Product Description
Product Description
Music from the church always featured in the repertoires of Country Blues Guitarists. In this lesson we explore several styles of fingerpicking gospel tunes. We start with playing in the key of C and two well known songs played in the style of Mississippi John Hurt and Elizabeth Cotten. We then tackle I'll Fly Away which introduces a new right hand technique that combines fingerstyle with strumming. This technique will add a different texture to your playing. We then begin to explore playing in open tunings and Just A Closer Walk With Thee played in an Open G Tuning. We then go to an Open D tuning to learn Death Come Creeping and Will The Circle Be Unbroken. Two bonus sections are included. The first demonstrates how to change your guitar strings so that they will not slip. The second is an audio section that features recordings showing variations and other approaches to the tunes taught. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. Each tune is taught phrase by phrase and played slowly on a split-screen. Titles include: I Am a Pilgrim, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, I'll Fly Away, Just a Closer Walk With Thee, Death Come Creeping and Will the Circle Be Unbroken. DVD is region 0, playable worldwide.
About the Actor
Stefan Grossman has been recording, performing, and writing about acoustic fingerstyle techniques and styles for more than 30 years. At age 15 he started taking lessons from the legendary bluesman the late Rev. Gary Davis. He also learned music from records by Brownie McGhee and Lightnin' Hopkins. When Grossman was 18, he formed the Even Dozen Jug Band with guitarist Steve Katz, harmonicist/singer John Sebastian and pianist Josh Rifkin. The group recorded the LP Even Dozen Jug Band [out of print] for Elektra in 1964. At the same time, Stefan became more interested in his work as a blues researcher. During the period from 1965-1975 he studied and traveled with some of the legendary figures in the world of blues guitar-- Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and other great black American bluesmen and songsters. From this experience Stefan authored his landmark five-volume series for Oak Publications that presented these styles to pickers worldwide. In 1973 Stefan co-founded Kicking Mule Records to counter the shortage of good instructional guitar records and music.