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Flatpicking the
Acoustic Guitar
A SHORT PRIMER
By John Cadley

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Shut up and play your

guitar.
Frank Zappa

Introduction:
Very little of what follows is original with me. I have learned it from listening to and/or
observing many great players. They come mostly from the world of acoustic bluegrass
flatpicking and Telecaster-style electric playing. They include Clarence White, Tony Rice,
Wyatt Rice, Dan Crary, Norman Blake, Doc Watson, Jeff White, David Grier, Robert Shaffer,
Steve Kaufman, Russ Barenberg, Scott Nygaard, John Carlini, Peter Rowan, Albert Lee,
James Burton, Jim Messina, Don Rich, Vince Gill, Ray Flacke, Jimmy Olander, Robin
Bullock, Beppe Gambetta, Mark Cosgrove, Dave Dillon, Jimmy Martin, Lester Flatt, Marty
Stuart, George Shuffler, and many, many more. Seek out recordings by any of these
musicians and you will hear sounds that are, well, music to any guitar players ears. I have
triedand failedto play like all of them, and that process of trying and failing has been
my teacher over the years, showing me what I can and cant do (and consequently leading
me to compensate in ways that have become my personal style). It is my hope that, while I
cant teach you to play the guitar (see the Bad News/Good News section which follows), I
can show you some of the methods I have found to be effective in teaching yourself.

The Bad News/Good News of Guitar Playing

The bad news: I cant teach you to play the guitar.
The good news: You can teach yourself.

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Guitar playing is a complex interplay of the physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual.
Those forces work differently in every human being. So I cant teach you how to play the
guitar because theres no right way to teach. What I can do is show you ideas and
techniques, which you can then make your own. Try what I have showed you and youll find
your body and mind automatically making many small adjustments to execute what youve
learned within your own abilities. That is you teaching yourself the guitar.
Theres only one rule than makes any sense. It comes from the great bluegrass fiddle
player, Richard Green: If its hard youre doing it wrong.

The bad news: You will never, never, EVER learn it all.
The good news: The possibilities for improvement are endless.

So you want to play guitar. What kind? Acoustic or electric? Nylon string or steel string?
Classical, rock, jazz, country, bluegrass, folk, celtic, or zeidico? Finger picking or
flatpicking? Standard tuning or open tunings? Which open tunings? DADGAD, drop D,
open G? Teach yourself? Learn from books, CDs, a teacher? Subscribe to guitar
magazines? Learn to read music or just learn tablature? Surf the internet for guitar
instruction and sift through thousands of hits?
And so on. Every choice in guitar playing leads to many more choices, all good, all
worthwhile, all challenging and rewarding. And if you could devote 12 hours a day to the
guitar, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for, say, 1,000 years, you just might learn a good
half of it. But you cant. Thats OK. If you are committed and consistent, if you work hard for
a set time every day, if you follow your instincts and trust your own inner voice, you will
learn all the guitar you need to learn. You eat the elephant one bite at a time.

The bad news: You will never play like your guitar hero.
The good news: You will play like yourself
Its good to copy your heroes. Its good to be inspired by them, to aspire to their level of
expertise. That will constitute a big part of your musical journey. But you will fail to play
exactly like them because you are not them. And in failing to play like them you will succeed
in learning how to play like you. What you may capture is the spirit of what they did, the
concept of it, and then create your own variations on it. Eric Clapton learned from Robert

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Johnson and Chuck Berry. Albert Lee learned from James Burton and Clarence White and
Cliff Gallup. George Benson learned from Wes Montgomery and Charlie Christian. Yet all
these guys have their unique personal style. The great jazz guitarist Jim Hall said that the
day he realized he would never play like his heroes was the day he started to really grow as
a musician. Be a sponge. Look, listen, learn, then process it through your own unique skills
and talents and make it your own. To say, I cant play like Chet Atkins so Im not a good
guitar player is not only self-defeating; its just plain wrong. A good guitar player is
someone who makes pleasing sounds with a guitar. Nothing more, nothing less. If you can
play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with good tone and good time, you are a good guitar
player. (Trust me, its not as easy as it sounds.)

