Steady Thumb guitar repertoire designed for beginners and intermediate guitar players to hone their country fingerpicking skills using the alternating bass technique. Stefan teaches us ten songs whose fingerstyle arrangements convey to us a complete spectrum of well informed styles. He reminds us that this, in its day, was dance music and our steadiness is what drives the dancers.
Inspirations including the Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Mance Lipscome, Elizabeth Cotten all shine out in various guitar Keys like C, D, E, G, F.
Now I have yet to find the ideal remote teacher for fingerstyle - maybe there is no such person via book or lesson. I want dead simple exercises like I am 5 years old. This gives a few minutes to the subject but not enough. I am sure it would be different if we were real live students of Stefans so we fall back to the comfort of the disc .PDF pamphlet
Excluding NPR and the Smithsonian there are basically two cultural fonts that I know off hand of devoted to this Americana: Stefan Grossman and Happy Traum. In the context of this site I can laud Stefan for being a historian of this type of Americana and I can laud Happy Traum too. Both these guys talk the talk and walk the walk keeping this style of guitar playing alive and hand in hand with that have made a career out of it being two pioneers of guitar instruction.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucius