A guitar lesson video (Hand Dexterity series) by Lauren Bateman teaching a guitar rendition of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna." The instructor demonstrates a bass-like lick across three strings using primarily the first three fingers, explains alternate vs. directional picking, and walks through the lick measure-by-measure with performance tips (start slow, build speed).
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. Lauren. Here we're in the next video of my Hand Dexterity series. In this lesson, what we're going to be doing is a song by the Beatles called Lady Madonna. What a great song. And you guys know how much I love the Beatles. Just like in our last lesson, we're going to be moving over a series of three different strings. So we're expanding our string capacity here. And we're mostly going to be using the first, second, and third fingers. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play through this very quickly so you guys can hear what it sounds like, and then we're going to get into how to play it.
So this is more of like a bass lick, but we're going to play it on guitar. Nothing wrong with that, right? Frets we're using in this are the second, third, and fourth frets owned by fingers 1, 2, and 3. So let's zoom in for a close up so that I can show you how to play this lick. So we're starting on the open A string here and we're going to play.
Open, open, three, four.
So that's open, open, then second finger, third finger, open, open, three, four dot and then we're going to go to the D string and we're going to.
Play open, open, four.
Open, open, four.
And then we're going to come down to the D string and with our first finger, we're going to play second fret. So let me do that again.
So it's open, open, three, four. Open, open, four, two.
Now, as a little side note, I'm doing something called directional picking on those last two notes. So we talked about alternate picking here, where we're basically going down, up, down, up. Well, directional picking is when I move the pick and the direction of the string change. So in this case, I'm going from the D string down to the G string. So I'm going down, down. So instead of picking up, I'm going to pick down. So let me go in for the close up and I'll show you. So here I'm using alternate picking. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down. One more time. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down. So instead of doing down, up, I'm doing down, down. Just something to keep in mind when you. When you're practicing. Rule of thumb is when you're playing on the same string, you use alternate picking. And when you change between strings, you pick in the direction of the string change. So back to the song. We're going to repeat that lick again, it's going to be open, open, three, four. Open, open, four, two. So that's your second measure. Let's jump over to the third measure where things start to change. So we have open, open, three, four. We're starting the same. Then on the D string, we're going.
To play open, open, 2, 2. So it's open, open, 2, 2.
So that measure is open, open, 3, 4, down to the D string.
Open, open, 2, 2.
And then the fourth measure, we're gonna jump up to the third fret on that D string.
It's gonna be 3, 3.
We're gonna to the G string, open, open, 2.
And then back up to the G string.
Open, open, open.
So that last measure is going to be 3, 3, down to the G string.
Open, open, 2.
Then back up to the G string.
Open, open, open.
So if we go all the way.
From the beginning, we've got open, open, three, four. Open.
Open, open, three, four dot Open, open, four, two. Now open, open, three, four. Open, open, two, two, three, three. Open, open, two. Open, open, open.
Now, this lick is fast, and it has a lot of movement to it, so I would highly recommend going slow and building up your speed as you go. But this is a great exercise for. For picking because there's so many notes and there's so much movement in the song. So let's go ahead to our next lesson in the hand dexterity series.
