Folk Guitar; 05, 06

Come on and take a walk with me through this green and growing land Walk through the meadows and the mountains and the sand Walk through the rivers and the valleys and the plains Walk through the sun and walk through the rain Or this is land full of power and glory, beauty that works in our recall Overpower shall rest on the strength of our freedom Her glory shall rest on a toll on the toll Hi, I hope you're ready to work very hard today I'm going to work very hard today, so you better do that too Let's tune, be sure we're in tune with each other that you're in tune with me and I'm in tune with you

Start with a low E, there it is When we tune on the program, we're going to keep doing it this way Although I hope you're trying the other way that I showed you before In the fifth fret, remember that one? Okay, that's your E All right, and here is your A And the D Good G Got it, and B And I think it sounds pretty good, finally the E

High E Here, little more, little more Okay, that's the one that's likely to get out of tune The high ones, the low ones will set after a while if they haven't yet But the high ones, the G, B, and E, are the likely to get out Especially the high E, people seem always to do that flat Tell you something about tuning, is that whoever tunes a guitar Tunes it to his own ear and approximates those pitches as much as possible But if you handed me your guitar, I'd probably retune it And if I handed you my guitar, I mean, after you get good, you'd probably retune it People hear things differently But if you can try to approximate these sounds, that would be good All right, we're going to review the three chords that we know Because we're going to learn a new, nice, hard chord today So let's review the D, the A, and the E And be sure that you can do those And be sure that you've got them straight in your head

Okay, remember the D was like this First finger on the second fret of the G string, the second finger on the second fret of the high E And the third finger on the third fret of the B Boy, that's a lot of talking Okay, and there it is And remember, you strum from your D string Strum from the base of the chord Good I know I say the same thing over and over again And sometimes it sort of goes by you when I say it And I think if I just keep saying it a lot of times, you'll get it That's the D Press good and hard, be sure you're far enough up in the fret Okay, that's pretty good Sound clear? Good And now let's try an A chord I mean, we have to squish them all in the second fret First fingers on the D string, second fingers on the G And the third is on the B And you've got to squish them in nice and tight Hard and strum from the A string That's what that looks like

Good I'm strumming one two with a thumb strum You can strum any way you like Okay And finally, the third chord we learned, which you should really know pretty well by now, is the E chord And that's the first finger on the first fret of the G string Second finger on the second fret of the A string and third finger on the second fret of the D string And there it is Okay, any strum from your right from your low E Remember again, I said that each of these strings, chords, strings chords That's a common misconception, which I'll tell you about in a second These chords strums from an open strings, which gives you extra time to change So strum the open string as you're changing and then you'll get there Strings in chords, a chord, a wrapping chord is a chord And a string is a string, that can be a wrapping thing too

But a chord for the guitar is CH, ORD And a chord actually is defined as a group of notes, three or more Sounded simultaneously Like that Okay, now we get on to something hard, since you know all those chords I'd like to play a G chord, I'd like to show you a G chord Right now we're going to do lots of songs with G chords in the future So let's really learn it Now my fingering for a G chord is second finger on the second fret of the A string Third finger on the third fret of the low E and the fourth finger on the third fret of the high E All right, don't go one, two, three It's not one, two, three, it's two, three, four Do you remember at the very beginning I told you that's one, two, three, four? Okay, we do two, three, four

And I can hear all of you say, I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't reach Okay, you can, I'll tell you why you think you can't do it Because you're holding your guitar that way, right? And you can't, you really can't reach, right? So that's the first thing you have to do is hold your guitar flat against you Flat against you, okay And put your wrist down and then put your second finger there Your third finger there and your small finger there And strum from the low E string And that's how it should sound Now, this is the first chord you've learned That doesn't have an open string as its bass note So what does that mean? That means you're going to have to get there on time fast All right, it's a difficult chord There's no other way to say it, it's a difficult chord So what we're going to do now is take your hands away, shake your wrist a little bit And put your hand back on it again

Two, three, four And play it again This one just so it sits there All right, I do not want you to do it this way One, two, three That's a no-no The reason for that is that when you do it the right way Then you can do all kinds of nice other things with it You can do, you know, pretty sounds, all right Get on a D chord, we'll go DG, DG Lots of times, all right, ready? And here we go D And G Okay, again, D And G

