8/14/2019 Fingerpicking with Tommy Emmanuel
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I3\' IVIAC IiANDAI.I. PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNA DICKSON
D-.p#,ll,nil$ri,lrx,t*:'fr si':ll{t$-#'t#$*"F"'"frMfirst love: fingerstyle acoustic playing. The results have been awe-inspiring, as any listener to his latest album' The MYstery\Fa'
;J;;#5;;ii,;;;. ;.."nue1s tastefur brend of country fork, and pop, derivered with crystailine tone and impeccabre
technique, certainly caught the attention of Grammy voters this year;they nominated him for Best Country nstrumental Perfor-
mance on "Gameshow Rag/Cannonball Rag," a medley of an original composltion and a Merle Travis classic that shows off both
the guitarist's fiendish speed and his knack for writing an unshakable melodv'
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8/14/2019 Fingerpicking with Tommy Emmanuel
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Of course, it's one thing to
think like a band and quite
another to actually play like
onHetting the fingers of
your picking hand to work
independently the way Em-
manuel's do takes major
time and practice. But You've
got to start somewhere, and
it's always best to staft with
the basics. ln this exclusive
lesson, Emmanuel takes us
through a fingerstyle Pat-tern from the bottom up
and demonstrates a few key
techniques that add dazzle to
his six-string feats of presti-
digitation.
So what does a guitarist
need to do to play finger-
style wellT First, concentrate
on the thumb. The thumb
plays what the left hand on
the piano would play. lt does
all the accompaniment. And
if you want to play finger-
style properly, you've reallY
got to make Your thumb in-
dependent and get it to take
care of all the backing so the
melody and harmony can be
taken care of by the fingers.
What's the first step toward
doing that? SteP one is to
play with your thumb bY it-
self. Put all your pick-hand
fingers down on the face of
the guitar. Mute the strings
slightly with your palm; that
way, the bass notes are in
their own little Pocket, and.
when it comes time to bringin a melody over them,
they wonl be ringing too
loud. Then you play some-
thing like this IFig. 1], which
is all downstrokes with the
thumb, starting every mea-
sure with the root note of
the chord.
And step two? KeeP that
bass going with the thumb
and bring in the fingers to
play chords at the beginning
of each measure [Fig.2]. But
step three is where You re-
ally come to the crossroads:Put in another chord accent
with your fingers between
the thumb strokes IFig.3l.
You're going to feel the Pull
here, because your fingers
will want to follow your
thumb and vice versa, but af-
ter a while they'll get used to
working independentlY.
Where to from there? The
next step is to play arpeg-
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I
\I\lrlrl<horse Down lJnderNever let it be said that Tom-
my Emmanuel doesnl suPPorthis local guitar manufacturer.His instruments of choice are
Australian-made Matons, ofwhich the live workhorse is an
OM-sized 8G808. On the road,
he uses the Maton's onboardAPS pickuP system and Plugsinto an AER Compaet 60 amP
via an Alesis Midiverb. His
strings are Martin SPs {.012-,0541, and his thumbpicks are
Dunlop mediums.
8/14/2019 Fingerpicking with Tommy Emmanuel
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gios with the fingers rather
than straight chords. This is
a standard pattern [Fig.4]-hear how the thumb actually
finishes the arpeggio that the
fingers stan. Once you've
got that together, you're
ready to play a real song.
Here's something based on
"Freight Train," which is a
tune I always teach people
who are just starting to learn
this style of playinS IFiS. 5].The most important thing
to keep in mind here is that
you've got to establish a sol-
id groove and keep it solid.
When I play, l'm always tap-
ping my feet and moving to
the groove. lfeel time, lthink
time, and I try to play time.
lf you do all those things-getting your mind andyourbody to move in time-yourgroove will get stronger. Agood bit of advice is to re-
cord yourself on something
and listen back to hear how
your groove is. lf you feel
that it's not right. then you
need to work on it. Practice
with a metronome. And isn't
it funny how those metro-
nomes always slow down?
Nice to know we're not
the only ones who noticed
that... On your latest album,
you couple a Travis tune,
"Cannonball Rag," with your
own "Gameshow Rag," and
you link the two with a nif-
ty little ascending lick. That
comes right from Merle, andChet lAtkins] too. When you
play it slow, it's got a real
funky sound, almost iike
something Leo Kottke might
do. And when you play it at
the actual tempo, it sounds
like this IFig,61.
Another great feature ofyour playing is your use of
Lenny Breau-style harp har-
monics. Right, that's com-
bining regular picked notes
with artificial harmon-
ics picked an octave up.
Here's an example usinga D9 chord-l'm covering
the bottom two strings withone finger on my left hand.
I start with a harmonic on
the 6th string, then I move
on to the 3rd string and pick
that normally. And I keep
that pattern going across
the neck, continuing to al-
ternate between harmonics
and natural notes: 5, 2, 4, 1,
3 [Fig.7A]. Now l'll go back-
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A9
wards and forwards with
that pattern IFig.7Bi. The
goal is to have the notes
ring into one another so
you can't tell them apart.
lwatch the Guitar One CD-
ROM for a more detailed
look at Emmanuel's har-
monic techniques.l
You also create a similar
rippling effect by alternat-
ing open and fretting notes.
That comes from Lenny
Breau too, as well as Chet
and Jerry Reed. Here's a
basic bread-and-butter lick
in that style [Fig.8]. Once
you've got that down, you
can try more elaborate ones
incorporating pull-offs IFig.
G(b5),Bb
91. Then work on how you
accent the notes: emphasize
some, hold back on others,
make it funky. Like every-
thing we've talked about to-
day, this is a technique you
can use all kinds ofways.
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