Testing New Techniques! // November
- Abhay Liginlal
- Nov 29, 2017
- 3 min read
Hectic Month
To be perfectly honest November really was NOT my month for playing the guitar. I didn't have CLOSE to as much freedom as I used to and overall that affected my time at the strum quite rigorously. However I did get some new things into my guitar
playing experience that was pretty cool to share to say the least!
Need to Diffuse
As I said before I had virtually no time this month due to exams and
what-not, but I found away to work around that which was both beneficial for my quest, my work and my mind. I allocated 15-30 minutes of time for my guitar playing every single day during my study sessions. My AP Biology teacher (which happens to be a large cause of my lack of time) recommends that students like me with huge amounts of work on their weekly schedule should always do something to let our brain diffuse while we study, so guitar was a pretty ideal tool I could use to fill that order. Every time my work gets either too frustrating or too heavy of a work load, I simply put my pen down and pick up my pick instead. It's not just really helpful for my mind to calm down and relax a little bit, but I also happen to get far better at the guitar with daily practice!
The Art of the Riff
One thing that I picked up during this time that I think deserves a section of its own on this blog was the art of finger style. Basically finger style is picking individual strings to make a melody and it is simpler to grasp than strumming chords, but also something that requires a lot of practice in order to get right. For this month my goal was to learn a couple cool finger style riffs and try to play them. Riffs are portions of songs or basic beats that aren't really a full song, but the basic tune of a melody that's repeated over and over again. Each one of my attempts has the tabs and a short video of me playing the riff attached. Hopefully I can learn more finger picking in the future for songs.
Smoke on the Water
First up, I started with one of the simplest guitar tunes that beginners learn: Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple. This song only involves the A string and has a simplistic pattern, that starts and ends with the exact same beat. (album image)
Seven Nation Army
Next, to up the complexity, I decided to play the Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. One of the most celebrated songs in recent memory and known to almost every guitarist in the world. The beat is really simple and only involves two strings: E and A. (album image)
I NEED U
Finally, I decided to go full K-Pop crazy like I usually do and play the riff of one of my favorite Korean songs by the band BTS. This song was introduced to me by my good friend Manya, who, funnily enough, is doing her Quest all about Korean language and culture (you can check out her blog here). This is by far the toughest riff I played and if I was to include the outtakes for the amount of times I tried to play the full thing, I don't thing the language would be appropriate for school to be perfectly honest :') (album image) (tabs image)
Song of the Week!
This week instead of doing a song I decided to learn a classic strumming pattern used in various songs across all sorts of genres, such as 'I'm Yours' by Jason Mraz. It uses any set of 4 chords, but I loved the progression of G, Em, Am, D. (image)
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