This month I thought that I’d give
our regular e-news instructor, Mickey Abraham, a break and share with
everyone a small excerpt from the newly released book from
Flatpicking Guitar Magazine titled Flatpicking Essentials, Volume 2: Learning to Solo—Carter Style and Beyond. This
108-page second volume builds on the material that was presented in
Volume 1, which addressed rhythm, bass runs, and fill licks.
I have always thought that if a
guitar student had a solid foundation in playing rhythm and working
with bass runs and rhythm fill licks, that a very natural progression
when stepping from rhythm playing to lead playing would be the Carter
style of lead playing. In the Carter style you are executing the same
right and left hand techniques that were taught in Volume 1 of the
course when the students worked extensively with bass runs and strums
in the context of playing rhythm. The only difference is that in the
Carter style the bass runs will be replaced by a melody line. So, my
thought was that if a student gained a good level of skill and
experience in the execution of bass runs and strums while working with
Volume 1, they would be ready to move on and play Carter style lead.
But Carter style lead is not where Volume 2 begins or ends!
In Volume 2 of the Flatpicking Essentials series,
the students will apply six fundamental steps to each song that will
teach them how to create their own solos to vocal tunes. These steps
are:
1) Select a Vocal Song
2) Learn the Chord Progression by Ear
3) Learn the Basic Melody by Ear
4) Find the Carter Style Arrangement
5) Learn How to Simplify the Melody
6) Embellish the Carter Style
Arrangement using techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides,
alternate chord strums, tremolo, double stops, crosspicking,
neighboring notes, scale runs, drones, and fill licks.
In Volume 2, students are shown in
detail how to work each of these steps and all of the techniques using
brad new arrangements of 36 different popular vocal tunes.
In this E-News Lesson, I will
present a basic Carter style version of the tune “Old Spinning Wheel”
that is taken from the book (Step 4 above), and then I will present
another version, which is presented later in the book after the
students have learned how to practice and apply the various techniques
of Step 6 above. Of course, in this E-News Lesson you are missing all
of the information and examples that are provided in Steps 1, 2, 3, 5,
and 6. However, if this short lesson sparks your interest in learning
how to apply all of these steps, one-by-one, to the 36 tunes presented
in the book, as well as any other tune that you may want to learn,
check out this new book at
http://www.flatpickingmercantile.com.
On the two pages that follow you
will see a basic Carter style arrangement of “Old Spinning Wheel”,
after that I’ll present you with the more complex variation that makes
use of many of the techniques that are taught in Volume 2. In Volume 2
of
Flatpicking Essentials each of these techniques is
described in great detail with exercises to help you learn the
technique and examples of how to apply each technique to specific
songs.
