Today I recorded the chords to sweet home Alabama along with the song to help me play in time and used the audio recording app audacity to help me record and edit the recording. I also found out that I have a broken bridge 🙁 on my guitar as pictured below.
I found resources on youtube from Kennis Russell (@Kennis Russell on youtube) and Jamie Boss (@Jaime Boss on youtube). I learned that to deal with this properly I should take my guitar to a luthier (a person who makes stringed instruments) but it should be ok for now. In Jamie Boss’s video, he explained that I could also loosen or take off the strings of the guitar, then glue and clamp down the bridge to let the glue set.
To learn this song I used the website, music play online (https://musicplayonline.com/guitar/) to help me learn the finger positioning for the chords and the chord progressions. Below is audio of me practicing a D-C-G chord progression (the chord progression in sweet home Alabama).
The first few times I tried playing along with the song it was far too fast to keep up with so I practiced and sped up my chord progressions as I got used to the finger transitions and the physical shapes. I next tried adding different strumming patterns that I learned last week into the chord progression to give it a more unique sound. using audacity I edited these two audio clips together.
Finally, I played along with sweet home Alabama trying my best to stay in time with the song. Below you can listen to one of my first attempts at playing the song. I found having recordings of the song really helped me listen for spots to improve. I found that my C-chord come out pretty muddy compared to my G and D so that is something for me to work on.
featured image by Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis on Unsplash