Finger Waltz

Hi again, fellow guitar enthusiast.

The little waltz I just made up for you this week has quite a few things going for it in the practice department. It's a combination of bass line, chords, melody, harmony, chord grabs, single note lines, slash-chords, wide finger stretches, open string use ... all in the space of 19 seconds. If you want to increase your picking-finger independence, this would be a good work out. As I mention often, the execution of repetitive finger-picking patterns is something you should always practice and keep well oiled, but what you are really looking for is the ability to make your right hand do what YOU want it to do, not what a pattern imposes. It's much harder to do. It takes concentration and focus in the beginning but once you lock in the basic principles, you can really take full advantage of the design of the guitar.

This is the usual movie/tablature/midi file formatted lesson.

Go to http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/ and click the Weekly Lesson link and negotiate the speedbump.

I have had a great reaction to the first of my Master Lessons, which is a dropped D slide 12 bar blues. The lesson comes on CD as it consists of 300 Mb of high quality movies, graphics, fretscapes and sound files. Go to http://planetalk.thatllteachyou.com/xroads/ if you want to hear the mp3 of it and read more details.

If you're curious about how someone who has been playing professionally since 1969 looks at the fretboard, then check out PlaneTalk - The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book. It's the book I wrote describing the simple but all powerful visualization technique I developed over the decades. http://planetalk.thatllteachyou.com/ is where to go.

Do you play slide guitar? Why not join the Slide Guitar Forum at http://www.bottleneckguitar.com ... we need members! And if you are the webmaster of slide guitar related site, feel free to join the Slide Guitar Web Ring. There are over 50 sites in the ring and it generates good traffic.

All the best, enjoy the lesson.

Kirk
http://www.kirklorange.com