Guitar Stylistic Studies: Lesson Wrap-Up

We've made it to the end of our guitar stylistic studies. To finish off, we've got a section from the song "Represent," which we're going to learn eventually at the end of this course. This section blends the three chords we've learned so far: E minor, C, and G, as well as some single note playing with the use of a key signature, telling us we need to play an F sharp.

Chord Overview

Let's take a look at the chords:

• E minor:

  • Played with our second finger on the second fret.

• C:

  • Played with our first finger on the first fret.

• G:

  • Played with our third finger on the third fret of the E string.

I'll just play through those three chords, and I'd like you to pause the video and give this a go at your own speed:

• E minor with the middle finger
• C with your first finger
• G with your ring finger

Take a few minutes to pause this and get comfortable before we continue looking at the next section.

Rhythm Breakdown

In bar one, we have:

• E minor lasting for four beats (a whole note).
  • Count: 2, 3, 4.

In bar two, we have:

• E minor again, but this time lasting for two beats (a half note) followed by a half note rest.
  • Count: 1, 2, 3, 4.

To play that rest, we're going to use our palm to rest on the strings and kill the note. These are skills we've learned previously in the course, and we're just using them again to refresh our knowledge and ensure we've got them under our fingers.

In bar three, we have the same rhythm for C:

• A half note followed by a half note rest.

In bar four, again the same rhythms but with G.

If I play you that chord line, it's going to sound like this:

• 1, 2, 3, 4.
• 1, 2, 3, 4.
• 1, 2, 3, 4.
• 1, 2, 3, 4.

Again, pause this video and take as much time as you need to get those chords moving smoothly between each other.

Melody and Key Signature

Looking at the melody on line two, we see that we've got F sharp due to the key signature, which tells us to play our F and go up one fret or one semitone to play on the second fret.

With this section, we're going to use a finger per fret method again:

• Open E: We don't need a finger.
• G (fret 3): Using finger 3.
• F sharp (fret 2): Using finger 2.

You'll notice in bars 1, 2, and 3, we have a quarter note rest on beat 2. So that's going to be:

• 1, 2, 3, 4.

So let's try that bar one together:

• 1, 2, 3, 4.

In bar 2, we start off the same with our open E, but this time we're going down to D (fret 3 on our B string) using our third finger before returning to the open E to finish off this bar.

So bar two sounds like this:

Final Rhythm Practice

I'd like you to look at Bar 1 and Bar 3 and see what they have in common. You should notice they're exactly the same:

• E, G, F sharp.

To finish off, we've got our open E string followed by a quarter note and a half note rest.

If we add those up, we have:

• One plus two, which gives us three.
• So we have three beats worth of silence (rests): 2, 3, 4.

Let's try that second line together, and then I'll see you in the backing track to try and give it a go:

• 1, 2, 3, 4.
• 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4.

Take as long as you need to practice this, and I'll see you in the backing track to try and get it up to speed.