Get that third finger there right away, D And G Okay, let's do the G, stay on it With the plucking strum now, which you learned last time All right, rest your left hand for a second Let's look at the right hand for a little bit and see about that plucking strum Because I'd like to review that too You remember that your first finger was on the G string Second finger was on the B And the third was on the high E And these fingers just pulled up that way That's right, that's good Okay And the low E You could play with the thumb or the A you could play with your thumb Or the D you could play with your thumb Whichever chord you were on

All right, what I'd like to do now is and have you do What I'm going to do in any way is go from D to G And D And G A plucking strum Okay, let's do that Ready? Go D And G And D And G Okay, flatten your guitar And hold it tight Love it, love it It's a lovely thing to love Okay All right, I'm going to let you rest and I'm going to sing you a song I'm going to sing Blue Tail Fly Which is a song that I learned from a record of burlives actually When I was first learning to play the guitar In fact, D chord was the first chord I learned So you see, I gave you a break I told you three other ones before

Burlives is a wonderful human being I think he's an actor and he's a singer And he did a tremendous amount for focusing And the time that I was starting to play anyhow And I learned that song and another one I'll sing later for you too But you're going to learn Blue Tail Fly too But you can rest if you like for a minute And I'll just sing you the first verse No, I think I'll sing the whole thing as a matter of fact Give you a long rest Starting with the chorus Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care My master's gone away When I was young I used to wait On master and give him his plate

And pass the bottle when he got dry And brush away the Blue Tail Fly Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care My master's gone away And when we'd ride in the afternoon I'd follow after with a hickory brew The pony being rather shy When bitten by the Blue Tail Fly Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care My master's gone away

One day we rode around the farm The fly so numerous they did swarm One chance to bite him on the thigh The devil take the Blue Tail Fly Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care My master's gone away The pony run he jumpy pitch He threw my master in the ditch He died and the jury wondered why The verdict was the Blue Tail Fly Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care

My master's gone away They laid him under a symmetry His epitaph is there to save Beneath his stone I'm forced to lie The victim loves the Blue Tail Fly Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care My master's gone away All right, that's a long one But it tells a story Did you notice something else I did in that song? I'm sure you did One thing I did was in the verse part of the song I strum straight down just once on the chord changes And the reason for that is two reasons One is for Variety's sake And another is a good background to a song When a song has a chorus

That repeats over and over again And the song tells a story So I would like for you to try Just the first verse in the chorus We'll start with the chorus And then we'll do the first verse And I'll wait for you on those G chords We're going to start Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Very, very slowly Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care I'm going to wait for you when we got there Jimmy crack corn now I don't care My master's gone all the way okay Now straight down once When I was young I used to wait On master

And give him his clip Good And pass the ball when he got dry And brush away the blue tail fly Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I don't care Jimmy crack corn And I am waiting Don't care My master's gone all the way okay That's good, that's good I know, I know you're suffering But please do it the right way You know what else is good with that strum In that way that Pearl Hives did too as a matter of fact When I was a bachelor I lived by myself I worked at the weavers trade And the only only thing that I did

That was wrong Was to woo a fair young maid I would her in the winter time Part of the summer too And the only only thing that I did that was wrong Was to keep her from the foggy foggy dude Okay, I'll sing that full one another time But that uses all the chords you know now That uses D and G and A and E You might try figuring that out yourself Starts on D It's good to do things by ear I think I want to show you now about alternating bass notes You might have noticed in the introduction to that I did that I did it because I do it naturally I didn't mean to do it at that point Because it was a strange sound to you That you have heard that sound before For instance on a D chord

Immediately you've got another dimension You've already expanded that D chord So that it sounds more interesting Right? Okay So let's do that on all the chords we know now Let me show you where to alternate How to alternate Back and forth that means I'm going to do it with the plucking strum On the D chord you can alternate From the D to the A string Hear that sound All right good The next chord you learned after the D Was the A chord On the A chord Normally you will alternate to the low E string But you might want to Some point alternate to the D string Because that now has become part of the A chord Because your finger is on it And you could do Right?

