Norwegian Wood Easy Acoustic Rhythm Guitar Lesson

[Demonstration] Hey, rhythm strummers you recognize that tune? That’s Norwegian Wood, that’s a great Beatle song. And I’ve got this great strum that can back it up. [Demonstration] I can only play it 30 seconds of that song in this freebie, but I’ll save that song itself for later. But let me show you that strum I was using because you could use that on this song or lots of other songs. Okay, this is that accompaniment, it’s for songs in sixth, eighth. You can also play it for things that are waltz time, because you can only think of waltz as being half measured in sixth, eighth . If you look at the strum diagram here, you’ll see that we’ve got strokes, strums both in black and white. The white ones are what we called ghost strokes that is to say to move your hand, but you don’t actually hit the strings. So there’s kind of sound although everyone use it a lot, because you're still doing this. You can kind of deep to pick down a little bit, and you get a little bit of that stroke in it kind of adds variety, makes it interesting. So you’ll notice that the first line of the pattern just two measures here goes 16th measures. The first line I'm just playing down strokes on the beats on one, two, three, four and for the end of four we have an up stroke, that’s not ghost stroke then down on five and sixth. All the other up strokes are ghost strokes so that sounds like-- [Demonstration] Now because this is a waltzy kind of feel, you may want to make beats one and four be bass note, and have the others be strums. So if you get more like [Demonstration], slet me start, since I'm playing a D chord, let me start on the fourth string as my bass note, so you get-- [Demonstration] Get that? Want to try that with me? Let me play just a little bit slowly you can do that with me if weren't ready-- [Demonstration] One more. [Demonstration] Okay, so that’s the first measure. The second measure go all hug and you get to play all the ups and downs. Now again, sometimes you can vary it a little bit by leaving out some of those ups strums, but for the most part what you’re going to do is play-- [Demonstration] Then pick out a note, a bass note on the ones and the fours and have everything else D chord. So that’s-- [Demonstration] One more. [Demonstration] You may notice that it sounds particularly nice, if you make the one beat either note that’s the chord you’re playing, like in this case I'm playing D string for the D chord. And make that four beat be a difference bass string. In this case I would try the fifth string that’s open and you get a sound like-- [Demonstration] This is often called alternating bass, because it all change between those two notes. It can make the pattern to fill longer, but still has that lots fills-- [Demonstration] Okay, so if we put these two together. Let’s just recap first one was actually a little more complicated than the second one. First measure was-- [Demonstration] You’re still doing that same alternating bass. I'm still intending to do that alternating bass. [Demonstration] One more time, last time. [Demonstration] Okay, let’s do the first one and then the second one and alternate them. [Demonstration] Again. [Demonstration] For the last time. [Demonstration] So this can be used for all kinds of songs in Waltz time, for instance-- [Demonstration] Now, if you're really interested in learning the rest of the songs which is terribly interesting about the frozen logger. This is a logger who was so manly that he is stirring his coffee with his thumb not a spoon. Okay, but why did we learn this pattern? We learn it really because of Norwegian Wood. So how does it fit with Norwegian Wood? It fits great, listen. [Demonstration] It fits everything, chords and all. If you want to learn more about that song we’ve got a whole lesson on it over at RhythmStrummer.com, we hope see you there.