Strumming Rancid and rancid strumming

My latest post has turned into a mammoth digital tome on the music that inspires me, and while that chestnut is roasting away I thought I'd post a proper progress report for my faithful fans (hi mum!) to keep you up to date on my epic war against the guitar.

Since I laid down my first song challenge I've been bashing away at a small but vital group of chords with a view to quality, not quantity - learning a few chords but doing them well. I've got G, C, D, A, Am, E, and Em all happening with a reasonable degree of success (but I still hate D - the higher strings cut into my fingers and I can never seem to get them in the right place first time. Any advice on that?). As for barre chords, I am still struggling away with B minor, which I can only seem to get to ring nicely about 50 per cent of the time. F, on the other hand, seems to sit quite well, though I still can't keep the shape very well when moving up and down the frets. I think the E shape barre chords sit better under the finger than A shape for me - and A minor shape is a pain in the arse, which is why B minor is causing me so much grief (for the non-guitarists out there this is a pretty decent explanation of how barre chords work, I think).

Anywho, now I can make some pretty reasonable chords, I thought it was time to delve into the mysterious world of strumming (ooooooh!). I googled some simple patterns and found I took to them fairly easily, rhythm-wise. I started applying this one to the chords I already knew:


"Well, that was a piece of piss!", thought I, and went back to google to find something a bit more complex. Ask, and the great instarwebs shall provide! I found this pattern:


More complicated, but still not rhythmically difficult. After thrashing these out on a G chord, I tried changing chords. FAIL. The patterns might be pretty simple, but the big challenge is making the chord changes fit while keeping the strumming rhythmic. This put a big, fat spotlight on the fact that my transitions between chords are, shall we say, uncoordinated.

Thoroughly jack of beating my head against the wall for one evening, I sat down for a bit of medicinal music therapy in the form of aural scourers Rancid. They (along with seminal East Bay ska-punks Operation Ivy) are one of the formative bands of my still-clung-to youth - I have all of their albums up to '...And Out Come The Wolves' on vinyl (yes, yes, I'm old) and as I was listening to 'Olympia, WA' and waxing nostalgic about my short-lived attempts to play a ludicrously low-slung bass with the sole objective of playing 'Time Bomb' by Screeching Weasel with my brother's never-to-happen teenage punk band I thought 'What the hell!" and googled the tabs. Turns out I know all the chords (who would have thought punk rock would be simplistic? *gasp*) and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening strumming away with awful pauses while I reconfigured my fingers into new and painful shapes, all the time with a huge grin on my face.

Today's result: Kate: 0 - Guitar: 1

Though the guitar won today's battle, I'm realising that loving the music you're playing is a huge incentive to keep at it in the hopes of taking that bastard down and ruling the world with rock!! I end today with a genteel and intimate live performance by Tim, Lars and the boys. OI!