Description
This lesson was designed to teach you how to play a percussive fingerstyle blues that requires no accompaniment. I’ll show you how to tap the strings on the off beats to create a rhythmic sound that accompanies your playing. I’ll also show you where these notes come from so that you can start to create your own compositions and even improvise in this style of playing.
Part 1 - Free Guitar Lesson
Part 2 - For Premium Members
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Slow Walk-through
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Video Tablature Breakdown
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Man! That is a killer groove and piece. You are one talented composer Brian! I can’t wait to learn this one.
Yea that groove is so sweet. I’ve been practicing on the acoustic. It seems long though.
Yup, another great one to add to my long list!!
Just what the doctor ordered ! Thanks Brian.
Wow! Amazing piece!
woooohoooo! that will be a great weekend! Thank you so much for this great composition. Greetings from germany!
I really have to get a parlour guitar! I’m not much of a lead player – I guess I never had the desire to learn – but I’ve always been a good rhythm player and these acoustic grooves are just fantastic! Any good recommendations for a parlour guitar? I see you playing the Alvarez – is that a AP70? It’s time for me to move away from my Gibsons into something smaller!
I just got a Taylor parlor for Christmas. Am a Gibson guy. I love this thing. Try it before you buy anything else. Won’t believe the sound.
Doc
I got the same Alvarez as Brian on his recommendation and it’s my ‘go-to’ guitar now for practicing.
Great sound, easy action and just feels great to play! Good value for the $.
what was his recommendation? I want to buy a parlor but some expert advice would be nice.
The Alvarez, which I tried and did not like at all. ‘Course I have a Martin D-18 that’s ruined my ears. But the parlors are much less of a workout when doing the barre hammers, etc. But whatever he plays certainly sounds good thru his amp and due to the fact that he’s a helluva player.
Than ks Brian – that is a very cool tune / can’t wait to get it under my fingers
Really cool Brian, I just came home and want to jump right on the acoustic to try this tonight! I was glad to have time all morning on the last lesson and was so involved with it because it was so fun .. Man it is tough keeping up with you but this is a good thing!
Coolest lesson ever! Always admired this style. Thanks, again and again, week after week Brian.
John
Oh yeah! That sounds…GOOD!
I bet Brian is a blast around the campfire!
Really nice groove Brian! I’m hearing some Clapton and JJ Cale here. Very nice. I’m motivated to try some finger style this week.
Mike
A great lesson and another top-notch composition thanks Brian. I am constantly blown-out by your ability to not only generate great lessons but to compose and play wonderful pieces of original music week after week. Thanks mate – your amazing talent and dedication are immensely appreciated.
Rick
I love this. I can’t wait to get my guitar. I look forward to more like this.
Nice groove, this will be fun to learn.
Thanks Brian
unreal! i am so glad you said in the 2nd video what you said Brian , enjoying this alot,,very cool piece you just released!
Wow. Great composition. Always impressed. The finger style is always difficult for me. Any other lessons that would help me with that would be great. I guess just keep practicing it is the only way to get it. Thanks Brian!
Awesome song, thanks for doing another acoustic
love these stand alone songs , always looking forward to Friday’s new one
Astounding, one talanted guy!
A tongue twister for the fingers! This will be another fun one to learn.
Michael
I agree with San-Luis-Rey, first thought was some J.J. Cale. Couldn’t say which tune, maybe Cajun Moon?
Bob
Super Brian, many times I tried something like that, with harp… it’s very nice, but finger style, difficult (for me !). Thank’s !
ˇAwesome! If I only had another life to learn all those lessons and to be as Brian!
Brilliant tune.Love fingerstyle,cant wait to get into this. Thanks ever so much.
Opening chord Em add 9.
Super cool, I hope I can get It sounding good.
Brendan
Thanks Brian! What a terrific lesson! very very cooool!!
Reminds me a bit of Sixto Rodrigues aka “Finding Sugar Man”
Outstanding !!!
Appreciate your weekly effort….unlike my weakly effort…
Nice tune hope I can do it justice
Brian: might be your best ever. Even my wife liked it and she hates my playin.
Doc Tim
Thank you Brian. I have been waiting weeks for something like this. Love the feel of this acoustic with no accompaniment.
Thanks so much, Brian. This is a huge breakthrough lesson for me. They just keep getting better!
Indeed one of your best, I love it
So cool ! Always wondered about percussion style play. Brian, you brought it home !
Always blown away every week.
Strangely enough, the most challenging lessons seem to always be the acoustic ones but for good reasons which I fully enjoy
Just to clarify then, Em in 7th measure is E6th minor , right ? relative minor to G6 ?
I love this one very much Brian,
thank you very much
Great way to start the New Year Brian. Keep these no accompaniment, finger style acoustic pieces coming.
I love your variety and creativity.
wow- i just go thru this one…when I first watched it-I thought “looks pretty hard- i’ll never get thru it” after your breakdown and thorough explanation–i got it!
not that i got it perfect- but i got the groove and something new an fun to work on….gonna try it with some hum buckers and dirt.
thanks….real nice lesson..haunting melody…
Nice piece Brian, as usual will be adding this one to my Fav’s list, keep em coming.
