Intermediate Guitar - Star Spangled Banner in 4th Hand Position

In this video, i demonstrate one way to play the star spangled banner, mostly in the 4th hand position.

I’ve always loved the song, and so i binge watched YouTube how-to videos, and each one of them had their own way of explaining it,

And none of those lessons “clicked” with me, which was discouraging because i really wanted to master playing this song.

So i just kept noodling around and incorporating all the ideas from all those lessons, and came up with this version.

In this rendition, you’ll notice a lot of extra-curricular clanking and banging around, and thats somewhat intentional.

It turns out, that when you play this song in the 4th hand position, all of the open sting notes just happen to clank and clash in a perfectly imperfect way.

This song could be played in this hand position, more cleanly, and it would sound good,

However, i like the way the mistakes sound, so i not only don’t try to avoid them, i go out of my way to make sure i make them!

I suppose if its on purpose, its no longer a mistake...

Anyway, if you want to replicate the mistakes, its mostly just a matter of “accidentally” hitting 2 strings instead of 1, and the extra string you hit on accident is usually the adjacent open string that sounds lower.

So for example, if you want to hit a note on the A string, then you simply play the note on the A string AND “accidentally” also play the Open E string,

So that nearly every note that is supposed to be played, is “accidentally” accompanied by an open string that is not supposed to be played...

We use this song as a lesson, because its old and in the public domain,

It has that major sound that we want to practice,

It will probably never go out of style,

Its based on an old English Pub drinking song...

Everyone who covers this song, owns it.

Jimi Hendrix version of this song at Woodstock is mind-blowing.

The first time i heard it, i thought it sounded like a guitar falling down a flight of stairs,

But after some research, i discovered that there are many “sounds of war” in the song, such as a machine gun, a bomb dropping, women screaming, an ambulance or air raid siren...

And after you know thats the sounds he was trying to achieve, you can “hear” it yourself.

Have a listen...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MFLy8eGtSYo

Jimi videos disappear fast so heres a search in case video gets taken down

https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=jimi+woodstock+star+spangled+banner