FALL II 2016 FREIGHT GUITAR CLASSES
Improvising and Variations for Fingerstyle Blues Guitar
Six Thursdays 7-8:15pm; Price : $120; begins Novemebr 10
Fingerstyle blues guitarists often find themselves locked into positions and patterns related to specific songs. What if we could not only play a song like Mississippi John Hurt’s “Stag-O-Lee,” but improvise over the chord changes without losing the alternating bass pattern? We will use “Stag-o-lee” as our jumping off point, then cover other blues songs in the key of E, A, G and more. The key to our goal of improvising will be learning the CAGED system: a way of mapping out the entire fretboard by using the first position chords of C – A – G – E – D. These chord shapes can be transferred all over the guitar neck to yield great chord voicings that will make our playing come alive with fresh insights and melodic ideas. Students should have a solid background in Travis-style picking.
BLUES GUITAR IN OPEN TUNINGS
Six Thursdays beginning 11/10/2016 ( (no class November 24),
8:30pm-9:45
price $120
In this class we will play strictly in open tunings. We will explore some of the great songs from blues masters such as Robert Johnson, Skip James, Son House and others. We will also learn some exercises meant to stimulate your own creativity in open tunings. Some of the tunings we will look at are: open D, open G, open C, open D minor and others if time permits. We will be playing mainly fingerstyle (using an alternating bass), but might do a little strumming, as well. Participants should have some familiarity with blues fingerpicking.
One of the fringe benefits of fingerpicking in open tunings is having the opportunity to focus on your right hand. In our beginning exercises we will use Open D tuning to play a simple alternating bass finger picking pattern – if you have not yet mastered an alternating bass (sometimes called Travis picking) this will be a good opportunity to do so. The bass pattern, in this case played on the 6th and 4th strings, is played by your thumb and is sounded on the down beat. So, if you are counting “1 2 3 4” you will play bass notes on each number. The melody or treble – played on strings 1-3 – will be played either on the DOWN beat or the Up beat.
Pete Madsen has been teaching and performing in the Bay Area for over twenty years. His musical specialty is the art and craft of fingerstyle blues, ragtime and slide guitar.Websites:
To register contact the Freight and Salvage
2020 Addison St. Berkeley, CA,
www.thefreight.org, (510)644-2020