Learning Project – My fingers hurt

Thanks to the gentle spoken, patient man on the fundamental guitar youtube channel, I have successfully learned the first four chords to the song, Like a Star. My fingers are feeling the pain, but hearing the chords I play actually sound like the song, is somewhat satisfying. The chords I have learned so far are, Em flat 7, Dm7, Am7 and Am6, along with the picking. My transition from chords to chord is not, by any means, creating a song, so that will take some work. My goal this week is to memorize these chords and play them over and over and over again until I can make it flow.

This doesn’t look natural, Dean. What are you trying to do to me.

 

Hmm..

When Dean (youtube guy) would say what chord we were switching to, I used google images to help me see what the chords looked like. Sometimes it helped, and other times I just paused on the close up of his hands and copied. He did explain the chords and transitions, but I prefer to teach myself on my own once I know the chord name and what it looks like. I learned later, the guy on the youtube channel is named Dean and has a website called Fundamental guitar. He teaches rhythm guitar and has links for various tutorials. If you are into Corinne Bailey Rae, Amy Winehouse, Bob Marley or Coldplay, I would definitely recommend checking him out.

“Google it”

For now, I am going to stick with this tutorial because I think it seems to be working nicely. In the future, if I ever plan to do a learning project with my students, I will want them to explore youtube in a meaningful way, not just use the first video they find, and then learn about the author/youtuber/channel. It just so happens that this tutorial, which was the first one I found as it was on the top searches, has the most views (I see that as a form of credibility) and has very clear instructions.