Making Chord Inversions Fun - Ask Zac 67

well hello friends and welcome to
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another Ask
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Zac today we're going to talk about
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inversions and
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kind of some some fun cheats or
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hacks or whatever we want to call them
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to to help you
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learn them and help them to be more
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musical and enjoyable
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just to to learn them in the first place
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yeah
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so if you've been enjoying the show and
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information if uh
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yeah in the description all right
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so i moved to Nashville in 1993
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to attend Belmont university and
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i immediately found that i was way
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behind
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i did not know the notes
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on the neck of the guitar i wasn't
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familiar with inversions
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i just knew some you know basically
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geometric shapes up and down the neck
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and i knew you know i could play a g
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like this
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or i could play g like this but
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you know i knew a little bit of it but i
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didn't even know what notes made up a g
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chord so i had a lot of catching up to
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do
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and luckily you know i had had great
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you know teachers there and they they
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really helped me and
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John Pell uh really you know
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made us you know do these inversions up
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and down the neck and do cycles of
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playing dominant seven chords up and
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down the neck
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and so yeah different different you know
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and
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you know just straight up you know
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triads and things like that
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and so it was while doing something like
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that
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that i did this
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i was like wait a second okay wait i i
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and I'm actually
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i actually played a a g to an a minor
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and then i played a g again
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and i thought well what if i just start
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running that up the neck
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[Music]
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and it started to sound like something i
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instead of just being
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you know
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[Music]
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it it actually it started sounding
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musical and
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also is kind of a brain twister also to
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go back and forth between two different
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you know chords and playing the
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different inversions of them
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so you know you kind of got that little
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musical kind of thing that i played in
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the beginning which to me kind of has
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kind of a
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gospel soul kind of vibe
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[Music]
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so all of a sudden that was a lot more
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interesting a lot more fun
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to practice and work up and think about
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that in different keys than it was
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you know just playing a minor inversions
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or just playing
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g inversions and
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and i found that's kind of been a
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hallmark for me is that
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i will practice things more that
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that sound interesting it's it's kind of
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like
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a couple years ago i started having a
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lot of trouble
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with my my left hand i was having a lot
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of pain
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and i couldn't play guitar for about six
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months
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and then i started kind of coming back
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and it was tough
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and i was I've never been really good
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with my pinky
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on this hand and i was really trying to
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get better on it
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and so i you know you can do things like
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[Music]
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this
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and that's great but i needed something
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that would you know be more fun to play
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and so that's where i came up with the
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little Ask Zac theme because i wanted
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something that i had to use my pinky on
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[Music]
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and so on and so that's kind of been a
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hallmark
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of of me as a player is always trying to
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find
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things that spark my interest and keep
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my interest
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because otherwise i have a hard time
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with it maybe that
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you know you know says something about
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my attention span
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but uh yeah so here let's just kind of
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take apart
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this uh this g to a minor
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inversion thing so I'll just play it
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slowly
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again that was the the b g and d strings
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that I'm just plucking
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you know with my pick and fingers
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[Music]
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do
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[Music]
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what's interesting is that even that the
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double stop that I'm playing there
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is covering those two chords because you
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have
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[Music]
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and that's what makes it sound good
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that's what makes it sound good to me
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and to you
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is that you're playing over the chords
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you know that are going along you're not
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playing against them
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all right so i hope you're you're seeing
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in this that
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these inversions are going to give you
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all these things to use for soloing for
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double stops for fills for all sorts of
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things
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so let's go up to the e b and g strings
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and play that same
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you know cycle of g and a minor so then
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you get
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[Music]
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do
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all right now let's go down
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to the a d and g strings and let's
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because this is going to be even more of
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kind of a brain twister because this is
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not where you really
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think of of chord inversions as much so
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this is going to start with just your
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first
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first finger playing on the second fret
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on the a string and plucking
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on the a d and g strings
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[Music]
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all right so now you want to take
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that and and go into all the different
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keys and
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and learn those up and down the neck and
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then you're you're learning all these
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major and minor you know chord
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inversions
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that then you can take in different
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directions and you can make them ninth
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chords or dominant sevens or things like
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that and you can you know run those up
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and down the neck
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all right one more you know kind of
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inversion exercise using two chords
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and uh I'm going to call this a a g6 and
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a g9
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and this is another you know kind of
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great exercise and you can use it for
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anything or soul r b western swing it's
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just a great
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you know kind of inversion thing that
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you can do and you can just
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you can use it you just run it down the
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neck and it's kind of a good
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soloing technique
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[Music]
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[Music]
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okay so up high uh
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you know of course you have this uh you
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know it's
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it's a g6 so you you're here on the uh
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you know that's like the uh 15th fret
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on the on your on your first string
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you're on the 16th fret
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uh on your g string and you're on the
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17th fret
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on on your b string and then you just
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slide it down
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chromatically you know
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[Music]
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then you change shape to where you just
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bar across at the 12th fret
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then you get this shape
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[Music]
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then you repeat the first shape
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[Music]
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so you can do that with that that's a
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great start to the solo and then you
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just go to the four chord
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why not uh yeah then
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you know also you could use it just in
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in more of an r b kind of way
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[Music]
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then of course you can take it and you
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can
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take it to other parts of the neck
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[Music]
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but i'll leave that up to you so you
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work on that
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alright guys well i hope you've enjoyed
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today's lesson
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and you use it to help you practice more
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and
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learn more and and get better on the
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guitar for your own enjoyment and
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hopefully for others too
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all right i hope you've enjoyed enjoyed
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today's show
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thanks a lot we'll see you next time bye