INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS, STEVE TROVATO, ALBERT LEE, ETC.

I've been watching Steve Trovato's instructional video "Learn Country Guitar Techniques." It's more or less a tutorial on Albert Lee style playing, and as such is very helpful. I've spent a lot of years incorporating chicken picking sounds into my playing, but I have to admit the flashier side of this approach has mostly eluded me in the past. This is the side of chicken picking that has become the lingua franca of modern Nashville guitar. Trovato does a great job explaining all of it, and all the technical nuances that I've missed (how to get a real snap out of the strings, chicken muting technique, etc.) are much more clear to me now.

There's no notation/tablature provided with this video, but Trovato patiently breaks down every tiny sliver of it. Watching this video, I was reminded of some gripes I've seen on amazon about this and other similar videos. People get really apoplectic sometimes about lack of tablature, or the inability of certain celebrity pickers to really show you what they're doing; sometimes it gets really righteous and the players are accused of selfishness. Having met a lot of brilliant players, I'd like to say that some musicians are just inarticulate about what they do. Others develop to the point where it's difficult for them to even think about the foundation of their style-- I can attest that, as you get better at playing and improvising, it becomes harder to understand how you got there. I've even tried to take notes as I've progressed, and it's still very challenging to remember all of the steps later.

Here are some thoughts about learning from instructional material.

REGARDING INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS COVERING INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED MATERIAL--

While I agree that beginner players need a teacher who can walk them slowly through everything, I think that serious players should start to realize that they're going to have to do some struggling if they want to join the big leagues. If you need every note spelled out for you, even though you have footage of the guy playing all of it, you may be tackling a job that's over your head. I think a lot of people believe that if you can just get the tablature to something, you can play it. Another phenomenon I've noticed (mainly in teenagers) is the notion that I have some kind of guitar secrets that I'm withholding from them. Maybe this is all part of our increasingly impatient society, I don't know; I do know that if many of the guitar innovators we all listen to had sat around whining about the defects of instructional material, music would have ground to a halt. There were no instructional videos years ago; even a guitar instruction book was a pretty scarce thing as recently as the fifties and sixties. When I was a teenager, there were plenty of highfalutin books around to help you with jazz, reading, etc. but not a whole lot showing you how to play blues, country, Hendrix, and the like. I know this sounds like the old "I used to walk ten miles through snow to return a library book" kind of rant, but Lord! I would guess that Albert Lee spent countless hours figuring out stuff that his heroes had played, and put it all together into his own style over a period of many years. It's "hard damn work," as Louis Armstrong once observed. I think that if you can't figure out anything Albert Lee does just from watching and listening, maybe you're not ready to play like Albert Lee. It's fine to buy a video, as I do all the time hoping for some insight, but you're still going to have to work hard. It's not just a matter of paying twenty bucks, popping in a DVD, and now you get to be as cool as Albert Lee. Even if Albert Lee came and crashed on your couch for a few weeks, and let you ask him questions all day long, sooner or later you'd have to sit down and do some work yourself.

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HANK GARLAND TRANSCRIPTION BOOK, "VELVET GUITAR" ALBUM

Guitarist Mike Joiner has done guitar transcriptions from Hank Garland's "Velvet Guitar" album.

Hank was a true musician's musician-- aside from playing on countless Nashville country sessions, he made a handful of top-notch jazz recordings before a car accident in 1960 made it impossible for him to play professionally. Garland's "Jazz Winds from Another Direction" is his most celebrated jazz album, but the "Velvet Guitar" lp has some beautiful playing as well. This album, currently available as part of the "Move" two-disc collection, may have been originally promoted and packaged as a "mood music" type of record, but it's nonetheless excellent. It actually has one advantage over the more well-known "Jazz Winds;" Garland is virtually the whole show. Impeccable single-note lines alternate with hip double-stops and some of the sweetest chord melody playing I've ever heard.

I'm looking forward to spicing up my playing with as many of these Hank Garland licks as I can steal!


Mike's notation/tab book is in PDF form. Anyone interested can contact Mike Joiner at jazzguitarist27@yahoo.com.


Here's a sample from Mike's book. "Ed's Place" is a slow and swinging blues. The hammer-ons and pulloffs are a great example of how to use slurs to get a bluesy jazz flavor. Listen to the track here--

www.karlstraubmusic.com/2-03 Ed's Place.mp3

click on "MORE" to see track listing from Mike's book.

. The tracklisting is:

1. Secret Love
2. Scarlet Ribbons (For Her Hair)
3. Greensleeves
4. Tammy
5. Polka Dots And Moonbeams
6. Autumn Leaves
7. Like Someone In Love
8. Ain't Nothing Wrong With That, Baby
9. Blame It On My Youth
10. Ed's Place

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MOVING UP AND DOWN THE NECK ON ONE STRING

This exercise is designed to let you move up and down the neck on one string, while avoiding stretches. That means you're always in a four-fret span position, one finger per fret. Use your pinky to shift, and observe the tablature carefully. (Although there are certainly some effective alternate fingerings, I suggest you use the tablature exactly as written until mastered. Moving around with this approach can help loosen up your left hand, which should be relaxed at all times. After a while you may start getting ideas for variations, changing my note pattern, fingerings, or both. It's really just a foundation for getting used to moving around this way.)

The version without accidentals will fit musically in some situations where the chromatic notes sound awkward or wrong to your ear. Unfortunately, it's harder to play! The accidentals were used so the pinky could be the consistent shifting finger, and you could play it all on one string. The diatonic one (meaning no accidentals in the key of C, no chromatic notes outside the key) requires you to use the B string sometimes, and shift either with ring, middle, or pinky. If you use the four-fret span fingering principle (one finger per fret) the fingerings should be obvious. It will take some practice to get used to the shifts.

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PETER GREEN "JUMPIN' AT SHADOWS" excerpt

Here's an excerpt of a Peter Green solo, from a live early Fleetwood Mac clip, beginning about two minutes in. Even this short snippet has the usual stellar playing from the underrated Green. I think my transcription is pretty accurate, but notation is a pale rendering of the subtle use of time and dynamics Green employs here--

I only did the beginning of the solo as a sample for a customer, but I thought someone else out there might like to see this. If anyone would like to see more Peter Green transcriptions, let me know! I'm thinking about doing a lesson based around his playing on "Greeny," and making it available as an inexpensive download.
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