Sister Kate

Here's some more guitar music. This is "Sister Kate" an old ragtime tune. The basic arrangement is again from Stefan Grossman's Complete Country Blues Guitar book. It should be played up tempo, and I'm giving it my best shot. A fun song to play.

Nobody's Dirty Business

Here's another guitar video. I'm playing a version of Nobody's Dirty Business, a popular blues from the '20s. This version is based on the arrangement in Stefan Grossman's "Country Blues Guitar Book," and was at least partly inspired by the playing of Mississippi John Hurt. It's in the key of C. You're playing just 3 chords in first position, C, F and G, but there's a quick move up to the 5th fret which can be a little tricky. I'll occasionally post new videos to my YouTube channel, you can find them here, or there is a link below my profile.

Fare-Thee-Well Titanic

Here's a video showing some of my guitar playing. The tune is an arrangement by Stefan Grossman, called "Fare Thee Well Titanic." It's played in the key of C. The video was shot with a small Canon elph, and the audio could be better, but you can still hear the tune reasonably well, I think.

Guitar tracks

In one of my first posts I indicated that I am a guitar hobbyist, and that I would try and post some examples of my playing. So here are a few songs. Please comment if you like, but keep in mind that the operative term is hobbyist. One of the tracks has my son doing back-up vocals of a sort, he was whining about how hungry he was, hence the name. Just click on the title, and you should find the mp3 files. I also added a link above my blog-list. Enjoy.

Pickin' the blues

Another of my favorite avocations is playing the guitar. I first started playing when I was in high school, but didn't keep at it much past college. A bit more than a year ago I got the urge again, and after getting a new guitar, I've been fully hooked ever since. I try to play some almost every day, and have definitely been improving over the last year, although I've still got a long way to go!

My favorite style of guitar playing is acoustic country blues finger picking. I always had a soft spot for blues, and the great thing about the style is that you can almost get a fully "orchestrated" sound. You pick out a bass line and rhythm with your thumb on the bass strings, while simultaneously playing a melody line with your other fingers on the top strings. When done well it produces a really full and complex sound, and the possibilities are endless. I pick with four fingers on my right hand; thumb, index, middle and ring fingers. Amazingly, most of the true masters only used their thumb and index fingers! Of course, while your right hand is working, your left hand has to simultaneously get the right chord positions and changes. It takes a lot of coordination between your two hands, but like anything, if you have patience and just keep at it you slowly become more proficient. It's also a great style for vocal accompaniment, but combining singing with the guitar playing I find to be quite a challenge. It's hard enough doing one at a time, combining them takes A LOT of practice.

Some of the great blues masters of the genre include Mississippi John Hurt; Big Bill Broonzy; Reverend Gary Davis; Lightning Hopkins; Doc Watson; Furry Lewis; etc. In my opinion, one of the most amazing players of more recent times is Stefan Grossman. Check out his guitarvideos.com website if your curious about finger-picking guitar styles. It's also a great site to get guitar music and even dvd/video lessons.

A few months ago I acquired some simple recording gear; basically just a decent microphone and pre-amp. With that and a lap-top one can start recording with any number of free-ware packages. I've used Audacity with some success, and it's very simple to use, can let you lay down multiple tracks, and even has some basic signal processing tools. At some point I'll try to put in some links to a few sample tracks, and you can critique my playing, or not!