Fred Sokolow Teaches How to Play Summertime
[Demonstration]
Okay, let’s take a look at some of the chords in right hand techniques also that happened in Summertime. Let’s start with the chords so take a look at my left hand here. I want to warn you that I make some chords in funny way I have fat fingers so instead of playing an A minor like this or sometimes hit two strings with one finger do this instead. Just if you’re trying to follow me sometimes I’ll do it this way and sometimes that way but I’m always hitting the fourth and the third strings together like that. At the very beginning of the tune, it’s an A minor so we started on this A minor chord and I did this little figure on the first string like that. So I back down here to catch the first string on the first fret and then hit it on the second fret and came back it sounds a little bit like that secret agent theme but remember Grishman wrote this along time before James Bond so I think his idea came first. And I think that was a cool introductory figure was like.
The second chord is B Minor 7 Flat 5 now there’s 0342 chords I was warning you about. Now, look it’s just a four-finger chord like this always written out in your book.. I was running down with you one time anyway. That I went to an E7, two finger E7 and then there’s a D Minor that looks like this and then this F7 this maybe a new chord to you, you borrowing on the first four strings and then hit the third string in front of it like---and back to the E7. Now, I had a little B7 chord but instead of hitting the whole chord I just hit—use these two fingers to get the fifth and the second strings. And there’s a little line I did walking up the bass and they’ve been the only time there was little finger picking the two rather than strumming. We’ll get to that in a minute. Those are the only chords, it’s first a C, it’s up for a first position C for this is the only chord that was in the tune.
As far as the right hand is concern let’s take a look at my picking hand. Most of the time I’m strumming with my thumb like this on the chords every once in a while when I have extra time on one chord it will be boring to just keep strumming. I’ll do a little arpeggio where I just pick up and down the notes of the chord like that. Well, that’s just to fill in in spaces where you need some fill in and that place where I did a little bass run, I played the bass notes with my thumb and then the fingers just brushed up like on the first and second strings. So you don’t even have to be making chord when you do that because you’re not just—you’re just playing open strings on the top. So those are the—basically the right and the left hand techniques that I used in Summertime. Now, we’re going to split the screen so you can get a close-up view of both my hands and I’ll go over at least the instrumental part of it once again.
[Demonstration]
I want to tell you about those ending chords in Summertime. Well, if you take a look at my left hand, the A minor, I slowdown on that last A minor and then I came up to the fifth fret up here and you can get an A minor just by borrowing the top three strings I played the open fifth string with it. If you want to include the forth string you’ll reach over here and get it there. And then I have these little two finger chord on the fourth and third strings you can play everything here from the fifth string down and it’s a really pretty ending chord for a minor key. So that was a kind of fancy but easy to play chord and because we love ones that sound good but are easy to play. Looking at the right hand for a minute, throughout Summertime and all of these other tunes that we’re going to be playing, if a melody is on a high strings, the first or second string I’m usually picking it with my index finger and often I’ll be filling out the rest of the chord with my thumb like---sort of pinching once again. Sometimes when it comes down to the lower strings or even on the second string I’ll strum all the way to the second string of my thumb sometimes I’ll get the melody note that way. Now, all these could probably redone with a flat pick as well but as long as I’m doing at finger style you’ll see there I’m going back and forth between index finger and the thumb. And if it’s the index finger like I said the thumb is adding some of bass like that to make a full chord now.
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