The bad news: You will always wish you could play better.
The good news: You will always have a strong incentive to improve.
Ive heard monster, killer guitar players say theyre embarrassed to listen to their recordings.
Ive heard them say they fake it a lot, that they dont really know what theyre doing, that
there are so many guitar players better than they. And theyre telling the truth. If you already
play and youve had that sinking, discouraging feeling that you should be a lot better than
you are, that if you had any real talent you would be better, rest assured: your guitar hero
has the same feelings. Think of a high school football game on a small, muddy field in
some little out-of-the-way town in the middle of nowhere. Then think of an NFL team of
world-class athletes playing in a giant stadium in a major city with millions of people
watching. Though the playing field is different, the basic human emotions, the thrill of
victory and the agony of defeat, are exactly the same.
The bad news: There is no magic secret to playing the guitar.
The good news: There is no magic secret to playing the guitar.
Someone once asked Dave Bromberg how he learned to play jazz. He said, I learned one
jazz song. Then I learned another one. No magic there. He applied seat of pants to seat of
chair and dug it out. Duh.
I am often disturbed when people see me playing and say wistfully, I wish I could play the
guitar, as if I just happened to be in the vicinity when the Angel of Guitar Playing threw out
some fairy dust. I feel like saying, Well if you put in the thousands and thousand of hours
that I have, maybe you could. (A great violinist once commented ruefully, I practice eight
hours a day for 37 years and they call me a genius.) Theres no secret, theres no magic.

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Yes, there are prodigies. Youre not one of them. Neither am I. Neither are 99.9% of the
players out there. When you see someone who plays like a genius, rest assured theyve
worked like a dog.

NOISE, SOUND AND MUSIC

It is reported that Artie Shaw, the great jazz clarinetist, once compared himself to
Benny Goodman by saying, He plays the clarinet, I play music. My take on that is that Mr.
Shaw believed he was using the clarinet as a means to an end, while he perceived
Mr.Goodman to be playing the instrument as an end in itself.
Being a big Benny Goodman fan I hesitate to concur, but its a distinction worth
considering. The lesson we should learn is that even though were playing the guitar, the
objective is to make music. We must be careful with this wooden sound chamber strung
with steel wires that we hold in our hands. Its physical make-up invites mechanical
pyrotechnics, with the left hand flying up and down the fingerboard while the right hand
picks furiously away; with scales, arpeggios and licks spitting out like machine-gun fire; with
four- and five-fret stretches that seem to defy the anatomy of the human hand.

Thats all fine. But is it music? Is it pleasing to the ear? Is it in tune and in time? Does
it fit the song? Does it evoke a response in the listener? Does the audience tap its feet?
Does the music evoke feeling rather than amazement?
You can play a lot of notes and never make music. Dave Bromberg once said he
tried to wring every bit of music out of every note he played. That makes me think of each
note as a music-filled capsule with a permeable membrane. Your job is to play in such a
waythrough your technique, your awareness, your love of the musicthat the membrane
is broken and the music flows out. If you dont, the music stays locked inside and the notes
fall like stones.
My point is this: you can play the guitar for all kinds of reasonsto get girls (or
boys), to become rich and famous, to rebel, to live out a fantasy, to escape from any
number of painful and/or stressful life situations, to soothe yourself, to occupy your hands
while youre watching television or waiting for your wife to get ready.
I have played for all those reasons, and theyre all valid. Not a bad reason in the
bunch. Ultimately, however, the idea is to make music. I believe music really is the language
of the gods, because it crosses all boundaries, all cultures, all peoples. I can run into a guy

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from Japan, take out my guitar and jam for hours without ever speaking a word, and by the
end well have made a truly soulful connection.
I would remind you, too, of something the father of Winton and Branford Marsallis
told his boys: If you play for applause, applause is all youll get.
Translation: the making of music offers far richer rewards than any you can gain from
the mere approval of others. Ultimately, you play the guitar for the music.

PRACTICEGENERALLY SPEAKING
ASPIRING MUSICIAN: Id give anything to play like you.
MASTER MUSICIAN: I did give everything to play like me.
Perhaps youve heard it said: Practice makes perfect, but only if you practice perfectly.
Very true. If you play what you already know over and over, stumbling at the same places
every time, your mind only half engaged, you are not practicing. You are repeating. Practice
is not mere repetition. Practice is working for the purpose of making each repetition an
improvement over the last. Dan Crary says the goal of practice is to become a little bit
better today than you were yesterday, and not quite as good as youll be tomorrow. Good
advice.
Practice is important. It doesnt mean you have to practice eight hours a day, although if
you have that kind of time and you want to, knock yourself out. It cant hurt. Steve Vai
practiced 10 hours a day for years and it seems to have improved his playing ever so
slightly. Generally, however, practice will be effective if you keep a few simple things in
mind:
1.

2.

Be consistent. Practice every day. Make it part of your routine. If its only 15 minutes,
and if youre totally focused for those 15 minutes, and if you practice that way every day
you will make more progress than you ever thought you could make in just 15 minutes
a day. More is better, but 15 minutes, faithfully observed, is not bad.
Practice one thing at a time. The ego is a hungry monster. It wants it all and it wants it
now. Not gonna happen. Sorry. Remember the elephant: One bite at a time. Do one
thing well. Master one thing. The good news is that when you master one thing, you will
have mastered it in every song in which it appears. So in effect you really are practicing
a lot more material than you might think. (See Kenny Werners book Effortless Mastery:
Liberating the Musician Within. Much good stuff there about getting your ego out of the
way when you play.)

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3.
4.

Use your head.

Another way to say that is trust your instincts. John McGann says that any technical
difficulty can be overcome with patient analysis and persistent effort (or something to
that effect). That means think. Fifty percent of good musicianship is just common sense
(thank you, Tony Rice). If something isnt working, figure out why. Dont just keep
bashing away at it hoping dogged persistence will win the day. And dont keep doing it
one way because some book or teacher told you to do it that way. Give it a decent
amount of time to work the way youve learned. If its not working, and if a little voice
inside is saying, This doesnt work for melisten. Youre probably right.

Example: some flatpickers will swear that the only way to crosspick is with a downdown-up pattern. The very man who pioneered crosspicking on the guitar, George Shuffler,
played that way. So did Clarence White. So does Tony Rice. Guess that cinches it. Who
could be better than those guys? But wait a minute! Russ Barenberg, Steve Kaufman, and
David Grier all use a down-up-down pattern. Hmmm. Theyre not too shabby, either. What
to do? Find out for yourself! Try it both ways, plus any other way you can think of. Who
knows? Maybe youll be the person to come up with a new crosspicking pattern, like Brad
Davis did for flatpicking. He couldnt get the speed other players got playing straight downup-down-up, so he invented his own unique down-down-up technique and is a killer player.
Good thing he didnt stick with the right way. They say Charlie Christian played all those
beautifully fast, fluid lines with just his thumb using all downstrokes. Guess he didnt read
the book that says youre not supposed to do that. And lets not forget the blind Puerto
Rican kid, Jose Feliciano, who plays a nylon string guitar with a pick using all upstrokes.
Never has such a wrong way to play sounded so totally right. Nuff said.
5.

6.

Be patient. It is common to feel like youre getting nowhere. Its called a plateau. Going
onward but not upward. Well, in guitar playing, if youre really practicing the right way,
onward is upward. It might not happen as fast as you would like, but it will happen. One
day youll do something you couldnt do before and it will seem effortlessthanks to all
your wasted effort.
You gotta love it. If practice is such a drag you just dont want to do itwell, Im not
sure what to say. Most players I know like to practice because it means they get to have
a guitar in their hands, which for them is what they live for, anyway. Chet Atkins said if
you really love something youre going to want to do it a lot, and doing it a lot is going to
make you better at doing it. Soyou really do have to love it. The sound that comes
from a plastic pick vibrating a steel string strung across a big ol wooden box with a hole

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in the middle has to be the most beautiful sound on Gods green earth to you. If it is,
youll practice.

PRACTICINGas it specifically relates to bluegrass flatpicking

Keeping in mind that there are no rules and that whatever works is right, the following
information seems to work best for a majority of bluegrass players.

THE FLATPICK.
A hard, or heavy pick seems to work best in drawing the deep, rich, woody tone out of
an acoustic guitar. Many players feel it helps them sound more smooth, or legato, as well,
because the pick has no give and thus doesnt slap on the strings as it bends back and
forth. That being said, heavy encompasses a range of gauges, some heavier, or thicker,
than others. Some of them can be 2 mm and more in thickness, feeling more like a pebble
than a pick. I find that to be a bit much. For what its worth, my own preference is for 1.4
mm thickness. That feels right to me. I use a Wegen TF140. Its made by Michel Wegen
in Holland (www.wegenpicks.com) from a polymer that produces a great tone for acoustic
guitar. I think he actually developed the material himself. The TF140 is a slightly larger tricorner-style pick which I like because I get a little more pick to hold onto and thus a little
more feeling of control. Wegen makes a classic teardrop shape bluegrass pick as well
from the same material, plus lots of other styles. Theyre not cheap ($15 for two of the
TF140s, but they wear like iron). But when you consider that your pick determines a lot of
your toneand your tone is EVERYTHINGits worth the investment.
And againthis is what works for me, which I only discovered after much experimentation.
It might be all wrong for you. One of the best flatpickers on the planet, Steve Kaufman, uses
a medium pick, which most other flatpickers shun, and no one would argue that it doesnt
work for himthe only guy to win the Winfield Flatpicking Championship three times.
One other thinga good many guitar and mandolin players use the rounded corner of a
teardrop pick instead of the point, claiming it gives them more speed and smoothness. Try it
and compare it to the sound you get with the pointed corner.
STRINGS

