Guitars, tips and great music discussions
I’ve said before that I was directed to Mississippi John Hurt by way of Bruce Cockburn.
It was not for his personal charm but for his technique.
This musician has had a huge influence on Bruce’s approach to acoustic guitar picking so once again, if it’s good enough for Bruce then it’s good enough for me!
Now if I came across this little gem of a video before he sent me his way, I think that I would have looked him up anyway. Decide for yourself.
Keep on Jammin’
If your a guitar player who thinks that he or she knows it all, then you should just skip this post! Also, this post is VERY LONG as well!
Every once in a long while I come across a guitar player who thinks that they know it all. I think that we’ve all met a person like this who fits the category? I understand that in order to be a great player you have to have this invincible attitude or ego to obtain these lofty goals but come on, you can’t know everything. There is always someone out there that knows something that you don’t.
In my younger days, there were moments when I had this type of footprint attached to my persona. Sometimes upon entering a Brantford music store some musicians put down what ever they were playing and looked at it as if they didn’t know what this thing was that they had in their hands. Sometimes at a party or other social event guitarists would not play while I was playing or afterwards for that matter. This I thought was good for my ego, but later on I realized that we all were doing was just cheating ourselves out of a learning experience. After not playing for many years, I started to understand this problem.
While living in a dorm/frat house I started to play with many levels of musicians. I realized that some had these guitarists were playing these great little progressions that I had never heard of before and it spurred on my thirst for more musical knowledge. I made great efforts to stunt my level of playing and let other people shine. This approach made others relax and play without intimidation.
Fast forward to today, I think that it is time for me to take lessons again, not to figure out songs/styles but for technique. I know proper positioning, how to change chords efficiently, but I could use some work on understanding progressions better.
Another area is finger picking.
My classical picking is now at the level of a hack, but I can achieve the action and dexterity that I need to pull off a song or style without any noticeable problems. The classical stance is something that I do not use to any great extent but it does come in handy once in a long while.The real problem is with my thumb drone or an alternating bass picking style. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a piano. You have the left hand working the bass or lower notes and the right hand doing the phrasing/melody. In guitar, your thumb is the bass and the rest of your fingers are the right hand playing the phrasing/melody.
Bruce Cockburn is the master of this in my eyes! It’s almost impossible to pigeon toe his style into one word but this is one of his many fortes. The best example of this is one Going to the Country which I have been trying to finger out or master for many years. I wish that the intro to the song was there to introduce to you to what I mean about his playing ability.
So now I am toying with the idea of taking lessons at the 12th Fret by a gentleman call Dave Martin. He specializes in picking, he loves the some style of picking that I do and best of all he has the same length of fingers that I have. While talking to him, he told me that he has come up against the same playing/technique problems that I have so it would be nice to have someone who has similar issues in this area.
They charge around $22.50 a 1/2 hour so I’ll try him out for a bit and see how it works out! I’ll get back to you later on the results and besides, he probably knows something that I don’t!
Now this is a song that I will attempt when I get a moment or so.
I love the use of his wammie bar on his guitar. He is the type of player who will either use or not use an effect and pull it off right both ways. This is what I shoot for when choosing a song that I want to play. If I can’t tackle a song correctly then I’ll try and try again! However, if I can’t, then I be a man and just let some get away!
Keep on Jammin’
If I Had a Rocket Launcher by Bruce Cockburn, performed live (10/21/06) at the Tarrytown Music Hall. Marty Balin featuring Slick Aguilar, Charlie DeChant, Gordon G.G. Gebert, Dave Trupia, Michael Sciotto.
Video 8:01 minutes
This is a favorite song of mine to play live. If you ever get the opportunity to see me perform, it will be on my play list. I do the acoustic version very well. The solo parts are challenging enough, and this is maybe the only song beside Neon that I can always change up every time I play or just have an extended solo to it.
Bruce plays the song in so many positions that he makes it all look easy, but the great ones always do don’t they.
My Larivee L-03 has the depth that you need to pull off a technical song like this live. My DigiTech chorus pedal is the perfect fit for this tune – like it was made for it. Hopefully when I find the time, I’ll tape video of it and let you be the judge on how to improve portions of the song, or which parts to eliminate. Hopefully the latter won’t come into play. 
Keep on Jammin’
I was just surfing while listening to one of my favorite Canadian musicians of all time, Bruce Cockburn (B.C.). I came to the realization that I am finally playing like a great guitar player of the 80’s, Mark Knopfler.
In grade 8, a song came onto the music scene that was really new and refreshing. It was a band called “Dire Straights”. The song that caught my ear was “Sultan of Swing”.
The guitar player was just a jammin’ on this tune. His name is Mark Knopfler. This popular song at the time was a song that I just had to play. I was taking lessons from the best guitar teacher of all time, in my mind, C. Peterson. I had requested that he show me how to play this tune and he said that he had already figured it out.
Mr. P. was just unreal at figuring out anything in on guitar. So off he went and started to show me the song. It was fun and challenging to play, just the way I liked it. After a couple of lessons, I could play the song pretty much inside out, which is the way he taught me.
While playing the song for many years, I decided to re-visit this song to see if there was any other way(s) to improve playing it. Mr. Peterson introduced me to the technique that Mark Knopfler used on the song but I thought that this guy was one of those off beat musicians that would fade after a short success, boy was I wrong.
I had listened to this song repeatedly over the years,and I noticed subtle tones that I had missed while playing. When I played it, it had a crisper sounding to it then what he had. His version almost had a muddled sound. In my younger years listening to the song, I had noticed that, and I thought it was just the recording technique at the time and that was it. So I then tried playing it with just my fingers and wow, it was really hard to play.
Being a classical guitar player, I was use to using my fingers but had to use my nails to attack the strings but, this guy used his thumbs and at a lightning like speed during his solo’s to boot! I tried and tried and tried but I could not get the calluses on the sides of my fingers that I really needed to pull of the song so I went back to the original way of playing the song.
Now fast forward to 2 years ago when I fell in love with the B.C.’s style of finger picking. The attack technique used here was different from my classical training but I loved the sound he got out of his axe. It was just plain fun to listen to.
So today while I was surfing and listening to B.C. at the same time, I was listening to this song called “It’s Going Down Slow” and “Mamma just wants to barrelhouse all night long”, from Waiting for a Miracle (1987). Today I can play these ones not bad and I just enjoy listening to them. It was at that moment that I noticed the similarities between both techniques and it had just dawned on me that, I can play guitar.
Keep on jammin’