Play Santa Claus is coming to Town with Buster
What a fun little song isn’t? I’ve loved that one for a long time. And it’s kind of—if you play it real fast, man, it sounds like a piano. And it’s a really a good one to play at the holidays. But there’s a couple of things that you should look at. I think the best way to attack this song is to study the tablature and look at the chords that I'm playing with the left hand and then practice just going between the chords.
Now I use the Dminor right there, that’s not really supposed to be in there but I just love the color that it put in there, nice tone. Now I like the bass lines too, you know, they add sort of a jazzy kind of feel tone. And then I did a little move up here and it was just kind of just spur the moment.
Okay what I'm actually doing is a blowing up in a D shape. I'm sort of analyzing this is we go because like I said it was just off the cap. Okay, so if you can visualize that chord shape in your mind, you’re not going to actually play it, you just need to know it’s there so that you know what to grab. And then suspend the D. And the rest to it is pretty much straight forward stuff. We’re going to split the screen so you can get a real good look at both of my hands and I'll try and talk you through this song.
Okay now I think we take a good look at this. You’ll see that my melody is predominantly inside the chord shapes that I'm using. I'm just sliding into it to make the melody happen. So you can almost play this for just strumming. That might be a good way to learn the chords and it get kind of grip on the melody. And then start the finger picking.
And just pay close attention to whether I'm pairing the first and second finger or the second and third. Then you see I go down with my thumb all the way down here to assist the melody. I could use my fingers but it wouldn’t have that rocking feel that you get with keeping your thumb going.
Now, when we hit the bridge, now we’re just doing a kind of a locked in, a double stop locked in. You can start to appear which is actually a little bit easier and sounds just as good. Okay, and then you go right back into the melody. Add just a little pull off right there. Once again the thumb coming down and now the first finger coming up to assist the thumb for the bass line.
Well that’s just about all the checks to it. So now, let’s try to play all the way through real slow.
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