Dave Matthews' Left Hand Techniques

[KarlK]

I've never been a fan of Dave Matthews, though he has has done quite well as a professional performer without my fandom, shocking as that may seem.

Anyway, he clearly has a unique approach to the guitar, with his specific rhythmic approach to strumming and chordal shapes.

The NPR desk concert linked below shows him in a solo acoustic venue, with pretty good camera angles on his left hand technique. The singing is "Meh" in my view, but I think it's worth seeing how he uses the guitar.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by KarlK

I've never been a fan of Dave Matthews, though he has has done quite well as a professional performer without my fandom, shocking as that may seem.

Quite. What is the world coming to, when musicians can become successful even when you or I don't like them?
State control has its limits, of course, but I think in this case the government really needs to step in and do something.

Originally Posted by KarlK

Anyway, he clearly has a unique approach to the guitar, with his specific rhythmic approach to strumming and chordal shapes.

The NPR desk concert linked below shows him in a solo acoustic venue, with pretty good camera angles on his left hand technique. The singing is "Meh" in my view, but I think it's worth seeing how he uses the guitar.

What I find interesting there is that the rhythm is in 4/4, but his vocal melody is consistently off the beat, making it hard to follow. Took me a while to actually nail where the downbeats are....
His left hand looks a little weird occasionally, but he's not really doing anything unorthodox in my view.

I agree the singing is "meh", the question is whether it's enough to get him jailed and banned from recording anything else. Maybe we need to seek legal advice.

[Gjimmy]

He is kind of a master at singing melodies that don’t match the guitar parts he is playing.

If you’ve never tried to play any of his guitar parts, you should give it a go. Very fun to play once you get them down. Also some of them are quite difficult.

Try one of these: “Satellite” “The Stone” “So Much To Say”

He really has a pretty unique approach to acoustic guitar.

[Denny B]

I enjoyed the clip very much... NPR Tiny Desk is one of my favorite sites to watch artists pretty much in the raw...

I also remember when Dave Matthews first came out... I thought he was so uniquely talented and different from the mainsteam crap that he'd never be able to achieve success on a large scale...

I was, and still am, delighted to be proven wrong...