![]() He fitted a glass bottle neck to his ring finger and moved it lightly over the strings to the 12th fret, before bringing it down to the 7th fret, and then the 5th fret, creating the most wonderful, plaintiff blues is sound. He had only played two notes before I realised that this was something special. I laughed behind my hand and made fun of this man, expecting to hear him play very badly. On top of that, the strings were so old that they were green and rusty. While sitting there, a man walk to the stage and prepared to play.Īs he walked past me I noticed that one of his guitar strings had a knot in it between the nut and the Capo. One night in the South of England, I happened to be in the folk Club in a small village, listening to the amateur floor singers and waiting my turn to play.įolk clubs are a fantastic way to learn the trade of playing in front of people. I loved to play complex guitar styles and I tended to ridicule styles that were either too simple or in another musical genre. When I was a younger player, like many people, I was quite arrogant. it wasn't until much later that I heard open G for the first time played properly in the slide or bottleneck style. In those days, I did try to play bottleneck style with open D but it never really worked out. The slow pieces allow you to get into the music and to get into the chord structure of an open tuning, well the fast pieces are exciting when done well. In particular I'd like to play Blind Blake tunes in open D, because some of them are slow, and some are fast and exciting. I like the idea of open tunings but for a long time they were really a minor part of my repertoire, preferring to play Ragtime blues and Delta blues or fast Piedmont styles. ![]() Of course this was finger-picking folk music and didn't involve a slide or a bottleneck. Yes, it sounds great and it gives you the old authentic feel of the Delta blues, but for a long time I just could not stop those strings buzzing.įor many years I played folk music and during that time I was introduced to open D by a friend of mine. I've always had a love-hate relationship with open G blues tuning. Jumping Jack Flash - one of the most Iconic Stones Tunes in Open G Tuning The bass EĬomes down to D, the A string down to G and the high E also comes down to D. The actual open G tuning guitar G (2m:58s) is quite easy, and Takes a bit of practice – stick with it, because it’s the backbone of the Strings with one of your fingers behind the bottleneck is very important, and Needs to be higher than when playing normal guitar, so it’s a good idea to keep Rest on the strings while we strum or fingerpick. Theīottleneck way of playing guitar consists of letting the surface of the slide Open G is the most common example of alternate guitar tunings and using a slide is by far the most common technique for this Delta blues tuning. Gives a different sound and feel to a steel or brass one – it’s a matter of It’s a simpler tuning than open D, and it’s perfectįor playing with a bottleneck or slide. ![]() Johnny Joyce model Aria, and at 1:22 I start to explore the open G guitar tuning from Robert Johnson's fingerstyle acoustic blues employed unusual diminished voicings and chromatic movements to lead from one place to another.Īnd modern electric players like Eric Johnson and Scott Henderson substitute unusual chords throughout the 12-bar progression, giving a jazzy feel to proceedings.The video above opens with an old clip of me playing Crossroads by Robert Johnson on an old John Lee Hooker and Elmore James often 'vamped' on one chord or riff, beginning and ending a song in much the same way. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and some of these are featured in our extensive catalogue of examples. It sounds more deliberate, rather than just bluffing through and coming up with whatever you fancy (that has its place too, but you know what we mean). There's something compositionally elegant, too, about 'book-ending' a song in this way. You could say it's like starting with an ending!" Sometimes this is called a 'turnaround' - the bit at the end of a 12-bar progression when everything is gearing up to go round again. "The first thing you often hear on any blues record is a 'taster' of what is to come, courtesy of some fancy or soulful licks.
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