Stick Season Guitar Lesson

Hey guitar enthusiasts, I'm going to show you an easier version of Noah Kahn's Stick Season. As a good New Englander, I felt like I should do this song. I heard this on the radio a few months back and I thought it was one of the coolest new songs that I've heard. I don't listen to a lot of new music, but I really did like this one. And typically, if you listen to this song, it's finger picked in the beginning, which is a little bit tricky. And it does have a bar chord so it kind of sounds something like this.

Okay. Something like that. So you can see it's very, very fast. And there's also a bar chord that comes in. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna eliminate that bar chord for you. We're gonna use a capo and we're gonna put it on the second fret of our guitar, which allows us to use all open chords. We're gonna be using a G chord.

Okay.

A D chord, an E minor chord and a C chord. Okay. Now the thing with this song is it is very, very fast. It is 235 beats per minute. So we are flying. So if you're someone who wants to work on the speed of your chord changes and your strumming, this is a great song to do it with. And I'm going to show you how you can practice that to get faster. So let's talk about the strumming pattern we're going to use on the song.

Now the great thing about this song, if we start off on the chorus is that we just have single strums. Okay. So when we get to our chorus, it's just we're single strumming a G chord, single strumming a D, an E minor and then a C. Alright? And we will start strumming halfway through the end of that chorus. But if we just go through that very quickly. Nice and easy.

And I love the mom but it's the season of the six and I saw your mom and I forgot that I existed and half my fall But I like to play the victim I drink alcohol till my friends.

So halfway through we're going to start strumming. What is the strumming pattern we're going to do that? I just played very sloppily. It's going to be 1 and 2e and a 3 and 4e. And so we're using a 16th note strumming pattern. And that's how you count these patterns. That's why it's E. And okay, so.

It'S down, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, up, down.

Okay, 1 and 2e and a 3 and 4e. And okay, so that's the speed that I would practice this at first. So let's do that a few times through just to get the strumming pattern down. Okay, so we got 1, 2, 3.

4, 1 and 2e and a 3 and 4e. And.

Okay, so that is it at a nice slow speed. This is how I would play it. And I'm going to show you a little spice you can add in if you like, too. So I go, 1, 2, 1, 2. Here we go.

We're flying.

Okay, so we are at 235 beats per minute. So very, very, very fast tempo on this song. So a couple tricks here. One, when you're playing a song like this that has a lot of strumming and pretty aggressive. I'm strumming the guitar pretty aggressively here. I would use a slightly thinner pick. Now, this Pick is about 0.77 millimeters. If you go thicker, you run the risk of getting a lot of resistance from your pick and then your pick falling on the floor. So slightly lighter pick. So with songs like this that have a lot of strumming that are very fast. Okay, so you probably heard my strumming had a little bit of a oomph to it. And what I'm doing is I'm accenting the and after one and the and after three. So the second down, I'm just giving a little extra. So when I'm strumming the chord, I'm kind of mostly focusing on the top three or four strings. And then on the accent, I'm getting the whole chord, so it'll be.

Okay.

So the first down is mostly bass, and the second down is more treble.

Almost like a boom Chuck.

Okay, so it's bass treble, bass treble, bass treble. So it's 1 and 2e and a 3 and 4. You can go down, down, down, up.

Down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up.

All right, if you want to add that in, let's try practicing that just a little bit again at a slow speed. And I'm going to show you how you can pick this up. All right, I'm on a G chord here. We got 1, 2, here we go. 1 and 2 E and a 3.

And 4 beat and a.

So that's a strumming pattern to use for most of the song. And there are some little intricacies with single strums and Other cut strums as well that we'll go over in a little bit. So first, let's talk about how do we get this song up to 235 beats per minute? Because it's very, very fast. So what I would do is I would just start with one chord. Don't worry about chord changes just yet. Just focus on the strumming pattern. Get that strumming pattern first into your rhythm, into your fingers and hands.

So I would start at a nice slow tempo, and you can even go slower than that.

Okay.

And then what I would do is I play it like five or six times, and then I pick up the.

Speed a little bit.

Then pick it up again.

And then again.

Again.

Until I felt like I could get up to the speed of the sign. Now, what's going to happen is this strumming hand is going. As you start to push yourself to go faster, this strumming hand is going to tense up on you. And when you play through tension, you go very, very slow. You can't go faster. So when you feel this hand start tightening up, remember to breathe and then slow it back down. So if you're here and you feel it starting to tight up, go back to where it relaxes, relax the hand and then bring it back in.

And then if it starts tightening up, relax it again.

So that's how you get faster. One, you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone to get faster, but you have to do this back and forth between going fast, which is going to cause a little bit of tension, and bringing it back to relaxation. And eventually you'll be able to go fast and stay relaxed. Because for strumming patterns like this, that's exactly what you need to do. So this is the strumming pattern we're going to be using on the first verses, a little bit lighter, softer. The second verse, we're going to bring it up, and then the chorus, we're really going to jump into it. But the first half of the course, as I said, is one strum. And then halfway through, the strumming jumps back in.

In.

Okay. And each of these chords, we're going to be playing them twice. Okay? So 1 and 2. Eenda. 3 M. 4, eenda. 1 and 2. Eenda. Three and four, eenda. And on the last line of the chorus, we have a C chord for one measure, a D chord for one measure, and then we have a G chord for, like, one and a half measures. So what's going to happen on the very end of this chorus is it's going to be on our G chord. It's going to be 1 and 2e and a 3 and 4e and a 1 and 2e and a. And then we're going to mute the guitar. Alright, so if I take it from the C chord, it's going to be 1 and 2e and a 3 and 4e and a 1 and 2e and.

A 3, 4e and a 1 and 2 e and a 3 and 4e and A 1 and 2e and a 3.

And then we jump right back into our verse. So let's do a little bit of a playthrough here. I will do one set of slower speed and then we'll do another time at a fast speed speed. And again, if it's still too fast for you, you can always use the settings cog to slow it down. All right, so let's take it from the top. This is the tempo. We're going to do it through the first time.

Just a little bit nice.

And even, so you can get used to the strumming pattern. Then we're going to pick up the speeds. So here we go. From the top, it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and a 3.

And 40 and a 1 and 2 and a 3 and as you promised me that I was more than all.

Like Halfway through the drivers your voice trailed off exactly as you passed my exercise kept on driving straight and left out the future to the right Now I'm safe you see my anger and my blame that I can't face the memories of something even told me some place I'm staring.

Cause I see you when it rains dogs won't be the traveling but it's Covid on the plains and I love the muck but it's the season of the sticks and I saw your mom but she forgot that I existed and it's half my fault But I just like to play the victim dumb I drink alcohol till my friends come home for Christmas and I'll dream each night some mention of you that I might not have until now.

Okay, so you can see at that slower speed, that chorus feels very, very slow because it's just single strums and we're holding them for a very long time so let's try it now at full speed. See if you can keep up again. You can use the settings cog to slow me down, but we're going to take it as close to 235 as we can. 1, 2, 1 and 2. And 3 and 4.

And.

As you promised me that I was more than all.

Veins and I love my mom, but it's the season of the sticks and I saw your mom. She forgot that I existed and it had my fault. But I like to play the victim. I drink out the hall when my friends come home for Christmas and I dream each night or something maybe.

Now if you like this style of strumming, I would highly recommend that you check out my Johnny Cash Folsom Prison Blues lesson right over there where we get more into this Boom Chuck and Boom Chucka type strumming pattern. Go check that lesson out right over there.