C and E, so there’s my C and there’s my E. Now a lot of you might recognize this chord shape as being a D down here. But when it’s moved up here, it’s a C chord, just in one of its inversions.

So practice going up and down your different chord inversions and you can even go lower because I can play this exact same shape twelve frets lower down here. And you can even keep going if you want. Up here, it’s starting to get into like ukulele territory but…

That’s your triad inversions on strings one, two, and three.