Groove Learning Pathway

We're with you every step of the way in this Learning Pathway. In every lesson, Kelyn will break down a new concept and run through mini drills with you so you can lock it into your muscle memory. To cap off each day's work, you'll put what you learned in a musical context with a guided jam session.

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‍Day 1. Feel the 1

Just like a planet orbiting the sun, the groove always comes back to the 1. You'll work on feeling a quarter note rotation to strengthen your sense of time and access deeper layers of a groove through eight and sixteenth notes.

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‍Day 2. Less is more (rhythm)

Sometimes the gateway to grooving is not through clobbering every rhythm, but laying out and creating space for other instruments to bloom. Here, you'll explore how keeping it simple can actually be profound.

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‍Day 3. Less is more (chords)

Day 3 takes you deeper into less-is-more headspace with some voicing-specific approaches. Day 2 saw us pairing down the rhythms we’re playing, and now we’ll thin out voicings to create even more harmonic space.

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Day 4. Dynamics (fretting hand)

Your fretting hand is capable of great nuance that helps get more tone from your touch. Muting strings you don’t want to be heard and controlling the length of chords gives you control over your sound and the space you utilize. You'll work on this with some Prince-inspired exercises.

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Day 5. Dynamics (picking hand)

You’ve gotten control of your fretting hand. Now, you'll explore the picking power of picking-hand dynamics via palm muting and volume control.

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Day 6. Pocket

The term pocket is loosely interchanged with words like groove or rhythm. When a band is "locked in" to the same rhythmic dance without overplaying, they're "in the pocket". Kelyn will teach you how to enter this magical space via a series of groove-based exercises.

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Performance pieces

Cap off your hard work by learning real songs that put everything you worked on into a musical context.

Here, you'll have the opportunity to jam with a live-recorded band of pro musicians.

Plus, you can submit your performance to the Pickup Music team for personalized video feedback – who said online learning wasn't interactive?!

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Final quiz

Finish the grade with a quiz to make sure you've adequately absorbed the core concepts involved.

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Day 1. Must-know dominant moves

Ready to make your chords dance? You’ll spend some time with the C9 chord today. Kelyn will show you how to turn one static chord vamp into a moving and grooving entity.

Day 2. Slept-on dominant moves

Tackle some lesser-known techniques to highlight the dominant sound. Today’s variations on the C9 chord come from the blues. You’ll utilize both the major and minor 3rd of C and add in the sound of 6ths.

Day 3. The 16th flow

As the guitarist, you’re part of the groove section and your rhythm playing needs to be locked in. Today, you'll work on a steady stream of 16th notes while maintaining dynamic control of your sound.

Day 4. Melodicising in A minor

Think a 1 chord groove can’t sound melodic? Think again! You'll use one chord voicing and notes on the top three strings to add melodies to the groove. You’ll learn how to embellish the A minor chord all while sticking to one position on the guitar neck.

Day 5. Funk from scratch (how to build a part)

Imagine you’re at a funk jam session and the drummer has already started playing. Other instruments start chiming in and all eyes are on you. What are you going to do? Today’s exercises will show you how to assemble an original guitar part on the spot.

Day 6. Cissy Strut-ish‍

Today, you’ll learn two guitar parts that could easily take you through a whole song. You’ll practice combining melodic riffs with chords and intervals.

Day 7. Swung funk

Today’s lesson will give you the tools to manipulate the rhythm of a groove. This will come in handy when you want to match the feel of other musicians or when you want your groove to embody a certain mood.

Performances‍

Put your skills to the test with three tasteful songs. As always, you'll have the live-recorded Pickup Music band backing you up while you let it rip.

Get feedback‍

Get personalized video feedback on your playing from the Pickup team.

Final quiz‍

Make sure you're ready for Grade 3.

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Day 1. Bubble picking

Today, you'll learn how to use bubble picking: a textural technique used to accent a repeated rhythmic pattern. The rhythmic picking pattern is more of a feeling that a melodic effect. Depending on the mood that you’re trying to set, bubble picking can be both picked while palm muted or open-string picked.

Day 2. The funky 4-3

Here, you'll tackle the funky 4-3 technique. It's a real ceiling raiser and useful for guitarists across all genres of music. By briefly suspending the chord tones and resolving them, this chordal technique paints each chord in the progression with a rapid fire tension-and-release sound.

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Day 3. The funky octave thing

Octaves are a simple melodic device that guitarists can use to add an extra intensity and density by doubling an original idea an octave above or below. Today, you'll work on some octave exercises inspired by Kool and the Gang.

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Day 4. The suspended sound

In Day 2, you’ll have learned the 4-3 suspended chords that were used to create a funky rhythm guitar part. Today, you'll tackle slash chords, which are closely related to suspended chords as both are used to create an unresolved but dreamy sound quality.‍

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Day 5. Muted 3rds and 4ths

‍Similar to bubble picking, intervals can be used to create rhythmic and textural interest when comping along with a band. Think of muted 3rds and 4ths as two bubble-picking melodies stacked together. Using the classic jazz-funk track Chameleon by Herbie Hancock, you’ll learn how to build slick comping riffs.

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Day 6. Jazzy modern funk

‍Roy Hargrove and Herbie Hancock are two pioneering musicians who merged jazz concepts with funk music sensibilities. Jazz-funk is a marriage between the one-chord vamps, rhythmic feel, and song structure of funk music with the harmonic sophistication, improvisation, and arrangement style of jazz music.
Today, you’ll introduce some jazz concepts into the funk style.

Day 7. Putting it all together

In this final lesson, you’ll combine everything that you’ve learned and put it to work. Groove is a feeling and philosophy, the only way to find out is to start livin’ by the four pillars of groove.

Performances‍

Demonstrate what you've learned in a musical context by learning original songs.

Get feedback‍

Get personalized video feedback on your playing from the Pickup team.

Final quiz‍

Make sure you're ready for Grade 4.

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