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I originally planned on wearing a mask for the video to be more thematic, but it made playing about twice as hard and after about 30 attempts I ended up taking it off. I really enjoyed learning this song – I think this the first time I’ve been able to play through a piece without sheet music. I also opted to use my thumb for picking/strumming in most of the song because I liked the way it sounded, but it’d be a good challenge to come back and learn the song and play strictly with 4 or 3 fingers.
After practicing more and getting up to speed it’s sounding better. I’m getting a handle on the dynamics more. Figuring out which notes are part of the melody is also super helpful. Is there any musical notation that’s used to call out melody (without having multiple staves)?
@jedart I think it depends on the type of pickup you have. I have an active/powered pickup and I could barely hear the saddle thumps when plugged in. I’ve heard that passive pickups are better for capturing percussion, though you may need to only lightly tap to get the desired effect.
Thanks @andrew. I definitely practiced just changing between chords for a while and it helped some, but would you suggest practicing something like playing a chord, then lifting my fingers off to hover over the next position, then putting them down at the same time?
Here’s my entry for this month. I still need to work on getting better at switching chords – that was honestly the hardest part of learning this piece for me.
I also recorded another version using a different style of percussive beat that I learned from this tutorial. The cool thing with this one is that it combines a strum and a snare hit into one action. Instead of just strumming through and away with your finger, you can strum down at an angle and let the top of your nail flick into the soundboard. It took me a little bit to understand that it doesn’t take much for it to sound good and that you don’t need to actually flick or add any additional power for that strum.
@becky7777 I think I figured out another way to get that scratch+pluck effect without scratching. You take your index finger and do a strumming motion, but instead of strumming “through” the strings, you kind of angle your finger so that the nail hits close to the sound hole. It’s almost like a lazy flick. This video helped out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGc1xRkZ9-U
Thanks! @becky7777 I was using a Lanikai QM-RDCEC which is really glossy so I don’t think I could get that cool nail scratch sound, but I’m definitely going to experiment a little bit more with adding some percussion
@ripley I noticed that too! It’s tricky to try to keep right hand movement small while also making the index finger percussion loud enough and different enough from the thumb/bridge hit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bccGS8bzI6A&pbjreload=10 I really like the sounds of the percussive hits they make in this video, but I don’t have nails so I haven’t been able to replicate it.
Things I need to work on:
* Picado picado picado
* 4 finger picking instead of using my thumb + pointer
* Tempo. I got nervous recording and didn’t keep consistent speed throughout. I’ll bet practicing with a metronome would help out with that 😛
* Hammer-ons with my pinky are *really* difficult, and end up sounding very quiet
* My sustain during the refrain is pretty poor and it ends up sounding very staccatoAnother thing I’ve noticed is that I play unintentional pull-offs occasionally. I’m not sure if this is because I’m pressing down too hard with my fingers and the strings get stuck when I lift them up, but it’s definitely a thing I’d like to fix.