Unbreak that Circle

Using the Fret Hand Mute in a Song

We're using what we learned in the exercise and applying it to a song. That's it. There's also three new chord shapes. The main goal here is TIMING! Stop the notes as precisely as when you start them. We are developing control with our fret hand, and striving for accurate timing.

All of these chords are two finger chords. One that might present a challenge is the E minor. There's basically two ways you can play this chord(for the position and voicing we're using). You can do a partial bar over the D and A strings on the second fret with your first finger. You can also place your fingertip directly in between the D and A strings. Sam uses this all the time, and on many chord shapes. As you know, the D string is a pair of two D's, and the A is a pair of two A's. When placing a finger in between, it will likely only fret the inside strings. The outside strings will be muted unless you have really big fingers. That's ok. The chord will still sound great.

Next up, we up the ante. We're working on a real Bluegrass back-beat chop with open string chords.