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How To Play The McNally Strumstick

How To Play Songs

To play a song, you have to play a specific note at a specific time. That is a greater mental effort than playing any old note any old time. It is not a greater physical effort; once you are squeezing and strumming, it doesn’t matter to your hands where you are squeezing, or how many times you strum.

So playing songs is actually a mental challenge, not a physical one. Don’t worry, it is not rocket science. It is good to get your hands practiced before you play a song, because it takes MENTAL EFFORT just to make your hands work at first, but after practice, it takes less. Then you have some mental effort available for doing a song.

The way we represent which note to play is by saying which fret number you are squeezing (remember, we squeeze just to the left of a given fret), and what string you have to squeeze. Most of the time, your notes will be on the first string. Therefore, if we don’t say which string you are playing, it means the note is on the first string. If I say, “third fret”, you assume it is on the first string. 1st fret, 4th fret, 5th fret, 2nd fret, each means on the first string. You are still strumming all three, to make a melody note, plus two background notes.

The top fret, the one the strings are already resting on, is called ZERO. If you are not fretting a string with your finger, it is said to be played at the zero fret, or OPEN. When you strum all three strings, without fretting any one of them, that is all three strings played OPEN (or at the zero fret).

The next fret from the zero fret is number one, the next after that number two, etc. We can specify a note by saying “play the first string at the third fret”. That means, press the first string down, just to the left of the third fret, and strum. Voila! You hear that note, plus the other two strings OPEN in the background.

Play the fourth fret on the first string. Now play the first fret (not the zero fret).

Can you play the second string (the middle one) at the third fret? At the first fret? Watch out your finger does not lean over and bump the first string, that is a little tricky.

If we say “Third string, 3rd fret”, that is exactly what it means; squeeze the third string just to the left of the third fret (try not to bump into the middle string, but don’t worry if you do though) and strum all three strings.

What would it mean if we say second string OPEN? Yes, it means don’t use any fingers, and strum all three, so you hear the second string OPEN note (which you hear most of the time anyway.) Some people are confused by this; it is not a trick, its a free note, you do not have to do any squeezing squeeze when any note is OPEN.

Now for a song

Here are the words to Mary Had a Little Lamb (yes, it’s my favorite song too. It’s simple though.) Above each syllable or word you will see a number. That number is the fret number to play at that moment in the song. "0"means "open", as you might expect. All the notes are on the first string, we do not have to specify any other string.

So the first note is (1st string) 2nd fret, the next note is 1st fret, the next note is open, etc. The whole song is played using ONLY threenotes on the first string; 0, 1 and 2. You should strum all three though, to hear a nice background.

To summarize how to play a song:

1. How to play notes on the first string:
The numbers above the song words tell you which fret to play. “1 “ means squeeze the first string at the 1 fret. Similarly, “ 2 “ means the 2 fret, etc. Remember that “ 0 “ means 0 fret, that is, no fingers.

2. How to play notes on the other strings:
For the other strings, we have to say which string as well as the fret. “2/1 “ means “Second string, 1 fret”; “2/0 “ means “second string, 0 fret ”; “3/5 “ means “third string, 5 fret”, etc. The format is “String/Fret”. If you see a slash "/", the number before it is the string, the number after it is the fret. If you see a number by itself, we assume it to be fingered on the 1st string, so we don't need any slash then .

How to Squeeze: Squeeze with the tip of your finger, just to the left of the metal fret, not right on it, and definitely not halfway between two frets. The object is to hold the string securely against the fret without muffling the string, and without having to squeeze harder than necessary.

Play slowly: The melody of the song appears when you smoothly play one note after the other. Any one strum may sound odd to you, especially on the second and third strings. When you can play each note slowly but steadily in succession, then you will hear the melody. Speed will come naturally as you become more familiar with a song. When you are learning, speed is not a virtue, it is an obstacle. ALLOW yourself to go slowly...enjoy the noise!

Chords: Some of the songs have chord symbols (letters) above the words. If you finger the various chords, and strum a rhythm that fits the song, you can sing the melody or accompany another Strumstick playing the melody. For more sophisticated playing, you can finger some form of the indicated chord AND finger the melody note, too, to get a chord background that changes through the song, instead of a constant drone. Be flexible and experimental; most chords can be fingered several ways on the Strumstick. Find a fingering, or a partial fingering, that gives some sense of the chord, and lets you play the melody note, too.

Missing notes, and Blues notes: The Strumstick does not play all the notes, that is why it is so easy. But you might need a missing note some time, for some songs, eventually. One approach is to just play a substitute note. Another solution is to muffle the string (touch it but don’t squeeze) and strum it anyway; that gives a percussive sound but no note; your ear “fills in the blank”. We can indicate that with an “x”; if you see “x” instead of a fret number, it means to muffle then . You can also stretch a string sideways to raise its pitch above the note you are fretting (“bending” the note). It won’t quite come up to a half tone higher, but it’s close enough, and the stretch up and back is a great blues effect. We indicate this by adding a “+ “ after the fret number. “4+ “ means stretch the 4 fret note (on the first string, of course). “2/4+ “ means “stretch second string, 4 fret.”

Rhythm: See the Instruction Book and Tape for information on playing and making up rhythms, or see Strumming and Rhythms in the Advanced Instructions section of the Strumsite. For these songs, we assume you know roughly how they sound already, and do not give any rhythm information. You can always start with a steady beat of downstrums and develop from there.

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