Fingerpicking with Tommy Emmanuel

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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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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C

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.



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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Fingerpicking with Tommy Emmanuel