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Hey All!
I’ve been doing more flatpicking lately and I’ve been working on this one a bit.
It’s a fiddle tune called “Ice On The Road”. The A part is in E minor, the B part moves to G.
I learned this tune from a mandolin playing friend who got it from a Butch Baldassari mandolin book. Really fun tune to play, with a lot of phrases based on arpeggios that lay out nicely on the guitar using lots of open strings.
Thanks for listening!
Richard
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Wonderful right hand work, Richard. I often feel my movements are too large in my picking hand, slowing me down, so I watched that with great interest. Any tips on building speed in the right hand?
John-
Hey John, yup smaller movements in your picking hand can definitely help. I’ve been on Bryan Sutton’s ArtistWorks site off and on and he talks about that quite a bit. He also talks about making sure you generate some motion from your elbow, not just your wrist and/or fingers. Of course, everything he is talking about is in the context of flatpicking an acoustic, but I think it applies to electric also.
TBH, your right hand technique looks pretty solid to me. But thinking about allowing smaller movements as the tempo increases might be worthwhile.
For building speed, another thing Bryan advocates is what he calls a 3 tempo method. For anything you are working on where you want to build speed, start with a tempo that is very manageable and try to internalize the feelings you experience at that tempo. Then go to a tempo that challenges you, but that you can kind of get, maybe with some glitches. This is where you spend more of your practice time. Where are you tensing up, are you trying to force things? Finally spend some pushing the tempo even beyond that, maybe it’s really sloppy but let your body experience it and try to carry forward whatever positive feelings you noticed at your first tempo. Then go back down to the middle tempo again and it may feel more manageable.
The idea is that over an extended period, your second tempo can become your starting tempo and you start the cycle again. Kind of hard to summarize all the nuance, but that is the gist of it.
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It’s both, some rotational movement of the forearm as well as some vertical motion from the elbow. And you’re right, you can see some movement in the thumb, but that is not a conscious thing. It’s just a byproduct of hopefully not forcing the thumb into a locked position.
In this video, at about 21:30, Bryan talks a little about his right hand/arm approach, just to give you a sense of it.
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That was actually a really brilliant playing from you Richard. Your recording quality and tone is so good. Loved the rhythm, loved the mandolin influence. I just love hearing two guitar performances like this – a little harder to put together but really worth it in the end.
In fact, this was so foot tapping I had a go at playing along with this. In the key of “G” I think 🙂
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Wow great flat picking, loved listening!
You played so effortlessly and clean.
It was worth all the work you put into it🙏🎸.
I like that tune… especially the contrasting major and minor part.
Richard, you can play so many styles…I also love your country twangy steel pedal lick playing🤠.
DeniseMore Blues!
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