Folk Song from the UK...Regards Smokehouse Elevens

For me, every amp is a different animal (if they are tube amps) Small Fenders and Gibson amps are fabulous. Lou Rosanno of at Louis Electric in New Jersey makes the best new amps i have used. He now makes his own version of Prinstons, Deluxes and Vibroluxes.His amps are always great sounding and pack a lot of punch for there size. He builds everyone from scratch himself. Great stuff!

Hi Preston,

As usual, despite your six month layoff, you've done a wonderful job on these videos. You have a great sense of where to play, your licks and fills make perfect melodic and rhythmic sense, show good technique and are simple and very effective. If you practiced and played more I think you could up the ante by just conveying more confidence and authority but, really man, this is good stuff!

Michael -- WAY COOL -- perfectly appropriate contribution -- fantastic vintage sound you are getting. 

Thanks for the clarification, Corey. I'll give Catfish Blues a try and post my take later, so I'll aso get a clue whether the recording/uploading process works well... Enjoy your day, greetings, T.

This isn't a "performance" video in that there's no video. I wanted to try mic'ing a new amp I got and so I played the lead guitar to a backing track of "Rock This Town" with the original vocal, bass, and drums. That said, it is a performance in the sense that it is one take (hence, the mistakes during the solos, which are my own) and I didn't do any post-processing on it. It's just my Rode R144 Ribbon mic in front of my 5W Vintage47 Spectator playing my Epiphone Swingster with a cheap $20 Behringer delay pedal and Danelectro OD pedal which I'm using here just for a bit of treble since the amp is recreation of a 1953 Valco and its natural sound is a bit too dark for rockabilly.

I know this isn't what we've been working on in Duke's lessons, but I wanted to participate and, actually, I'm able to translate a good bit of what I've learned from Duke into this type of playing. I hope to put up a video of a performance of Duke-related stuff before the OM is over.

Alex-- a depression economics p.s.-- I was watching an Alan Lomax documentary about Appalachia and he was interviewing a 90 year old veteran of the coal mines - during the depression he went to work there at 4:00 in the morning and worked until 10:00 or 11:00 at night and got paid $2.80 a day.  And they had to shop at the company store for everything so they never got ahead. For many working people the price of even a budget guitar was about a month's wages.  And many people worked, got paid, and bought what they needed on the barter system with no real money ever hitting their hands.  My grand father was a Sicilian immigrant and he would drive an old truck out and shovel coal for a week and get paid with a truck load of coal which he would trade for rent and produce and other family needs.  When they sang "I'm broke and ain't got a dime" they really meant it. Money was very hard to come by.  And of course it was even harder for African Americans, especially in the South. These are the conditions that inspired songs like "Hard Time Killing Floor." 

Hi Corey, thank you for your interest

to be honest I'm having problems with the independence of the thumb
I'm exercising a lot but with few results, I find almost all the songs very difficult, already from the beginning, because of the fact that I'm not used to play two things at the same time... I was about to give up because in two months I'm still working on the first two lessons with poor results

it's like I need some exercises that can get me ' closer ' to the parts of the song before starting to work on it

any suggestion ?

Maurizio -- you musn't give up -- it can be frustrating but you will get better if you practice even a little every day -- even small segments -- as long as you play every day you will get better and those segments will start coming together into bigger segments and entire songs.  Time is on your side.

@Maurizio...how is it going?

@Tony O....greetings and thanks for your message.  I think the best place to start is where you feel most comffortable.  Maybe try a simple song like Runnin and Hiding or .44 blues.  It really up to you though.  Just browse and see what speaks to you and then go from there.  You are in the driver's seat so do what works best for you!! Full-joy Ghana...one day I will make the trod there.  Thanks for posting!

John and all the others that have requested Charlie Christian tunes. I see here I have neglected your requests and will get one in soon. Thanks, Duke

Pierre, One suggestion I could make is to raise your pickups higher on the treble side to get more output and better tone. also lower the bass side of the pickups. its not a measurement thing, more a fool with it until it sounds good to you. That amy help. Always remember 90% of the sound is in your hands! 

Jim, Oscar Moore is another of my favorite guitarists. He was unique in his approach and was very fast for that time. I have incorperated some of his licks into my playing and they are often quite hard to pick up on. You had to be fast to keep up with Nat Cole! Nat is still one of the best pianist that jazz has ever produced. Listen to the tracks he cut with Lester Young and Buddy Rich. They are beautiful and no bass on that session but you dont miss it whatsoever. there is a blues called "Back to the Land" that is about the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

Hi Joe, You are correct, Louis Jordan was fabulous and his small band arrangements were so perfect. I have never tried to adapt them to guitar because I love them so much the way they are. I do love Bill Jennings who was his guitarist in the 50s. BB King told me he was his favorite guitarist when I first met him. He also said I reminded him of Bill which was, of course an unbelievable compliment! Bill Jennings and Billy Butler (of Honky Tonk fame) were 2 of my biggest influences back then. They still are. I have just opened my scope of musical styles over the years to many things. But closest to my heart is the swing blues and classic tin pan alley swing and jazz that I fell in love with when I was young. Blues feeling with jazz improvisation can't be beat in my book!    

