The Horizontal 3-Step
Published: Tue, 03/23/21
Today's lesson is all about groove, which, like improvisation, can prove to feel nearly as intangible as smoke. One way to change that is to get down into the nitty gritty of what it takes to put the thumb and fingers together. In the steady-bass style, the thumb provides that solid 4/4 thump, and it's the syncopated way the fingers play off of that that makes the groove, so it's pretty key to know how to put that together, and how to keep it going. At the same time, you don't want to get so focused on the moment-by-moment details that you lose track of the big picture, which is to put a cool melody over a solid bass line. All that picking-hand coordination – the vertical stuff – is the mechanical means to the musical end of getting two horizontal things – the melody and the bass – to happen at the same time.
The Horizontal 3-Step is my breakdown of that process, and in today's lesson I'll walk you through those three steps with specific examples from the eight-bar blues "Motherless Child." It's pretty straightforward once you get the idea, and you can repeat this process on just about any fingerstyle tune you want to. You can also use this approach to work through the kind of modular licks I presented in yesterday's Improvisation lesson, "Form And Phrasing." You can find today's lesson (and yesterday's), and download the PDF booklet, at the link below:
The Horizontal 3-Step
More soon,
David
P.S. I'll be the guest on my friend Jeff Plankenhorn's Twenty Question Tuesdays this afternoon at 1pm Central to talk about fingerstyle guitar, songwriting and whatever else people write in about, so if you want to join us, here's the link, which goes live about fifteen minutes before the show. According to Jeff, you don't need to be on Facebook to tune in:
Twenty Question Tuesdays