Tone, Melody & Truth

So I'd like to talk about picking techniques. I kind of like to use several different ones because I've listened to a lot of different players, and I like this guy. I like that guy. I like this girl, this, whatever, you know, and you just kind of get, well, okay, they picked everything differently.

So I tried to create my own kind of thing. One of the first things I think that made me become aware of picking was on the "Blues Breaker," Eric Clapton record. When Eric was playing, instead of just hitting the string, I noticed that he was kind of digging into the string like this, and what I noticed he was doing is he was grabbing it down deep and kind of coming up on the side. So it kind of became like a bounce thing. In other words, I'll pick from the bottom of the pickguard; I'll kind of pick up more than just hitting the string straight on instead of just doing that. There's a lot of up and down motion on the hand. I also started noticing that steel guitarists got a really high percentage of tone out of their playing. And of course, most of them used finger picks, but their technique a lot is that bounce technique. And you'll hear like if they use fingers.

You'll hear that bounce thing going on, and what happens with that bounce is, I think, you get a little better tone; you get more value out of tone purity instead of so much picking noise. Of course, sometimes you want that picking sound, but I generally like to favor, you know, getting the pick to just brush and bloom out the sound, so to speak.

And so, doing that, I mean, you can have all sorts of different picking. You can have just straight-on picking where you just do this, or you can do like picking and fingers, reading both of them together. I use that a lot because, to me, it separates the guitar a little bit from just being totally a generic guitar sound, which is a beautiful thing. You know, you want it a lot like that, but sometimes you just want to create a little bit of departure on the guitar sound. Using it, you know, it's almost like playing it like a piano if I just use my fingers and my picking. And then sometimes, other than that, you know, you have masters like Jeff Beck, who didn't even use a pick, and you get just a different way, which gives you a little more chance to use the fingers.

So that's pretty much most of the avenues that I like to use as far as finger-picking or just using the pick.

So this first selection we're going to look at is kind of a Chet Atkins-inspired thing, which is a guitar player that I've always loved. And there'll be a little bit of a melody thing over the top that I'll use some open strings in the melody. This is going to be in the key of A, and after we listen to it, I'll talk about certain techniques that we used in it.

In this demonstration, Eric will showcase a full performance, integrating all the techniques we've explored throughout this lesson series.

This first piece is something special to me because I love Chet Atkins. I wanted to create a rhythm track with some fingerpicking. Although it's relatively simple picking, the main idea is to keep the bass and the fingers moving together.

Here's how you can start learning it: take a simple chord and just practice, gradually adding more to it. The goal is to get the baseline going, and this piece is an example of what I achieved.

If I were to play it slowly, you'd see that I was trying to synchronize the bass with the rhythm picking. The sky's the limit with this technique; players like Tommy Emmanuel and Doyle Dykes are masters at it. Chet and Merle Travis have also done beautiful work in this style.

This piece's rhythm aims to emulate that beauty. The chord changes consist of a four to one pattern, followed by a shift to F sharp minor, B, and E. It's a cycle of fourths, and it's integral to the piece.

One specific technique I'm using in this rhythm track is muting with my right hand and making the bass more staccato. It gives the music a certain effect and keeps the strings from ringing out. On this piece, I'm using a guitar pick and my fingers, but you could also use a thumb pick or even all fingers. A thumb pick can work great too.

That's the gist of the rhythm on this first selection. Give it a try, and you'll see how it comes together.

In this demonstration, Eric will showcase a full performance, integrating all the techniques we've explored throughout this lesson series.

So on the lead, I really just tried to create a little melody to go with it. One of the things I did was use some open strings to create an interesting approach to a melody with a pop off of open strings.

By using the open B and the open E, I created a little melody. When I'm playing that, I might also add a little vibrato to it. So if you're holding a note, like a legato note, you can put a little vibrato on it.

I used a lot of major scales on this, and in the other part, it's really just a lot of major scales. Those are a couple of approaches you can use to try the lead. See what you think.