Fun with charts and the mysterious second line

     Okay guys, I have a confession This week, I cheated on Keith and his carefully planned DVD lessons. Instead of using a DVD this week, I learned a song from that website I mentioned earlier, guitarnoise.com.

     Well, I started learning a song. I'm not done with it yet, and I'm certainly not ready to really perform anything, but I can recognize the tune from what I've figured out so far, so I'm happy with it.

     It's "House of the Rising Sun", which, according to Wikipedia, started as a folk song and was most successfully recorded by The Animals in 1964. Although it is included in Keith's lessons, this song doesn't come until the 25th lesson, and I really wanted to play some blues music and I just got kind of impatient.

     Also, I wanted some practice with reading actual music. Keith's method so far is great, which consists of him telling us and showing us how the song is played by demonstrating, but I would really like to be able to pick up sheet music and be able to figure out what all the notes mean.

     The lesson I found online started out with introducing the chords that would be needed. (I was super excited when I found out I already knew one.)


     Then it explained how finger picking works, which just means you use your finger tips instead of a guitar pick for the stings, except my nails were too long and it just ended up sounding like I had five guitar picks on the ends of my fingers.

     After cutting my nails, I started to unravel the arpeggios. They're notes played in a descending or ascending succession. They're kind of like chords that have been taken apart, so you play each string individually while holding down the chord on the frets.

Here's the first arpeggio:


     The letters in the middle indicate which finger to use to strum that note. Then I used this chart to help me figure out which strings corresponded to the notes.


     It's a cool looking chart. It seemed a little daunting at first, but I think I've figured it out...pretty much. The only thing is, I'm still not super clear on what the second line is, with the T, A, and B and the numbers. Does that have something to do with where your fingers are holding down the chord on the frets? If anybody reading this happens to have a clue about this mysterious second line, I would love to hear more about it in comments! If not, I'll do a little bit more research and figure it out eventually!

Until the next post,
-Sarah

Oh, and I got the images from http://www.dontfret.com/how_to_use_it.html and http://www.guitarnoise.com/lessons/house-of-the-rising-sun/

If you want to check out the online lesson I used, follow this link http://www.guitarnoise.com/lessons/house-of-the-rising-sun/