Hi Frank, Yes, Meet me at no special place is a great song and I should do it live. I'll try to add that one into the mix. I'll need to re-learn it first. It's not so much hard as it is an unusual chord progression. 

Hi Guy's Now that I have Paul helping me for a while. I will have him show you Johnny's Blues. It's really done with horns on the recording by Johnny Hodges but i thought it would make an interesting head for guitar with chords. Then Paul harmonized it higher up and it is cool. I am hoping to record it with Paul on a guitar duet album soon. 

Hi Joe, Thanks, of course there are a gazillon Dylan fans who want to know all kinds of things which I cannot answer. All I can say is I was called to come participatate on time out of mind after they had started tracking. Please don't anyone ask anymore Dylan questions.That's not why I am here. Thank You very much! 

Just a great job on that. Very tasteful vocals, piano And guitar. Can I ask what chords you are playing.

Hey Corey,

I trust you're doing well.

Kindly note this text is partly copied and pasted from your lessons site which I deleted after failing to upload my first try in tackling the the main riff of "Catfish Blues" (and thereby stupidly wasting my 2 guest lesson - posted something successully in "Open Mic", though). Please let me say that I not only enjoyed your performance very much, but I also think this is a great lesson (those two things don't come in a package all too often, I guess)...

Although I applied for a guest account quite a while ago I didn't really have the oportunity to take a closer look on the site and how it actually works. Living in Ghana is great, but comes with some challenges in terms of Internet connectivity. However, I have solved my Internet issues for this month at least, so here I am. I read through your "Where to start! quick tipps, and I really like the idea to take time when progressing through the lessons and not to tackle more than one song per month (also because this leaves time to spend on other areas of guitar playing than building up repertoire). What I don't get, though, is where to best start: Am I suposed to go through the songs in a particular order (e.g. from key to key/easy to hard/technique to technique etc.) or is it up to each's personal taste? And are you okay if one's also working on other topics while learning those songs?

I surely look forward to get thaught by you and Duke and learn  how to handle the guitar. Hope to get some Feedback from you soon!

BTW, when will you visit West Africa again, any plans already?

Greetings,

Tony

Hi Kurtis!

Thanks for your Feedback, it's much appreciated! Yes, you're right about the Peter Gunn theme song ;)

Greetings,

Tony

I have to qualify that Hopkins remark because very late in his career he did play J-50's and J-60's  -  But only when he was making big money in the blues revival did he change from Harmony's.  Technically, depending on what year it was made a J-50 is similar to a J-45 except for the top finish - but there were a lot of variations in bracing in all the J guitars over the years and depending on which year and model you had they could be very different in sound.  Also in the 60's Gibson made some models with a narrower and thinner necks as well so the models weren't that consistent. Bill Broonzy is one of the only players I have heard of who played a Martin 000-28 most of his career - but he was a big star in Chicago in the 30's and had a lot more money than the average country blues player.  Gary Davis played a J-200, but I doubt he started out with one. 

One point though - a jumbo guitar like a J-45 is a modern invention.  Gibson's first jumbo was the J-35 and it was produced in 1938.  Lightnin' Hopkins didn't own a Gibson in until the 60's during the revival, when he had money and it wasn't a J-45 - he always played Harmony's before that. When he had money though he even played a black Strat from time to time.  The mail order guitars were made by different companies so they would not use the same templates as a Gibson.  Prior to 1938 Gibson was not big in the flat top guitar business.  And anyway a J-45 is not a ladder braced guitar, and those older guitars were ladder braced and that's one of the reasons for their particular sound.  There's a biography of Hopkins which describes a concert he did in Carnegie Hall on a bill with other musicians, one of which was a famous Flamenco guitarist playing a custom made guitar which cost thousands of dollars.  It is said Hopkins walked away with the concert playing a cheap Harmony with a De Armond pickup in the sound hole.  Hopkins hit the road playing guitar when he was eight years old and was a lifetime gambler - he always played cheap guitars and frequently would have to hock even those.  But all those guys compensated for the poor action on these guitars by using heavy strings and down tuning from standard a lot - so the strings were playable and they still got a big sound.  Actually you get a much different sound when you do that, and they most of the time used an unwound third string too.  You can take any guitar, put heavy strings on it, down tune two steps and use an unwound third and you will immediately get a blusier sound.  Many of those pre war players used wire for strings too - they could not afford to buy guitar strings either.  They grabbed anything they could afford and found a way to play it. They did not have money.  They played, until the "revival" only for other African Americans - and they didn't have any money either. They either hoboed like Big Joe Williams or had jobs which paid very little in a harsh segregated South.  Hopkins once travelleld to Arkansas with his sister to pick pecans for two dollars a day - so he was not buying a lot of Gibson Guitars. 

Nice. Also, that one spot where you switched it up that reminds me of what I know as Peter Gunn theme song...is that right?

@Vinny and Tom..thanks for your informations! It's a pleasure to read you!!