Hey, how you doing? It's practice schedule time for Lesson 9. Slight little tweak here,
I'm putting 5 minutes of song repertoire revision at the beginning of the routine.
I think, if you launch straight into trying to practice your 'F' chord without having
any warmup, although that could be, you know, potentially risking injury a bit,
so, I think 5 minutes of your song revision; making up your own song book, pick one
tune, pick a few bits of tunes, whatever it is that you wanna do, it's free form -
it's just experimenting and revising songs that are in your repertoire; that's the 5
minutes to start off with. Then you've got 2 minutes of attempting your 'F' chord,
so, it is, you're not aiming to be nailing your 'F' chord; you're just attempting to
have a go at it; trying to develop the muscles that you need to be able to do
that, experimenting with the hand position, seeing how it feels comfortable for you,
experimenting with the twist of the wrist, the pulling of the arm, all of those
different factors, until you find the way that it starts to feel comfortable. It's
likely to take you a few weeks but the sooner we get to it, the sooner you'll get
comfortable with that chord, so it's 2 minutes. Then you've got 2 minutes of your
'F' chord cheats practice, so just going through your 'F-major7', your 'F-major7'
with a 'C' bass, and your mini 'F' chord. In all three of them, you could focus on one,
one day or you could do a little bit of practice on each one, it's completely up
to you, again, I would let the song choices lead me in deciding which of those I was
working on; and also, that comes through to the next three 1-minute perfect fast
changes exercise; now, the ones that I have selected, that I thought were gonna
be best, which you might like to follow but feel free to change it, if you wanted
to. I've been doing the 'F-major7' with a 'C' bass [playing guitar] to 'C' mostly,
just because they're really nice for, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the
Rolling Stones, which is a song there, [playing guitar] it's a nice change to
work on, then I was doing 'F-major7' to 'G' [playing guitar], just 'cause it's
really big change, gives me practice on that little 'F-major7', and the last one
of the perfect fast changes, I was doing 'D' to 'F', or 'F' to 'D', no matter which
way you call it [playing guitar], the reason I picked that specific chord
pairing is that, it's in the "House Of The Rising Sun", which is another song that I
wanted to be working on, so, you could change those perfect fast changes to
other chord combinations that you need in the songs that you choose, but they would
be the ones that are kind of, seems the most logically to me, and it meant that I
was working on my 'F-major7' over 'C' and my 'F-major7' and my mini 'F',I was
working on all three of them; you don't have to do that, you could just put all of
your effort into playing mini 'F', or the 'F-major7', you know, you have to do
little bit of self-assessment here to work out what's gonna be best for you. We then
got 2 minutes of the 'C' major scale, just all down picking, doing it nice and slow,
focusing on accuracy, focusing on memorizing the pattern, not being in a rush. If you
can get it to a metronome, great; if you can't, don't worry about it, it's not a
big deal. We've got 2 minutes of the little finger exercise, remembering that
the dexterity of the little finger is the point here, so if you accidently hit some
extra strings, or whatever, it's not really a big deal. The main thing is the
controlling movements of the little finger; that's the focus of your attention, when
you're practicing that. We've got 4 minutes on "Californication" riff, which has all
kinds of benefits, like I've mentioned in lesson, the picking out of strings
individually, the shape of the 'F' chord, the barre, holding the 1st and 3rd finger
while moving the 2nd finger - loads of great technical stuff in the course of
learning that riff; really a fantastic find was that riff for this particular
lesson. And then, we've got 10 minutes of song work, where you could pick any of the
songs that you wanna be working on for this lesson. So, I would pick one, or two or
three of them and focus on those, you can focus on just one and really give it every
thing you've got, or you can have a few songs, it depends on your character type
and what you enjoy 'cause it's really important that you're enjoying this stuff,
so, find the one, and the way that works best, for you. And the million dollar
question, when to move on to the next lesson? What is the requisite for moving
on? And I know everyone's gonna ask, so the 'F' chord, you should have had a go
at, and maybe, occasionally be getting the 'F' chord that sounds okay - that would be
it. Occasionally, sometimes getting an 'F' chord that kind of sounds okay - it's very
loose there; I'm not expecting you to be able to play an 'F' chord, okay? NITSUJ is
able to get some 'F' chords by the end of this practice sessions, but not everyone
will be able to do that; some people will get it right away, some people won't, so
little bit flexible there. I would like you to be able to play 'F-major7',
'F-major7' with a 'C' bass, and mini 'F', to be able to play them so they sound
good, and you've memorized them; that would be an important part, so that's
essential. 'C' major scale should be memorized and you should be able to play
up and down from memory, okay? All down picking; no speed that you have to get it
to, or anything like that; just be able to play it up and down, at whatever speed it
is, from memory - the key thing there. Little finger workout, there's no, just
have done it, you know, feel a little bit better with your little finger, that's the
only limit there. "Californication" again, the riffs are fun - there's always gonna
be other things going on when I teach you the riffs, so there's gonna help it , but
the point of it is, just to have fun. With the songs, I would say, at least one new
song that is using the mini 'F' chord, would be the thing that Id like you to add
to your, kind of, repertoire, your rotating circle of songs that you're practicing
regularly; just 'cause the mini 'F' is actually pretty decent. Even if you can
play big barre chord 'F', then practicing the mini one is not a bad idea at all. If
you find 'F' chord is really simple, you could jump in and just do a song that uses
big 'F' straight away, but I don't think that's gonna be the case for many of you;
certainly wasn't for me. We're gonna talk a little bit more about changing to 'F'
next lesson and the one after, because changing to it is a little bit more
difficult than just playing it, as you'll probably find. I'm sure you're gonna enjoy
practicing all this stuff next week; don't let the 'F' chord get you down - if you're
finding it really difficult, honestly, it's gonna take most people quite a while to
get that comfortable under the fingers, so don't feel disheartened at any point. Try
and keep it fun; find songs that you love and I'll see you for plenty more lessons
very soon. You all take care of yourselves. Bye bye.