Think playing music is too hard? You haven’t tried
the Strumstick.
SONGLETS:
Lesson 3: SONGLETS
Soon we will go on to playing regular songs. Before ten, it would help to be very comfortable with fingering and strumming the strumstick in general. You can get that experience playing random notes and strumming, but you can also get it with a fun and useful exercise we call Songlets. Songlets are little bitty song pieces (that you create!) that can even grow up into real songs. They are small enough to be easy, and interesting enough to be fun!
Step A:
• Play any three different frets (notes), 1, 2, 3. You might strum one of them twice, to get four notes (like 1, 2, 2, 3), or just once each. Do not worry about doing this wrong. If you forget a note or play a different one, that is not a problem.
• Play the same notes again, the same way you just did them.
• Repeat again several more times. While you play them, listen to the little song they sing. You just made up a musical phrase.
Step B)
• Now make up another phrase, three notes, any three, go up or down the neck, whatever. Feel free to play one of them twice to get four beats if you like.
• Repeat this second phrase a few times. Listen while you play. Enjoy how this phrase sounds.
Step C)
• Now do the first phrase (A), followed by the second phrase (B) , and the first phrase (A) again. A Songlet is born!
• You could also play any or all of the phrases twice in a row if you want... A A B A, or A B B A, or AA BB AA,...you get the idea.
You just created this songlet, a little fragment of a song. You made it up yourself, you figured it out, you learned it (by repeating each phrase), and then you put it together. Do you like how it sounds?
We believe it is a lot easier to learn how to play an instrument by using it in a very relaxed manner, adding one thing at a time, and especially having fun as you go along. The phrases and songlets are a way to get you organizing what you are doing, just a little, while your strumming and fretting gets worked into shape.
More advanced instructions will cover more rhythm techniques; leaving out downstrums, accenting, syncopation, etc., but you can make a lot of music using just what you know now.
Lesson 3: Changing notes while strumming different rhythms.
Now we are going to try changing whatever note you are fretting while you do different rhythms with the left hand. Before trying this you should be able to:
A. Change notes with the left hand.
B. Make the rhythm change by adding in upstrums after every beat, or once in a while.
Finger the 2nd fret on the first string.
Squeeze, and hold that note while you strum 1 2 3+ 4+ 1 2 3+ 4+
(that would be: down, down, downup, downup; down, down, downup, downup)
Now stop strumming, move to the third fret ( you can move the finger you are using, or put a different finger down), squeeze, and strum 1 2 3+ 4+ 1 2 3+ 4+ again.
Go back to the 2nd fret. Strum 1 2 3+ 4+ 1 2 3+ 4+ again. It is starting to sound like a simple song, isn’t it? Simply bounce back and forth from 2nd fret to 3rd fret, strumming 1 2 3+ 4+ 1 2 3+ 4+ each time until you get tired of doing that. If that goes smoothly, you are ready for lesson 4.
Strumstick®: Songlets