This will go down as one of my all time favorite lessons. Time to get out my Taylor Baby guitar.
Brian,,
If I’m reading your tab correctly, you show clicks on 2 and 4 beats..not the “ands”?
My clicks don’t sound like clicks on my Martin w med gauge strings..any hints?
Ty. G
Update: I have fixed this to reflect the counting in the video. I changed the tab to be 8/4 time instead of 4/4 so now it matches the video. Thank you for calling this to my attention!
Brian, I notice in the printed tab that not only does the bass E string precede the 2nd beat, but also the third beat of the measure, then back on beat for the fourth. I don’t know what 8/4 time is, but is that correct that only the 1st and 4th E string are on beat? Thanks an love the piece.
Hello Brian, hello Danway1, hello every one,
I noticed the same thing about the bass E string preceding second and third beat, but I’m not an expert for reading tabs.
I think that you’re right danway1, but i’d prefered having some confirmation from Brian.
Thanks a lot
(Sorry for my english, I’m french and I was not a good student at english classes at school)
Brain,
I love this! What a cool groove and sound…
You never cease to amaze, Brian! Your talent is limitless.
Cheers, Debra
Brian,
I misspelled your name as ‘Brain’ in my comment above.
It must be due to the intelligence and mastery of your compositions!
Debra
Ha – I have noticed that several people have misspelled Brian’s name as “Brain”, but I thought it was on purpose….
I don’t mind – I’m used to it 🙂
This piece was way to hard for me at the start,then i split each bar in half and hey presto. I dont know if this is correct or not but it got me through. Great work Brian, all the best from oz.
I’ve watched all your videos and you keep showing me different sides of you. You are very talented my friend! Keep ’em coming.
Thanks a lot Brian, If you ve been asking me what I was expecting for this week I would say ‘percussive fingerstyle’. GREAT THANKS FROM GREECE
Great !! More sometime in the future please.
Arlo looks good. My dogs and the cat go to sleep when I’m playing, contempt rather than contentment I think .
Robin (from Brexit Island)
Billie Jean……cool attack really nice thanks.
just love this lesson thanks brian all the best joe by the way I use my second name
That piece is driving me berserk but I love it !
Intoxicating , been wanting to learn some of that percussive stuff for years, finally breaking thru.
Thx a bunch Brian
Thanks for all this fun Brian!
Bar 4 reminds me to a certainsong but I can not remenber wich one.
Probably more than just one.
As soon as I heard the preview I was hooked on this one! Straight into favourites and straight to the top of the ‘must do right now’ list. Have been working on trying to add this style of percussive element to my playing for a while so this lesson is a god send, Great composition, been haunting me all week, especially the Em/A6 transitions in bar 4. Love that!
Love this lesson Brian! I can play some fairly advanced Fingerstyle stuff, but I’ve always struggled with this particular percussive technique. I know if I stick with it this will be a breakthrough for me.
By the way, that “Pink Floyd” chord is an Em+9.
This is a wicked groove. Having a lot of fun learning it! Would love more fingerstyle lessons in the future. Thanks!
I love that Brian. Keep up the great work
I’ve been waiting for another acoustic blues and this one is it! Just started getting my fingers round it and hoping my head will catch up soon…
wow ! thanks for another great lesson.
Just what the doctor ordered…this one is the best yet Brian .Hope to see more like this one…cheers
Beautiful
Just started playing this and now I’ve got Come Together by the Beatles as an ear worm!
Great! Exactly what I´m looking for.
Fingernailstroke + syncopated 2 + pull and hammer on = mystic groove.
Feels like Mark Knopfler is asking me in.
Thanks for teaching this.
Thomas
Frankfurt, Germany
I LOVE this one so much!! It checks all my boxes: blues, percussive, acoustic, no accompaniment — AWESOME!!! PLEASE DO MORE LIKE THIS SOON 🙂 Also really enjoy all of the Delta Blues stuff you have done, hope to see more of that as well
I’m taking a detour from Doc Watson and Deep River Blues to play this!
There’s a really nice feeling when you hit the zone playing this!
I’m trying to figure out how to add some more bling to it as well, but currently I’m not finding the time slots to do much yet! But I’m hoping that’ll change when I have to think less about coordination.
Also I seem to get much better tone if I flick my fingers towards the strings, kind of like snapping them, but using the palm of my hand to lock them before flicking. It seems to work well but I’m not sure if I’m loosing precious time when doing so. I’m talking about my index and middle fingers.
Love this lesson because of the incredible groove it unlocks with so little extra work one has to add!
Brian. Forgive me, you have probably answered this a hundred times, but I can’t find the answer on the website so far. What Alvarez are you playing on this song? Is it the masterworks MPA70E? If not the E, what pickup are you using? Also what strings for this song? Going to buy my first parlor, and I love the sound you get from that Alvarez. Thank you.
Hey Robert, it’s an Alvarez MPA70. The strings are light gauge D’Addario
thank you Brian.
