Day 20 - Slow Rock Strum

I still felt like total shit today and had absolutely no desire to pick up my guitar.  I took a nap after dinner and woke up, still sick, miserable, and disoriented.  It was 8:30pm and I decided to take a look at Facebook rather than get up and do anything productive.

There was a post by Mark McKenzie -  the Guitar Guy - with a Dm chord progression.  I watched the video and the chord progression actually sounded quite lovely.  It was:

 

Dm - Am - Dm - C - G - C - A - A

 

The Facebook video inspired me to do more than just pick up my guitar, strum one chord, and call it good.  Sooooo, I hauled my sick, lazy ass into my practice room and practiced this progression.

 

Mark was using what he calls a "Slow Rock Strum."  I had never encountered this pattern before, to my knowledge, although I am under the influence of cold medicine and can't be trusted to remember anything.

 

 I was searching for a nice little graphic but apparently cannot find one.  So, the pattern was essentially this:

 

D (miss D) DDU (repeat twice for one bar)

 

Oh Lord, I pray the music police aren't reading this.  I don't know the proper terms, but this is 16th note strumming so I guess it would be, according to Justin Guitar:

 

 

1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a

(strumming on the red notes)

 

OMG, I apologize for the musical ignorance.

 

At any rate, practicing this strumming pattern actually perked me up a bit.  I probably played 20 minutes which was 19 minutes and 30 seconds longer than I had planned.  Oh, and miracle of all miracles, I played the first 10 minutes or so with the dreaded metronome!

 

Here is a link to the nice Dm chord progression:

 

 

 



Now off to pop a Nyquil...