The Carter Scratch

[phydaux]

Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly

I love melody 🎵 and am always impressed when someone does it well.

That won't be me, at lease not for a good long while.

One of my favorite quotes from Tommy Emmanuel is before there can be music there must first be skill. To help lay that foundation I'm doing what I am calling chord scales. First I'll pick a two octave C major open scale while holding a C major open chord, and after each note I strum the open chord. Then I do the same for the open G major chord & scale.

Then it's on to learning the 50+ songs in the book, most of which I've never heard before .

[Skarsaune]

I'd be interested to hear what you think of that book.

Flatpicking Carter-style - interspersing the melody with chord strums in my case - is something I've been working on for a while. Much of my performing is solo voice and acoustic, so I wanted to do a bit more than just strumming when the song calls for an instrumental break.

Also available from flatpick.com, Volume 2 of the flatpicking essentials is "Learning to solo, Carter-style and beyond". I've found it a helpful resource.

[phydaux]

Originally Posted by Skarsaune

I'd be interested to hear what you think of that book.

Flatpicking Carter-style - interspersing the melody with chord strums in my case - is something I've been working on for a while. Much of my performing is solo voice and acoustic, so I wanted to do a bit more than just strumming when the song calls for an instrumental break.

Also available from flatpick.com, Volume 2 of the flatpicking essentials is "Learning to solo, Carter-style and beyond". I've found it a helpful resource.

Yes, I have Vol 1&2 of Flatpicking Essentials. I got Flatpicking Carter Style as a supplement.

The book is a collection of articles published in Flatpicking Guitar magazine over the years. Most of them are either flatpick Carter Style arrangements of various songs, or tips on embellishing flatpick Carter Style arrangements of songs by adding bass runs, hammer ons, flick offs, and crosspick rolls. The book organizes the articles with the simplest arrangements first and the more complex arrangements later.

And the book is THICK, 200+ pages and well over 50 songs, several of them with multiple arrangements.

I expect I'll be working my way through this for quite some time. But IMO these resources are the best roadmap for advancing beyond "beginner guitarist."

At least as a flatpicker. The other fork in the road leads to fingerstyle chord melody, also well documented by by other resources, and IMO a tad beyond my talent level.

[Retired1]

Originally Posted by phydaux

IMO a tad beyond my talent level.

nope - in my opinion if you can walk chew gum and open a bottle of beer at the same time you can learn to do all this stuff

[CopyCat]

Huge Maybelle fan here. I used to be more diligent about trying to replicate her style (and had a nice old archtop at the time).

I seem to remember there may have been a Homespun lesson on it by someone like Mike Seeger or one of the Traums.

I use a flatpick more often now which doesn’t really get her sound. But you’ve inspired me to go back and work on it.