Beginner guitar lesson with Chet Atkins

[batwoman]

Chet and two of his students are playing simple open chords and making melodies. It's a nice, slow pace. I like this to practice my scales with this master. It makes me happy to jam with Chet. He also teaches Country Road. Found some simple ideas for fingerpicking in this.




Hope this is OK to post on Justin's site.

[close2u]

nice find

[Joerfe]

Bookmarked!

[DarrellW]

Bookmarked!

+1, really like the simplicity and how good it sounds!

[MrBumble]

I've booked this too. Thanks for sharing it.

[DavidP]

Lovely. Clearly I have a ways to before I'll find that simple 

[batwoman]

Lovely. Clearly I have a ways to before I'll find that simple 

David I've broken it down into bite sized pieces. I've gone as far as making an audio recording of the first little bit and looping it (not sure that's how you say it?) I slowed it down till I could play good, clean notes. I'm singing/learning the note names as I go. I've also recorded the next bit and slowed it down. Still working on this one. There's so much material in this video, some of it beyond me at this stage, so its baby steps right now. It will be a thrill the day I can play along at tempo, singing all the notes. That's my goal. 

With your recording knowledge I'm sure this will be an easy thing to do. To slow it down, I'm using 'change speed' in the Effects menu in Audacity.

[phx1973]

Thanks for this, Batwoman. I bookmarked it too! You can really hear that Nashville sound people talk about with him, especially in the Country Roads tutorial. Mr. Guitar!

[DavidP]

Thanks Batwoman

Must remember this "break it down, slow it down" strategy.

Maybe what I will do is record a few chords that I can use as a backing to do something similar with the A minor pentatonic than I am focussed on.

I assume Am would be one    and a D or a Dm?  Maybe should just start with Am ... start real small, the  1 b3 5 of that chord.

[DarrellW]

This will help David, I don’t know if you have looked at it yet but it’s well worth learning, especially when you start trying to transcribe!

[DavidP]

Thanks Darrell.  I've heard of it but not something I've got into studying yet.

What I did pick-up from the video is that an interval is measured by the number of notes between two notes, including both notes.  I was intuitively thinking that the interval would be the number of notes, excluding the first note.  That is why A to C is a third. 

And then the minor or major is determined by looking at the end note in the major scale of the first note.  In this case of A to C it is a minor third since in the A major scale the C note is a C#.  Therefore in this interval it is flattened by a semi-tone, which makes it a minor.

So A to B would be a major second?

Lots to learn 

Meanwhile, didn't pick up anything in this to give me a pointer as to what chords I should be playing if I want to start playing my A minor pentatonic (at the 5th fret as instructed in BC stage 7) over a chord progression.  Maybe I should be playing Am and C?  Would it work to play other chords in the C maj scale, such as Dm and Em?  I assume that would work if I was playing the C maj scale, but not sure about this given I am using a minor pentatonic.

And this has now become a hijack, I think ...

Darn, I did it again ...

[DarrellW]

Right David, you can play Am Dm Em C F and G and 7ths if needed.

[batwoman]

Useful David, not a hi-jack at all. Chet would be pleased 

[DavidP]

Thanks Batwoman 

As I was thinking more about chords to start using the A minor pentatonic, considering Darrell's inputs, I found the following site.  Useful for me, maybe also for others ...

https://jguitar.com/

[close2u]

David, for the very early fumblings with A minor pent, if you're not going for blues licks, stick to just a two chord loop and dwell on each of the five notes to hear its character and quality, then slowly play some simple multi-note passages. Or, G Major scale and a simple 2-3 chord loop.

Notice in the video that one of the students is literally just playing the C Major scale up and down slowly, the other is chording whilst Chet does nothing elaborate and he simply sticks to the notes of the C Major scale ... which notes and when is the key.

ps

get the Practical Music Theory for all sorts of intervallic goodness.