fingerstyleblues.com » Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons: Part Three

Lesson #18 – Cold Beer, Fingerstyle Fundamentals Wrap-up

Smike — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:36:02 +0000

Cold Beer and the Fingerstyle Fundamentals Wrap-up

This lesson brings us to the end of our introduction to fingerstyle techniques for now, at least as far as playing the blues is concerned. At this point you should have a pretty good idea of how to develop your fingerpicking skills, applying and identifying chord shapes and finger patterns, and thumb independence. Now it’s time to begin putting it to use. If you’re struggling with any of these techniques, refer to the troublesome lessons and keep at it. If you have any burning questions feel free to drop us a line.

Cold Beer is an original tune that combines elements that were covered in section two. If you’re unsure what you need to work on, this song should help point out any weaknesses in your playing. It’s named Cold Beer because if you’re anything like me, by the time you get to the end you’ll need one.

Take your time and learn it in sections if needed, come back to it until you can play it through. The bass notes change with every chord, so be sure you’re playing the proper rhythm under the melody.

Download the pdf(1.1kb)

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Lesson #17 – Freight Train Exercise

Smike — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:55:57 +0000

The Freight Train Exercise

This is another simple yet strong and beautiful melody. This time we’re playing in the key of C. The song was originally penned by Elizabeth Cotten when she was twelve years old around the year 1900, and has gone on to be recorded countless times by various artists. Elizabeth was a self taught guitarist who used a lot of unique open tunings. Being left handed she simply flipped the guitar over without restringing it. Her signature style became the alternating bass (also known as Cotton Bass). With the bass strings on the bottom she developed a method of playing where she used her thumb for the melody and her fingers to pick out the bass lines. Quite an incredible woman, I urge you to seek out some recordings of this American original. If you haven’t already, please read her biography here, and check out our Freight Train extravaganza here.

The Arrangement

This arrangement strays slightly from the original, we’ve used a few ‘Lenny Breau’ inspired chord and melody substitutions. In case you find these too difficult the standard chords have also been included where noted. In bar nine you have two choices to play the F note on the high E string; you can hit the note like you normally would by moving your index finger over, or you can continue to hold down the E major chord and quickly bar across the top strings with your index finger.

If you’re having trouble, try leaving out the hammer-ons and pull-offs until you get the hang of it. Try learning it both ways and see how much these subtle changes effect the general feel of the song.

A few notes on the substitutions:

1-Playing the melody this way gives it a nice ‘chimey’ effect, be sure to hold down the F (6th fret) until it moves down to the D (3rd Fret) to get the full effect.

2-Here we’ve substituted a D7 in place of the F. This helps to drive the ear back to the C, fills out the sound and the bass does a cool little walk-up.

3-Finally we replaced the C with a neat ragtime style G13. This allows the same melody to be played while opening up the chord and giving it more air.

Here’s the arrangment:

This is the simplified version:

Freight Train

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Lesson 16 – Nine Pound Hacksaw

Smike — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:15:12 +0000

Nine Pound Hacksaw

As you can probably guess, this is a new arrangement of the classic ‘Nine Pound Hammer’ based on Merle Travis’s version and played in the key of E. It’s a simple three chord blues progressions with a strong melody on top. The challenge in this piece is to keep a tight, strong, snappy rhythm, while making sure the melody rings out loud and clear.

Note that the intro needs to be played only once, the final bar ends with the intro notes, taking you right back to the top.

Nine Pound Hacksaw

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Lesson 15 – The Caravan Exercise

Smike — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:06:18 +0000

The Caravan Exercise

The song Caravan was written by Juan Tizol and recorded by Duke Ellington in 1937. Since then has been performed by thousands of artists in styles ranging from jazz to bluegrass, surf to rap, and everything in between. A lot of people are surprised to learn that there are actually lyrics to this song, as it’s often performed as an instrumental.
The melody is simple yet sounds very exotic, evocative and arresting.

In this simplified arrangement we use only the intro over an alternating bass pattern. It may look and sound simple, and it is – but its actually quite challenging to keep a solid rhythm while letting the melody sing out. For some reason, this piece is very confusing to your fingers. Start slowly, and if it helps try playing the bass and the melody separately until you get a feel for the arrangement, then put them together.

Caravan Excercise

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Lesson 14 – Applying the Fundamentals

Smike — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:01:40 +0000

By this point you should find your fingers becoming more coordinated and your thumb growing independent. This means it will now take less conscious effort as your motor skills will begin to take over the repetitive parts and you can concentrate on some of the more exciting aspects of your playing.

If you haven’t quite got the swing of things yet, don’t worry. The more time you invest into the exercises and patterns in the previous section, the faster you’ll develop. We all progress as different rates, so don’t let the amount of time its taking discourage you or become a factor. Ideally one hour a day will get you along the way a lot faster than one hour a week, so put in as much time as you can afford to without letting it get stale or boring. To give you a little perspective, it’s been said Lenny Breau practiced for ten hours a day, and then would go out and play all night. That’s incredible dedication on top of a natural gift.

Unfortunately, not many of us can afford to invest that much time, so put in as much as you can manage. Once you’ve mastered the material in section two, continue to use the exercises as warm-ups to loosen up your fingers and keep the muscle memory working. If you can fit in ten minutes a day before you start, you’ll find it will really improve your playing.

Our next step will be to apply these new found skills to a few basic song structures, songsercises if you will. If you find when learning the following material you regularly lose the beat and spend a lot of time trying to figure out where your thumb is supposed to go next, take it slowly, one bar at a time. If you’re still having problems, go back to chapter two and find the exercise that gives you’re the most trouble and put in a little more time. It’s important to keep in mind that these are skills you’re learning, they won’t develop instantly overnight so don’t rush ahead of the fundamentals.

Finally, remember this; it’s not always as easy as it looks, it’s usually easier.
Things are about to get interesting.