Roll Over Beethoven

I'll pin you to the top.  The adventure with 12 bars and powerchords continues!

excellent!!

Hi Porr,
   If you are going to play any kind of Chuck Berry tune, it is essential that you get that Rhythm ( that I like to call the"Chuck Berry "crank") down Pat.You want to play it funky like a garbage truck rolling down the road. You do this by using down and up strokes with the accent on the down strokes. Allmost in a stacatto like fashion.
   It requires good timing and a fair amount of finesse.
   If you can master this little piece of "hypnotic simplicity", You will rock the house and you will be well on your way to your first 15 minutes of fame.
   Three good examples of this style are "Oh Carole", "Promised Land", and perhaps the greatest rock and roll song ever written "Jony . B. Goode".  8)

yeah pplz
i'm 14 & i'm a girl can i join this thread?  ::) ??? 8)

I hope so!  :) :) please do!!

yeah pplz
i'm 14 & i'm a girl can i join this thread?  ::) ??? 8)

Welcome to the madhouse!  It's a great place to hang out and it's great  to have you aboard!

thanks i'm practising guitar heaps :)

spent the best part of the week-end murdering this song and would be thrilled to have it sound like a garbage truck because now it just sounds like garbage.

I didn't try the down & up strokes, only used down strokes. Does "accent on the down strokes" mean to play the down strokes louder/harder than the up strokes?

Also, I noticed that the higher up the neck I go, the more space between the strings & the fretboard there is. I don't know if this extra space is messing me up or if it's in my head. Thought about trying a capo but I'm thinking it'll defeat the whole purpose of the lesson.

BTW: I'm not looking for 15 minutes of fame, just trying to get my kids to take their fingers outta their ears when I play ;-)  

spent the best part of the week-end murdering this song and would be thrilled to have it sound like a garbage truck because now it just sounds like garbage.

I didn't try the down & up strokes, only used down strokes. Does "accent on the down strokes" mean to play the down strokes louder/harder than the up strokes?

Also, I noticed that the higher up the neck I go, the more space between the strings & the fretboard there is. I don't know if this extra space is messing me up or if it's in my head. Thought about trying a capo but I'm thinking it'll defeat the whole purpose of the lesson.

BTW: I'm not looking for 15 minutes of fame, just trying to get my kids to take their fingers outta their ears when I play ;-)  

Yes, accent the downstrokes.

No, don't use the capo.  And yes, it takes a while to get the chords up the neck.  There's a middle area on the neck where it's a bit easier, but then up by the 12th fret it gets harder for a while.  Work at it and don't worry about speed.  As a matter of fact, just try  playing it as a slow blues feel for a while to get used to playing the power chords.  Then after you get comfortable with it, go for the Berry rhythm.  I used to just practice bluesy twelve bars up there before I tried moving it over to a faster rock rhythm.  I think that' what you should do for a while.  See how that goes. It'll let you focus on practicing the power chords up the neck.
Hope that made sense.

Played around a little bit with this lesson over the weekend but hope to devote more practice time this week.

David Hodge - thanks again for another great lesson!  Fun to read, fun to play, with some theory thrown in for good measure.

I found the stretch for this one not "too" difficult but my fingers aren't very accurate at speed yet (especially the pinky).  I do notice that I'm slow to move from one string to another - any tips or advice there? (aside from obviously keep practicing).
I think I had another question/comment or two but I don't have the lesson in front of me.  I'll post back when I get a chance to play around with it some more.  I tried with the capo briefly to see if I could make some cool sounds with my guitar - it worked but I will practice without for now.  

On another note - I clicked on the link to format the lesson for printing and printed it out.  The ends of the lines got cut off.  Anyone else have that problem?  It didn't seem to format properly.  I don't think the problem is on my end but it could be.
Cheers!

Thanks for all of the above!

I was having the same troubles as PORR.  That's made a lot of sense what you answered to him Tim, I'm trying that and thanks very much!

Chuck Berry's speed is too fast for me yet. But it is getting better with practice.

Laoch, I also had that problem with the printing, I didn't know how to fix it, so just filled in the missing bits with a pen. ie not sure how to advise on that. You sound to be doing pretty well.

regards, Allison

Last weeks lesson was easier on the fingers, but I was a little concerned about the theory involved.  This week my theory woes are multiplied.  

I guess the fact that I could make "Before you Accuse Me" sound decent, helped me accept that I didn't understand the theory.  But I can't make this lesson sound half-way decent yet, and while reading through it I am so far behind in theory, that I tend to just skip to the tab and play/slaughter the song.

I spent a long time reading through the lessons on theory, but they aren't "sinking" in. I know rhythm patterns and how notes relate to beats/measures. I understand the concept of half-steps and whole steps.  I understand how specific patterns create a scale.  Where I get confused is how chords/scales are related.  When I see roman numerals (eg.  I,IV,V...) my brain completely shuts down, and I cease to learn.  Are these numerals used to represent notes in a scale, notes in a chord..or chords in a scale....some evil combination of all?  Also, when people talk about moving a chord up the neck, doesn't this create a different chord?  Are they just talking about the shape of the chord they are moving?  

Arghgh!! Sorry for the rant, I needed to vent...  I think I'll sit on this lesson until the mystery of theory reveals itself to me.   I hope my dog likes 12-bar.  
;D

A scale follows this pattern right:  (w=whole, h= half step)

w w h w w w h

So, in Before You Accuse Me the scale is the scale (or key) of A:

A -  B (whole step)
B - C# (whole step)
C#- D half step
D- E  whole
E - F# whole
F# - G#  whole
G# - A  half step

let's write it out:

A  B  C#  D  E  F#  G#  A
that's the whole scale. Now let's do the numbers:

(warning -- i can't get these to line up right but i think you'll get the idea

A    B    C#    D   E   F#   G#   A
1     2     3      4    5    6     7     8

So the chord progression you need is:
A  D  E  (i iv v)

Let's do it now for C:

C w D w E h F w G w A w B h   c
1     2     3     4     5    6     7    8:

Progression needed is C  F   G

Let's try E just for fun:

E w F#  w  G#  h A  w B w C#  w D#  h E
1       2      3       4       5     6        7     8

Progression  = E A B

And for the shuffle you're using power chords.  They're made of the 1st and fifth note of the scale:

go back to the A scale:  an A 5 is therefore an A and E.
A C5 = C and G
And  E5 = E and B

So if you can build the scale, you can figure the rest  -- both chords and chord progression.

But you can learn the power chords as simple chord shapes without having to puzzle all that out right now.

I hope that made sense and that  I didn't make any stupid mistakes!

Slightly off-topic, but getting tab, etc. to line up is quite hard on the forum. I use a separate ASCII editor (the sort you use for writing programs), you can use Notepad at a pinch.

All editors, like Ultraedit, etc. use fixed spaced fonts, such as courier as standard. Type it up in your editor and then copy it.

In the forum, click on the icon to get the [ font =... ]     [/ font]
and simply paste between the two, voila .- correct spacing guaranteed.