Before we get into the song lessons, I want to give you some practice exercises. Some ways to practice the alternating bass with your thumb. And some ways to put the treble and the thumb together and practice playing the alternating bass while you're also picking the treble strings with your, with your right hand, first finger. Now, these are not official practice exercises. These are just things that I did as I was learning how to play this kind of music. The first thing you want to do, at least I think, is isolate the bass and just work on trying to teach your thumb to play both kind of basis without really having to think about it.

It's almost like you're gonna make turn yourself into a machine where your thumb will just keep pumping away or thumping away. And you don't even have to think about what it's doing and you can Concentrate on the melody. And one way to do that is just pick the courts that we've learned and practice the different basis the the let's start with a monotonic bass. So one practice exercise is just to get your left hand fingers and a chord shape like an E, and then just work on the bass. So the thumping of the of the bass on the sixth string. Just keep it going in B 12341234123 more and just keep doing that a good.

Something I used to do is I do it while I was watching TV, usually by myself because I didn't know anybody else that was watching but I turn the volume down on the TV or even have it up and just sit there and thump away. It's also good to try two different tempos. That was a more up tempo speed. You could try it slowly. Just like that, and then switch chords, go to a G, then move to a C. And this does a couple things for you, it helps your thumb you know, just get used to keeping that steady beat. And also it's good practice finding the strength.

And so as we're going to do with the courts here in a little bit, it's a good idea to practice this base and switch courts while you're doing it. But at first when you're just trying to get the hang of this, just stay on the same court and concentrate on the beat and keeping the beat and muting the string with your right hand palm which is really important. Now the alternating bass you can do the same thing. So let's start our E bass going Keep it going as long as you can, without missing a beat or without botching it. It'll take time you'll you'll suck at this at first, but after a while, your thumb will just start to learn that movement. And then you can switch chords like a G and take all the chords T, A, C, and even F and what this does for you, it also helps you review which strings are your bass strengths for both the monotonic bass and the alternating bass.

So those are two exercises you can do to practice your base your your thumb, your right hand thumb. When it comes to chord shapes, sometimes people who are learning how to play guitar can find getting the hang of chords pretty difficult and it's really simple. Your fingers and your hands have all kinds of muscles in them tiny muscles and in playing guitar and like learning guitar, you've basically got to teach those muscles, totally new ways of moving and new positions that takes time. And what I've done over the years is I've developed some practice exercises to learn chords. And I still use the same exercises myself when I'm learning new chords that I discovered. So the way you do this one that I call is just I don't even know what I call this, but you just take your fingers and pick a chord.

Let's start with E. And just try to put your fingers in an in an E chord. And then once you think you've got them there, strum the chord with your thumb or even with your thumb and your finger on your right hand. If it doesn't sound right, what that means is you probably don't have your fingers in the right place. Maybe they're, they're right on the frets instead of in between them. You know, maybe you're the middle of your finger is not on the string you know holding the cord. Examine the position at Your fingers and try to figure out why it doesn't sound right.

And then take your hand off, put it back on. Try again. And just keep doing that. And at first, you may have to do it really slowly just find the right strengths. Check it really slowly and deliberately in check it out. And when you check it, the best thing you can do is pluck one string at a time.

And that will reveal if you have any fingers that aren't in the right position, if you can pick that and that sounds clean, and you've got the cord down. So do the same thing with every core that you're learning. And what I would recommend is try to learn the chords in the groups that they go with the progressions. So if you're going to work on an E, you might want to work on an A and a B seventh at the same time. So I'll do a E for a while and when I feel comfortable with that I'll move to my a or maybe my long a Take your finger off, put it on again and just keep trying. I call these on and off.

That's what I couldn't remember the name I had for him. Pretty, pretty elaborate name there, then your B seven. Take your hand off, put it back on. And then as you get better at this, the next exercise that I have is called switch a ruse. I like that one. And what you're gonna do is just switch courts, you're gonna go E, A, B, seven E, he can't really do this until you've mastered the first drills and can cleanly make the chords reasonably fast.

The last thing I want to show you is some practice for putting the two together the bass and the treble, so your right hand thumb and your right hand first finger and a good way to practice getting these to work together. getting the hang of playing the alternating or the monotonic bass while you're picking out something on the treble strings is to just pick a chord. So let's again start with the E. And let's start with the monotonic bass. So I'm going to start the bass stop. And I'm just gonna start messing around on the first and second strings and keep it simple at first. What you're going to do is try to keep the bass going and then just try to invent some melodies, you know, on the on the first and second strings mainly so you can do something like that.

And doing that will also help you learn which notes you can use with which courts while you're while you're picking, and then the alternating base, just do the same thing. So let's take e What I'm trying to do is get used to using both my thumb and my first finger at the same time. So we could go to a and now use the alternating base when you start feeling comfortable doing something like that and any of the chord shapes, all of them so go to C and just play around with the alternating bass and the treble strings with all the chords Don't forget g, f, d, and really Any chord that that's listed in the chord section of the chord dictionary that I've provided with the with the resources here. So there are some simple practice exercises. This is before you start getting into the songs.

And the next part of this lesson series, which is the main part. The whole idea is to help you learn these chords and how to play the alternating bass and all that by giving you some specific songs to work with. And it's a lot more fun learning guitar when you're learning specific songs and you have an end goal in sight. So now that you've got your chords, your chord vocabulary and your chord practice exercises work on that. And when you think you're ready, move into our first our first group of songs in the key of C.