Hi, how're you doing? Justin here.
Welcome to IM-145,
where we're going to be checking out how to do a snare drum hit
and add a bit of percussive element to your rhythm guitar.
Now the snare drum is normally played on beats 2 and 4,
and if you'll excuse my really rubbish beat-boxing,
a kind of real basic drum groove goes like:
. . .
and it's the little "ka!" that we're gonna try and emulate
as part of our rhythm guitar.
Now if I play it for you, it sounds like this:
. . .
And you can hear it really kind of brings a bit of life
and a bit of groove into your rhythm guitar.
If I play it first, but without the little "chuck"
. . .
It's fine,
nothing wrong with that
. . .
But as soon as you bring that in
. . .
you'll find that all of your mates are tapping their feet
and clapping their hands in no time.
Really good if you're doing an acoustic guitar thing
at a party or at a barbeque,
you'll really find that it makes all of the difference
between a regular strumming pattern
and a bit of this in it.
It really moves things along really well.
Now the most important thing here
is that you get the technique right.
And I've seen a couple of people explain it by
kind of relaxing your hand on the neck and hitting the strings,
which kind of works, but it doesn't then work for open chords
and a lot of the times,
if you're in that kind of party acoustic guitar thing,
you're going to be using open chords.
So it's really important that you learn how to perform this
without having any hand on the guitar at all
other than your picking hand.
So you can do this snare drum hit like this:
. . .
And it's important too to realize that there are actually two elements.
There's two things going on here, which
when I'm doing it sounds just like one motion
because I am using just one movement.
But the two parts are:
First of all the hand hitting on the strings,
and you get the strings hitting on the wire frets
You get this kind of metallic crunching sound.
So that's kinda the first part.
And the second part is once the hand is on the strings,
the pick plays through the strings,
and you get a little bit of a "thud" there.
So when you're practicing it,
you have to learn it by doing it in two motions:
Hand, pick. Hand, pick. Hand, pick. Hand, pick.
And then, it becomes one motion.
And it's really the sound of those two things happening at the same time
that gives it that really strong kind of snare drum-like sound.
So, let's have a bit of look at a close up at this
because it's quite an interesting technique,
and if you don't get it exactly right it's frustrating.
OK, let's look at these two motions.
So the first one, it's the outside part of your hand,
after your little finger,
-- so that kind of the outer palm part --
that's landing on the strings.
And it has to cover all six strings.
It's really important that it lands firmly on those six strings,
it should be, I don't know, 3 or 4 inches away from the bridge.
So somewhere kind of at the back end of the sound hole is where it should be landing.
And it's important that you realize that it lands from above
because it's part of a strum, really.
It's that strumming motion, so
practice, first of all, just moving your hand from above,
falling down, so it's almost like part of a strum,
and then it rolls out and it should just be falling like that
with the outside part of your palm.
So try and get used to that, first of all, the motion.
Now you can hear already the strings hitting against the frets.
That's the noise. They're just up here somewhere.
The strings are hitting the frets.
And you get a bit of that click noise.
So that's the first thing you should be trying to work on.
It's just trying to get that hit to come down like that onto the strings.
Making sure it's not too noisy and there's not too many strings ringing out.
Sometimes my little finger is hitting on the finger board there.
I can do it deliberately if I want.
That's not a bad thing, it just adds to the click sound,
so don't worry if you do a little bit of that, it's not really the point,
but it doesn't matter if it happens a little bit.
Now I'm making my hand go out this way
a little bit more than I probably should, just to show you,
so normally it's staying a little bit squarer than that,
and you can see now that my pick hand is ready to hit the strings.
And, of course, now what's happening is
the hand is going on and then the pick is roughly at the top and:
it picks a few of the strings.
It's doesn't have to pick like all of them,
but probably the first four, the thickest four strings.
Something like that.
Four or five, it doesn't really matter. So,
try and get used to now : hit, strum. Hit, strum.
And practice just getting that motion,
again this hand is not doing anything, so making sure
because if you cover it like that you can get away with
not doing any palm muting, just strumming.
So, really, you want this hand not touching the guitar and:
Mute, strum. Hit, strum. Hit, strum. Hit, strum.
And eventually, you'll find that you can:
hit-strum, hit-strum and that, then, it's the point.
Now, it isn't something that's gonna get closer and closer
and then suddenly you'll get it.
You practice going: hit, strum. Hit, strum.
Once you feel confident that you're doing that really well,
just have a go at trying to throw the whole thing together.
And that's when you get really good.
And it does sound a little -- well, QUITE A LOT -- like a snare drum.
. . .
Next, we have to incorporate it into some rhythm guitar patterns.
The next thing we're gonna do
is incorporate that now into a rhythm guitar pattern.
And probably the easiest one to get going with
is to start off with a straight-eight pattern.
So if you remember back to our basic rhythm guitar,
we had one-and two-and three-and four-and,
using down-up, down-up, down-up, down-up.
I'll just run through it once so you know what's going on.
I'm using a G open chord.
It's a good idea to practice this with open chords first, so you don't cheat.
If you're using barre chords, you can lift them up a little bit
and that's kinda cheating a bit. So,
get yourself an open chord -- I'm using G --
you can use whatever you like.
First of all, just get that real basic strumming, so:
One-and two-and three-and four-and,
One-and two-and three-and four-and.
Hopefully you've got that one by now,
So now what we're going to do
is we´re gonna add in that hit on beats two and four.
So we have one-and TWO-and three-and FOUR-and
One-and TWO-and three-and FOUR-and
. . .
Just practice it slowly, make sure you've got it right.
That's the most important thing, trying to get it smooth, because it should.
It really kinda feels like a strum,
it doesn't feel like you suddenly have to do something different with your arm.
Your arm should still be flowing:
. . .
I'm not feeling it's any different.
I do feel a little bit like my shoulder is coming forward a bit
and I'm digging into the guitar a little bit,
but it's not changing the way that the strumming feels.
Because remember, the hand should not stop moving when you're strumming,
or it will kind of throw you off.
So, really important then just to practice:
Getting it in the groove, getting your hit nice.
. . .
It's worth practicing as well sometimes
trying to get that hit so it's louder than you think it should be.
So really try and throw it out.
. . .
Really try and give it some.
Because you'll probably find that you're doing it a bit too quiet.
So, if you ever record yourself or get a way of listening to yourself,
what you want to do then is trying to even it out,
so it's at the right volume level.
But that's something you can only do when you hear yourself back.
Now, once you've had a go at doing that basic eighth-note one,
maybe you'd like to try a sixteenth-note pattern,
and probably the one to go for and to start off with again is
doing "one-and two-and three-and four-and",
but this time using all down strums, so:
One-and two-and three-and four-and. All downs.
. . .
And then adding that snare hit on the two and four.
So having: one-and TWO-and three-and FOUR-and
one-and TWO-and three-and FOUR-and
. . .
And if you've got that right,
you might like to try and add something else a little bit more funky with the sixteenth-notes:
. . .
It's a really good idea to try to insert this technique
into as many different rhythm patterns as you can.
You'll find that it works really well in some, and not so well in others,
but that's really your call. What you want to do is to get good at it enough,
that you can just let it flow and start happening
whenever you want.
'Cause really with rhythm guitar, it's not really like:
"learn this pattern and learn that pattern"
and numbering them and all that sort of stuff,
it should just be kind of flowing, going with the groove,
and then eventually finding the rhythm pattern that works for that particular song.
So, see how many different rhythm patterns you can insert this snare drum hit into.
It's lots of fun, hope you've enjoyed it too.
See you for another lesson real soon.
Take care, bye-bye.