The Chetboard

In this video, I take a lick from the late, great Tommy Jones' rendering of Will The Circle Be Unbroken, and discuss its implementation, along with some thoughts on technique.

Basically, the key point of the video is that Less Is (Often) More. Nobody knew that better than Chet Atkins, and his best "students" (like Jerry Reed, Tommy Jones, all the CGPs, ... ) learned that lesson well.

If you don't like anything else about the video, maybe you'll like getting a walk-through on a neat lick.

The video (about 5 minutes in length):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1JbJsVXhzw

By the way, where I say "D string pull-off," I should have said "A string pull-off"

Also, I forgot to mention this in the video: tuning = 6th string in D, 3rd string in F#, all other unaltered.

Bruce, what a great idea.

I would like to request your permission to post this as a topic on a new blog I started up here in Toronto for Fingerstyle Guitar fans called PlayYourGuitar.ca. (http://playyourguitar.ca/) (This used to be a discussion forum but, people were not that into actively participating in discussions.)

As it is only a week old, there isn't much on it yet, just a review of our Adam Rafferty concert last Thursday. However, an update digest is periodically emailed to all 2,879 people on our FingerStyleGuitar.ca Fan Mailing List - so it gets some hits as many of these people do click through to check it out.

Of course, I will give full credit to you and a link to your blog <http://www.brucekeener.com/> I will also honor any request from you to change any commentary I contribute should you not like it.

If you decide you do not want to give me permission, no hard feeling feelings!

Thanks for considering it.

Randy
416-722-6524

Hi Randy,

Fine with me for you to mention the subject video on your blog. In fact, that would be neat.

No need to link to brucekeener.com, as I am not even sure I'll keep that blog. But it would be good if you would mention that my youtube channel has about 75 tunes, in case some of your readers want to browse around a bit.

Thank you and my best wishes to you with the blog.

Bruce

Just a clarification, since I don't think I made it real clear in the video:

The key reason you would use a thumb/one-finger counterpoint instead of a thumb/two-finger one is for the music, not just as something to "make it easier on yourself" (although there's nothing wrong with making playing easier for yourself). You can, if you don't watch it, "overload" the listener's neurons, so they are not even hearing half of what you're playing.

There are times though when you want a more full sound. When I modified Tommy's counterpoint, I was looking for more of a piano sound. (Plus, the tune I was writing allowed for a little longer riff than that allowed by Will The Circle Be Unbroken.)

Anyway, just wanted to be more clear on the reasoning.

Thanks.