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Table of Contents
xi
Five Positions You Should Know: Meanderings of the
Pentatonic Scale .......................................................................................165
Relating the positions to each other................................................165
Connecting the positions: Licks that take you up and down........167
Understanding the Logic behind the Corresponding
Shift of Position and Key .........................................................................167
Recognizing common keys and their comfortable positions .......168
Mapping keys to positions ................................................................168
Chapter 10: Express Yourself: Making the Guitar
Sing, Cry, and Wail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
Appreciating the Art of Articulation..........................................................171
Going In for the Attack ................................................................................172
A little bit louder now . . . a little bit softer now: Dynamics .........173
Hitting hard and backing off .............................................................175
Breaking Down the Music: Phrasing ..........................................................176
Connecting notes the slippery way: Slides .....................................176
It’s hammer time — get ready to strike a string! ............................179
Exposing a note by lifting a digit: Pull-offs ......................................180
Giving Your Sound a Bit of Flair..................................................................182
Shake that string: Adding vibrato ....................................................182
The rubber-band blues: Bends that stretch a string .....................184
Playing a Song with Various Articulations ................................................187
Part IV: Sounding Like the Masters:
Blues Styles through the Ages ....................................191
Chapter 11: Acoustic Roots: Delta Blues and
Its Country Cousins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193
Delta Blues: Where It All Began ..................................................................193
Understanding the Delta technique .................................................194
Ladies and gentlemen, king of the Delta blues:
Robert Johnson...............................................................................194
Country Ragtime: The Piedmont Blues .....................................................201
Everything In-Between: Country and Folk Blues......................................203
A quick profile of country and folk blues........................................203
Giving these “in-between blues” a listen .........................................204
Closing with a lick and some style: Ragtime tags...........................204
Country and Folk Blues Had a Baby; Its Name was Rockabilly..............206
Quintessential Blues: Slide Guitar..............................................................208
The tools that let you slide ...............................................................208
Sliding technique................................................................................208
Tuning your guitar for slide, a technique all its own.....................209
TEAM LinG