Easy Steps to Steady Thumb Acoustic Finger style Blues Guitar 2 - Happy Traum Page Three
The secret sauce or silver bullet is provided by your guitar sweat equity and elbow juice and maybe a looper and drum machine. Rhythm is a many sided affair and there is a distinct difference between playing a one-two, one-two country hoe down drum beat to steady thumpin' on your E string. Then you switch up to alternate string thumping combined with melody notes and my eyes tear up but I'd like to be able to go there one day. See the menu. Also See John Hammond's Lesson where he steady thumbs, play harmonica, taps his foot and sings all while looking good and sounding great.
Another thing is that Happy sings for us at the drop of a hat and he can sing pretty well too. He also has a historical background repertoire and instead of singing for us "Nobody Wants You When You are Down and Out" he teaches us Brownie McGhee's "Sportin' Life Blues" almost right out of Porgy and Bess.
There is a lot here if you are serious but steady thumb takes effort to achieve and you can only be shown what to do. This is, in my opinion the perhaps best guitar lesson to start. Doing it is up to you. I'll qualify that by saying if you already know how to fingerpick you will have an advantage and with that move on to review Happy's 3 lesson set Easy Steps to Guitar Fingerpicking. I recommend beginners consider that as their first purchase as its all about teaching the steady thumb technique.
Easy Steps to Acoustic Blues Guitar 2- Happy Traum
- Ch 1: Intro
- Ch 2:The Steady Thumb explained
- Ch 3: The Steady Thumb on low E string
- Ch 4: The Steady Thumb adding the 1st string pinch
- Ch 5: The Steady Thumb adding the 2nd string pinch
- Ch 6: The Steady Thumb alternating treble strings
- Ch 7: The Steady Thumb adding syncopation
- Ch 8: Adding the left hand
- Ch 9: Adding Syncopation w/ the left hand
- Ch 10: Syncopation variations
- Ch 11: Adding Triplets
- Ch 12: Picking a blues scale
- Ch 13: "Baby Please don't Go" broken down
- Ch 14: "Baby Please don't Go" syncopating the melody
- Ch 15: "Baby Please don't Go" adding lines to the melody
- Ch 16: "Baby Please don't Go" Varying the bass notes
- Ch 17:"Baby Please don't Go" played up to speed
- Ch 18: "Rock Me Baby" played
- Ch 19: "Rock Me Baby" Melody and Rhythm: E chord
- Ch 20: "Rock Me Baby" 2nd part: A chord
- Ch 21: "Rock Me Baby" 3d part: B7th chord
- Ch 22:"Rock Me Baby" Played slowly
- Ch 23 "Rock Me Baby" played w/capo an octave up
- Ch24: The Blues Scale
- Ch 25: Shuffle Bass line
- Ch 26: Shuffle Bass line variations
- Ch 27: Boogie Woogie Bass line
- Ch 28: Boogie Woogie Bass variation
- Ch 29: Boogie Woogie treble and bass strings
- Ch 30: Playing a solo up the neck using triplets
- Ch 31: Solo turnaround
- Ch 32: Solo variations
- Ch 33: VI-II-V progression in E
- Ch 33: "Trouble in mind"
- Ch 34: "Sporting Life Blues"
- Ch 35: Turnaround ending
- Outro
Steady Thumb Page One | Page Two | Page Three
