Using walking basses is a common technique used to write worship songs. You see this in songs like ‘As A Deer’.  You can also use this technique to make a song arrangement. I show some examples in our Music Theory Course of how to take a song and make many different arrangements of it. In the video below is a video showing how to find the walking basses in three different keys.

There are examples in the key of ‘C’, ‘D’, and ‘G’. In the key of ‘C’ there are no sharps or flats, so the notes of the descending scale are C, B, A, G, F, E D and the back to C. In the video below you learn that the descending scale often moves to the ‘V’ or ‘V7′ chord between the last two notes, or last two chords.

In the picture you can see one example using the chords ‘C’, ‘C/B’, ‘Am7′, Am7/G’, ‘F’, ‘F/E’, ‘G7′, then ‘C’. The note underneath a slash ‘/’ is always the bass note. In the video the chord should have been called ‘Am7/G’ instead of ‘Am/G’. It’s actually the chord in the picture.

In the key of ‘D’ the bass notes are ‘D’, ‘C#’, ‘B’, ‘A’, ‘G’, ‘F#’, ‘E’, ‘A’ (which is the V), and ‘D’. In the key of ‘G’ the descending bass notes are ‘G’, ‘F#’, ‘E’, ‘D’, ‘C’, ‘B’, ‘A’, ‘D’ (the V), and ‘D’.

1. The first tip is practicing. You need to spent time with the instrument to improve your playing. Use scales to begin you time of practice. It helps you to focus on just the technique of playing.
2. Speaking of focus. That’s the next tip. Sometimes people play the guitar, but just play things they already know. To get better, it takes concentration and focus. I know a concert guitar player who plays a difficult section of a piece 100 times perfectly. If he messes up on #89, he starts over again from #1. We aren’t all ‘concert guitar players’ but I think focusing will benefit all players.
3. Start the scales by playing them slowly. Try moving both hands at exactly the same time. In other words, hold down the note and strike the string at the same time. This will help you play faster down the road.
4. Using a metronome is an excellent practice. You can use it to gradually increase the speed and it will also help you achieve an more accurate sense of tempo.

For an easy scale to play, there is a video at the website of Guitar Scales.

The ‘How To Master Finger Picking‘ course is now in a book and DVD format. The new name is ‘Jean Welles Worship Guitar Class(TM) – Mastering Finger Picking.’ This new book is currently shipping to the retail stores and is available on the website. It has 12 lessons with both song accompaniments and instrumental solos. The last song is a Flamenco piece with techniques like the tremolo, the tambour and the rasgueado.

For more information visit – http://worshipguitarclass.com/mastering-finger-picking.html

The Travis Pick works well with songs like ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus.’ I’m working on an instrumental arrangement of this song and planning on adding it to the Finger Picking Course along with some other songs using the Travis Picking patterns.

Here are a few tips to getting a clean chords on your guitar, so your worship songs sound great

1. Trim your left-hand fingernails. If you have nails it’s impossible to hold the strings down cleanly.

2. Hold a string down with the tip, or pad, of your finger right behind the frets. If you hold a string down on top of a fret it can produce a muffled tone. If you hold down a string too far from the fret it can produce a buzzing sound. Stay on the tips of your fingers and hold each string firmly, as close to the frets as you can.

3. Only strum the strings that are actually part of the chords. For example, avoid strumming the 6th string when playing a D chord. The bass of a D chord is the 4th string. It sounds the cleanest to strum the top four strings for this chord. Strum just the strings in the chord and preferable with the bass string as the lowest. Here are a couple examples with number for the frets to hold down on each string:

D should not be strummed with 0 0 0 2 3 2, instead use x x 0 2 3 2
C should not be strummed with 0 3 2 0 1 0, instead use x 3 2 0 1 0

4. Keep your guitar in Tune. Invest in a good guitar tuner and use it every day. My favorite is the Headstock tuner since it tunes by the vibration of your instrument and not the audio sound. Hence, it doesn’t matter how noisy the environment is, it still works great.

These are a few simple tips that can improve the ‘sound’ of your playing.

(My Nephew took this picture in Africa. Beautiful!)