Hey there fellow guitar people. Today you're gonna learn how to play
Three Little Birds by Bob Marley and the Wailers
not too hard of a song and I've included a really cool
play-along track towards the end. Check it out. Let's do this.
We're gonna use three open chords for this song and I'll assume that you know
these. I'll show you quickly. An A chord,
a D chord
and an E chord.
I'm going to show you two slightly different versions of the strum.
The second one uses a bass note so let's go over the bass notes.
For the A chord the bass notes on the fifth string,
for the D chord on the fourth string
and for the E chord the low E sixth string.
Okay we're going to move on to the strum. Now I'm going to show you two different
versions. One little easier and then the second one adds a little
bit to it a little more interesting but a little harder also.
If you find this difficult please do not worry.
How appropriate. Do not worry. Anyway I made a whole video on this strum
and I break it down to little bitty steps and give you a bunch of chances to
practice it including a whole practice along track
so I'll put a link to that so you'll have that too.
Let me show you quickly this strum now for those of you who either this comes
easy or you've already watched my reggae strum video. It's called easy
reggae strum. Here we go. I'm going to start out without a chord.
I'm just going to muffle the strings. It's going to be
mute, down up, mute, down. And for each measure we do that
twice mute, down up, mute,
down. So let's play that together right quick and just kind of test where you're
at with this if you want to go to the other video or
continue with this. Here we go. Ready, hit it - 1
and 2 and 3 and 4
and. You see that makes 4 beats. A little faster would be
1 2 3 4 and that's one bar. So let's try
that with an A chord together. The song is A chord so how
appropriate. Here we go ready, hit it.
One bar. Do it again. Ready, hit it. Mute, down up, mute, down,
mute, down, mute, down. So that's the basic strum. The next
version of that strum is we're going to add a little bass note
that's actually muted out so that's a mute technique. What I'm doing is hitting
the bass note and muting the bass note at the same
time with the palm of my hand so it's mute.
And again I show you an excruciating detail
in the video easy reggae strum. Let me show you all together now.
Bass, down up, mute, down. Bass, down up, mute, down.
Now of course when you go to D that's where you change up the bass note
and E the low sixth string.
Now before we go to the play-along track I want to give you a little experience
looking at the music and seeing how the chords and the strum fits in with the
music. So as you can see, we start off with
just a bunch of rests. Now really on the play along track you're actually going to
hear the rhythm right there but I suggest at least in the beginning
you start off just counting so each rest just has a count kind of to
give you a head start to get into where that A chord that letter A is that means
an A chord. So it's going to be 1
and 2 and 3 and 4
and. I just counted in the first measure. Then on
the second measure you'd start mute. Okay that was the second measure before
what you see next comes a reverse repeat sign that's the two
lines. The thick line, the thin line and the 2 dots that's a repeat. That's
saying basically when you get to the other end of that repeat the one
facing in you go back to there not to the beginning so don't worry
about that for now that's not an issue. Let's just do that together. We're going
to count the first measure and then start on that A chord the
second measure. Here we go 1 and come on
get ready okay. Now you're ready. Okay, let's do this.
Ready, go 1 and 2 and 3 and get the equal ray 4
and mute, down up, mute, down, mute, down up, mute
down onto the third measure mute, down up. Still A chord
down, mute, down up, mute. Next line down now A chord mute, down, mute,
down, mute, down up, go to D chord down now mute down,
mute, down, mute, down up, mute, down and the third line A chord
mute, down up, mute, down, mute, down
up, mute, down. Last measure mute, down up, mute, down, mute,
down up, mute. Yeah, okay you're coming along. Okay, before it let's
you lose with the play along track I want to give you a few tips to
help you be successful with this. Now I want to remind you that that first
bar I'm suggesting you count in but you'll hear the playing
along the software is playing along anyway.
I will call you in, I'll count you in at 3 and 4 and I'll skip the first
2 beats. It'll go like this. You hear the sound from the software and
just think to yourself 1 2 then you'll hear me
3 4 and here's where you start 1 2
and so on. And you'll see where to change to the D chord and eventually to the E
chord. Now this song is going slow. The melody
sounds a little strange it's because it's not that slow.
But I wanted to give you a chance to get the strum and
get used to being able to go through the whole song. If you ever want to try a
faster version head over to my real guitar success
membership site and you'll find I have both
speed up versions as well as some extra resources exercise of things.
Now if you get lost anywhere along the way, don't worry about it
just wait for a little bit and see if you can catch up where you're supposed
to be and if not you can always just start
over. As a matter of fact I would encourage you to just count on
doing this several times before you can really get the hang of it
and try to have fun with it
2 3 and 4
now
second strum
you