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L E S S O NA C O U S T I CON THE CD . Tracks 53-5
Alex De GrassThis month Stuart Ryan uncovers the lush, dreamy, ambient
style of one of America's greatest exponents of fingerpickedacoustic guitar, the great Alex De Grassi...
A BI L I T Y R TING
Moderate
Will improve your:19 P ercussive playing
Use of alternative unings
Ambient feel
AMERICAN INSTRUMENTALISTAlex De Grassi is one of the finestpurveyors of acoustic guitar musicyou are likely to hear. Rightfullyacknowledged as one of theacoustic guitar world's top-flightplayers, D e Grassi first came toprominence in the 1980s as part
of the Windham Hill record label,which gave rise to several othergreat acoustic artists includingMchael Hedges.
De Grassi is my favouritetype of musician, the guitaristas a composer; h is writing issimply stunning and he has hisown voice on the guitar. Thebeauty of De G rassi s writing isin its subtlety; perhaps his mostplayed piece, The Water Gardencan seem quite simple on firstlisten but sit down to play it andyou will find awkward stretches,tricky syncopations and variouspercussive devices that can behard to execute.
Combine great writing with
GET THE TONE Alex is a Lowden man, an F35to be precise. You are dealingwith a lot of low, altered tuningshere so the thickest possiblestrings are best, both for theguitar itself and or the tone. Iused a Nick Benjamin 00 - this isa tiny guitar but still sounds greattuned all the way down I used1 2 - 5 3 gauge strings.
that other essential tool, tone,and you have an artist who iswell worth studying. De Grassi swriting eschews theatrics andinstead comes across a s musicthat could have been writtenfor any instrument, which is oneof the greatest achievements acomposer can aim for.
In this month's piece I
have aimed for some typical DeGrassi trademarks - a low alteredtuning to give the guitar addedresonance, deep sustained chordsand a percussive string slap togive the music a sense o f forwardmotion. Like De Grassi, I haveaimed for subtlety and melody.There are some passages herethat may be a little trickier thanthey at first appear. Studyinga slow piece like this can reallyimprove you as a player.
PRO TIP Altered tunings can be a greatway of coming up with new ideas- make sure you have a goodworking knowledge of chordvoicings so you can figure ou twhat you want to play anywhereon the fretboard.
At workshops I always
encounter great players whocan tear through complex, fastmaterial but then struggle withslower pieces where every singlenote is exposed
Alex makes music thatappeals beyond the guitarplaying audience alone, one ofthe greatest achievements of anyinstrumentalist. Check him outand be dazzled
Percussive muted strings canreally add to a piece but they are
quite hard to sound correctly.In order to do this you need toslap the string so your thumbstops dead on it - if your thumbbounces off the string you willsimply sound the note, so youare trying to effectively 'kill' thenote by stopping it with yourthumb. It's a great technique thatwith practice will give an extra
dimension to your playing andwriting. GT
T R A C K R E C O R D
8 The WaterGarden isa beautiful
album full ofAlex s signature
compositions and chord voicings,but it's also worth checking out
everything else recorded by the
great man
I encounter great players who can tear through complex, fastmaterial but then struggle with slower pieces
uitarTechniques ecember 2 7
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ON THE CD = Tracks5?54
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ON THE CD ft^ack54 19 - Previous page] Watch out for the fretted strings and the muted, [Bar 27] There's a brief use of harp harmonics here - use an artificialed bass notes here - it can be d fficult mov ing between the two. harmonic technique to sound the harmonics up at the 14th fret whilst22 ] There's another slightly awkw ard slide on the fourth f nger here so plucking th e strings at the sam e time. I suggest using th e first finger on theup to this slowly. picking hand to fret the artificial harmonic at the 14th fret whilst picking with
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Hundreds o f Great Tr a c k sO n e A m a z in g Guitar
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GI NTS OF MET LGI NTS OF ROCK
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