So I continued today with this, and just had the hardest time finding the rhythm. I mean it was really strange, and I couldn’t fit my life figure out why. Until it hit me.
When droning a delta, my thumb is the constant that everything else wrapps around. It’s the #1 #2 #3 #4. But here the #2 completely throws that. And having put a lot of effort into keeping a steady rhythm with the thumb I started thinking about if there was any other “place” I could anchor the groove. And then it hit me! The consistent part though all this are the “slaps” or “clicks”.
Using that as, I don’t really know how to describe it but I guess like my internal counting clock, everything fell into place again.
So if someone is having a hard time finding the groove, try to ignore the beat and focus on the backbeat instead! It helped me!
this one is really really tough -getting the timing and positioning right is really difficult -this one seems geared to the more advanced guitarist. the newfeatures are really great. I really like a lot of what’s here this week but learning it is really difficult -heck I spent an enormous amount of time just on the first few measures and still can’t get the timing right!
I spent two days on the first Em to Am chords. But then it suddenly fell into place!
Brian I have to ask, after the first B7 when you use your pinky and slide up to the E on the B-string and then grab the Em “bar” chord. Right after that when you flick with the back of your nails, you add this exquisite little thing where you quickly mute and then hammer on.. kind of. It sounds so sweet and I’m just trying to figure out what that is.. is that some kind of spell only you wizards are allowed to use? 🙂
It happens between 0:15 and 0:16 seconds in the YouTube video.
I think you are using your middle finger to pull off and hammer on the B note of the Em chord on the G-string?
I’ve been working on this one all week and struggling with the timing. But today it suddenly fell into place and it feels so wonderful to get that groove! Now I just have to fine tune 🙂 You should feel proud, this one is amazing!
Wow! It takes me more than two weeks to get the timing right, but now I’m so happy that I have this lessons forever in my repertoir!
“The beautiful about learning is nobody can take it away from you!” – B.B. King
Thank you Brian!
Been at it off and on since mid-January: just about cracked it yesterday but still find it difficult to get the percussive sound. wonderful though when you get it even half-right ! Much admired by odd listeners !
Would love more like it if possible.
Robin from Brexit Island.
Hey Brian, great lesson! Your’e a great teacher!
Today – practising this very nice lesson – I discovered that when you select some bars in the On Screen Tab Viewer these selected bars automatically loop!!! (with a short pause after every loop, but that’s no problem.) That looping-functionality helps me a lot tp practice the phrases that make up your songs., Brian, and it’s something that’s not possible with (your) youtube or vimeo videos…
Thank you.and maybe you should make a vlog about this (and other functions of the On Screen Tab Viewer?)
This is going to take a while. Thanks
This is really a great technique for the right hand you teach us here. It’s an effective way for making sound relatively simple chord progressions much much more interesting. I enjoy very much playing your composition and I am able to follow other workshops which teach songs from Hozier (admire him a lot …) and from Maroon 5. Thank you so much 🙂
great haunting melody, I can’t help wondering what this would sound like played clean on a telecaster shame my skills aren’t up to it 🙁
brian ,first off I really like the sound you get out of a guitar ,very fine touch!! I’ve been playing for more than a half century, and this tune floored me! I can’t seem to get started right on the percussive sound. is there any way you could break it completely down? very slow(I mean snail pace) thank you for the inspiration!! paul
Paul, check out the on-screen tab viewer.. I play it slow already in that one, but then you can slow it down even further – down to 50%.
These percussive fingerpicking style sounds really nice, but I am having a hard time to get this style under my fingers. It frustrates the hell out of me!!! I am a decent fingerpicker, but this one (also lesson EP221) floored me like Paul. Even slowing down this song doesn’t help. Somehow I find it harder to play. Going to skip these percussive fingerpicking styles. Maybe later in the future. For now I am going to stick to normal fingerpicking. Anyway, great tune Brain!
One of the easier –and cooler–ones to play. Just gotta find the groove…
Awesome! More of these please! Maybe in Folk like the style of Michael Dunstan, Ziggy Alberts or so? Deep into theses coastal folk stuff. Would be great Brian. Love your lessons
Well Brian, I am loving this piece. I never thought I could get this groove down but it is starting to come together for me and I’m sure for so many others here. Thank You so much for always challenging your students to improve, especially on arrangements such as EP187 and so many others.
Kevin
Hi Brian, just luv the groove! Isn’t that very first chord a Em9, or Em9 Spanish Romanza chord?
Just enjoying the course.
Denis
🎼🎵… People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed… 🎶🎧
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🤩👍❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Fast forward one year and it is eerie how appropriate your comment is!
Something about this groove I feel I could play for hours! Nice work Brian
I keep coming back to this tune, love the groove. And, it is a perfect fit for my new Martin 000-15 mahogany blues machine!
Nice piece. Just about got it under my fingers. It’s the little incidental notes that really make this tune for me. Nice one Brian. Love the acoustic blues/ragtime stuff.
Got myself an Alvarez MPA66 recently, I already own a Delta 00e/tsb. Love these guitars.