"Vincent" by Don McLean Tutorial

[Glennwillow]

On a previous thread here posts 54 & 58, martingitdave and I exchanged thoughts about my providing some insight into how I play "Vincent" by Don McLean. Based on that discussion, I decided to make a tutorial and see if this was of interest to folks on the AGF.

The total tutorial ended up being about 16 minutes long, and YouTube limits videos to 15 minutes unless a person has gone through some kind of approval process. So I cut the video in half and made parts I and II, embedded below.

Here is Part I:


Here is Part II:


In the videos I spent my time discussing what's going on with my fretting hand, and I spent no time at all on the right picking hand. Unless the right hand is playing particular signature combinations of notes, the picking pattern is quite straightforward: Thumb hits two lower pitched strings in sequence, hitting lower string first, then up to the next, followed by index finger picking the next string down on the guitar (which is really a higher note) and then middle finger picking the next string higher after that.

I did take my original performance video and showed only the left and right hands combined with the listing of chord symbols and diagrams shown in the lower right hand of the screen as the chords are changed. I did not try to show chords for every single small change or chord variation, but I showed many of them.

I hope this might be helpful to anyone interested in learning to play a song like this.

Thanks for listening!

- Glenn

PS: I added a Part III to address coordination of right hand with left hand.

[BJ9RW]

OK, you got me hooked. I'm learning this now. Great job, thanks so much!

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by BJ9RW

OK, you got me hooked. I'm learning this now. Great job, thanks so much!

You're welcome BJ. I hope you find this helpful.

- Glenn

[backdoc]

Thanks for posting that. I appreciate anyone who puts stuff like this out. If I can offer one suggestion as an observer who is just trying to learn fingerstyle. If I am representative at all of others in the same boat, I need way more discussion and demonstration of the right hand technique than what you mention in the first post. In fact, since I have played at the guitar thing for many years, when I look for fingerstyle lessons, the left hand discussion I pay little attention to because it is fairly easy to quickly see what is happening there. It is the right hand that seems to need some voodoo and incantations and lots and lots of instruction to learn. At least it is for me.

Thanks for the videos. I have always loved this song and I think I'll take a stab at it, but I will have to supplement with other videos out there that take more time to discuss what the right hand is doing.

[Kerbie]

Wow, Glenn... fantastic! I love it when some of you really talented guys post tutorials! It'll be a few days before I have the time to go through this with a guitar in my hand, but I'll make GOOD use out of this! Thank you very much...

[martingitdave]

I'm looking forward to viewing this after work!

[Rogerblair]

Glenn, that was a most effective way to teach that song. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I know it must have been very tedious.

Roger

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by backdoc

Thanks for posting that. I appreciate anyone who puts stuff like this out. If I can offer one suggestion as an observer who is just trying to learn fingerstyle. If I am representative at all of others in the same boat, I need way more discussion and demonstration of the right hand technique than what you mention in the first post. In fact, since I have played at the guitar thing for many years, when I look for fingerstyle lessons, the left hand discussion I pay little attention to because it is fairly easy to quickly see what is happening there. It is the right hand that seems to need some voodoo and incantations and lots and lots of instruction to learn. At least it is for me.

Thanks for the videos. I have always loved this song and I think I'll take a stab at it, but I will have to supplement with other videos out there that take more time to discuss what the right hand is doing.

Hi Backdoc,

Thanks for the constructive criticism. As a result of your comments I added a Part III to my original post in this thread. I hope this helps address the weaknesses in Parts I & II.

Thanks,
Glenn

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by Kerbie

Wow, Glenn... fantastic! I love it when some of you really talented guys post tutorials! It'll be a few days before I have the time to go through this with a guitar in my hand, but I'll make GOOD use out of this! Thank you very much...

Hi Kerbie,

Thanks for your thoughts and support. You'll note that I have now added a Part III. It was a little crazy filming this, with a camera over my shoulder behind the guitar neck to get a picture of my right hand picking fingers and a camera just on the other side of the neck looking down at my fingers. I had to spend a great deal of time watching the two video monitor screens (little ones) to make sure I kept my fingers in the view finders.

In the process of doing this and thinking of so much at once, I know I did not get the words of the song correct. I figured, well, who cares? This part of the video is about coordination between right and left hand fingers.

I hope this Part III helps a little bit more.

- Glenn

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

I'm looking forward to viewing this after work!

Hi Dave,

Thanks for checking in on this. I really hope this helps address some of your questions about how I played "Vincent."

I hate to make excuses, but I am not a guitar teacher. So here I am, experimenting on everyone on the Internet!

- Glenn

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by Rogerblair

Glenn, that was a most effective way to teach that song. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I know it must have been very tedious.

Roger

Hi Roger,

Thank you for your support on this.

The truth is, the only thing that was tedious was putting those guitar chord images into the song video as I was playing it in the video. But I made my living as an engineer; I know how to deal with tedious things (mostly!).

Thanks,
Glenn

Thanks for sharing Glenn. Seems like a labor of love.

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by J-Doug

Thanks for sharing Glenn. Seems like a labor of love.

Hi Doug,

Thanks for commenting. I'm just trying to be helpful.

- Glenn

[Jeremy]

Very cool of you to do this, Glenn. I think you found your post-retirement calling.

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Very cool of you to do this, Glenn. I think you found your post-retirement calling.

Thank you Jeremy!

Nice of you to comment!

- Glenn