Or Or make a little pattern for yourself Up and down Okay get that Any of the three bass strings All right the next chord you learned was an E chord And again You can alternate between the low E string Which is your original bass Now the primary bass note is the E And you can alternate with the A string Because that's now part of the chord too Or And or you can alternate And then you can just mix them up And make a little pattern A A See? All right experiment Then you go backwards and upwards and forwards And whatever way you like Now the new chord we learned today The D-roll G Didn't think I'd let you forget that one

Get on the G chord And again you can alternate With any of the three bass strings That's the primary bass note And you can go to the D string Which is sort of the most logical And that's the one you want to do first of all Up D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-Do Okay that's it And you may also alternate With the A string So you might do Or Baring in mind that these three fingers Do not move They stay right there And the thumb moves To the three bass strings The thumb can do on any of these And these three stay right there All right let's do a song With that alternating The song is Red River Valley

The Mohawk Valley And it was from New York state The Mohawk Valley New York state And that's where the song originated It was apparently very Potentiously arranged tune And very pretentious words And as the westward movement Happened as we expanded Towards the west in our country The tune came along Which happens very often in folk songs Tunes drift from place to place And people put their own words to it And it got to the Red River Valley In Texas or got around there People use the same old tune The Bright Mohawk Valley And put these words to it And I'll sing you the first verse And then you can try it with me All right we're going to alternate the bass notes Ha ha ha So I'll give you one extra little thing to worry about From this valley You are going We will miss your bright eyes

And sweet smile For they say you are taking The sunshine That brightens our pathway of one Come and sit by my side If you love me Don't all rush when it works Do not hasten To bid me our due But remember the Red River Valley And the one who has loved you so true Okay stop for one minute

We'll do another verse We'll do that whole thing again in a second What is the reason for alternating Do you think Sounds good right And it's actually that's the main reason The things we're learning Or tend to improve the sound of what we're playing But you know how long we were on that Decord at the beginning And if we didn't alternate it would be a terrible bore Listen From this valley They say you are going We're still on that Decord We will miss your bright eyes And sweet, oh Then we get to the A But while we're there We want to have a little more interesting sound Let's do that together again Alternate is the base And now we can say Ready go From this valley They say You are going We will miss your bright eyes

And sweet smile For they say You are taking the sunshine I'll slow down That brightens our pathway A while Come and sit by my side If you love me Do not hasten Who beat me a dew But remember the red river valley And the one who has loved you so terrible

Okay All right, if you just keep working on that You'll get it, I mean, you know Guys, I don't have to tell you that I was born about 10,000 years ago You could tell There ain't nothing in this world that I don't know You could tell that too I saw Peter Paul and Moses Playing ring around the roses And I'll lick the guy that says it is so When he looked the garden door I saw Adam and Eve driven from the door And from behind the bushes peepin' Saw the apple they were eating And I'll swear that I'm the guy that ate the core That's a verse of 10,000 music a couple of verses That's an old, in folklore There are a lot of Nonsense on folklore

Is folk legend, folk songs, folk music, folk cultures Habits, mores, ways of people do things Are very common There are common things in every folklore throughout the world The stories, these superstitions, the ideas Have aruded in every culture, actually We'll be talking more about that in future programs But there are always, certainly always love songs There are work songs There are nonsense songs There are children songs There are mood, just mood, kind of fantasy kind of songs And this is common in every culture throughout the world We'll be doing mostly American ones But some other ones too on this series One that you can do with an A and a G is Why? why, why? I! I! There! I am! Why I went down to old Joe Clarks He was sick and bad got some water from the stream

Packed it on his head Well, fair with the well old Joe Clark Fair, the well I'm gone Fair, the well old Joe Clark good bye Good five to say, yeah So that's all for today. Work on that G chord, okay? Bye. I'll call the rhodokansas and the Carolinas too. Virginia and Alaska from the old unto the new. Texas and Ohio and the California shore. Tell me who could ask for more. For this is Alaska, for the power and glory. You can either work and I'll recall. Oh, her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom. Her glory shall rest on us all. Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor. Only as free as the padlock.