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If youre just playing by yourself or with another guitar player, you can use light gauge
strings. Theyre easier to play than mediums and have a sweet, clear sound. However,
since bluegrass is typically a group effort involving banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and bass,
volume is important, especially since everything but the bass is louder than the guitar. Most,
if not all, bluegrass musicians playing regularly in a band use medium-gauge strings. They
give you more volume and power, more substance, more oomph, and you need it.
Bluegrass is not mood music. Its high-octane stuff and you need to generate power when
you play. Light-gauge is just a little too thin. So my recommendation is medium-gauge.
Theyre a little harder to play but youll get used to it, and youll find they draw out the full
sound of your guitar much better, especially the big dreadnought-size body, which is what I
recommend for bluegrass playing.
RHYTHM
OK, now we get serious. Youre probably not learning to play bluegrass guitar so you can
play rhythm. You want to play lead and take solos. Fine. What happens when its somebody
elses turn to solo? What will you do then? If you dont know how to play rhythm you cant
do for the soloist what he or she did for you when you were soloing, which was to lay down
a solid, steady beat for you to play against. If they were playing good rhythm they were
helping you play better. How will you return the favor?
The point is: unless you plan to be the only soloist in the band, and to solo constantly, even
when the singer is singing, you better learn to play rhythm and play it well. In your musical
life its what youll be playing 90% of the time.
In addition, rhythm just happens to be the heart and soul of all music, and certainly
bluegrass. It dont mean a thing if it aint got that swing. Until the advent of George
Shuffler and Don Reno, and then perhaps Doc Watson and Clarence White, the guitar
wasnt even thought of as a lead instrument in bluegrass. It was there strictly to lay down a
shot-from-guns rhythm for the banjo, fiddle, and mandolin. The great bluegrass guitar
players of the 40s and 50s were all rhythm playersLester Flatt, Jimmy Martin, Charlie
Waller, Joe Stuart, and even into the 60s with Peter Rowan and Dave Dillon. In fact, long
after bluegrass lead guitar playing was a regular feature in many bands, you never heard it
in the band run by the father of bluegrass himself, Bill Monroe. Strictly rhythm, thank you
very much.
Heres the deal. Rhythm is what really gets people going, gets them feeling the music. Its
what makes them judge a concert as good or not good, even though they cant explain

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why. A lot of hot playing with no rhythmic underpinning is actually irritating, and youll know
it when you hear it. The reason why you love the sound of the great lead players like Tony
Rice and David Grier is because theyre so rhythmic when they solo. Theyre right in the
pocket, perfectly in sync with the rhythm. Even when theyre playing completely solo (as in
David Griers exquisite CD Ive Got the House to Myself) the rhythm is implied. You still
want to tap your foot. Its all there. They pick you up and carry you with them.
And by the way, all the great lead players are great rhythm players, too. Believe me, thats
how they kept their jobs. Listen to Clarence White with the Kentucky Colonels backing up
his brother, Roland, on the mandolin, or Tony Rice playing behind J.D. Crowe on the banjo,
or Peter Rowan behind Bill Monroeand youll realize how much that guitar is creating the
drive that makes the music so powerful.
Trust me: If you get the reputation as a rock-solid rhythm player, a lot of people will want to
play with you. Conversely, if you get the reputation as a hot lead player who cant play
rhythm, start developing a solo act.

THE METRONOME
The reason to use a metronome is to develop your internal sense of time so you can keep a
steady beat and not drag or rush. Rushing can be a particular problem in bluegrass. The
tempos are often quick, creating a play-fast mentality that can lead you to play even faster
than the tempo. Its called speeding up, and youll know its happening when you start a
song at a comfortable speed and finish it struggling to keep up. Youve sped up.
A metronome can help here. Set it at a tempo where you can play something comfortably.
Then keep bumping it up one notch at a time, gradually, so its just a little beyond what
youre comfortable with. This is how you build speed (actually, its one way to build speed
more on that later). Its also how you program yourself to be aware that youre not just
playing the guitar; youre playing music, and that means playing notes within the context of
a tempo, of which you must be continually mindful. Trust me: If you screw up but manage to
keep the tempo, people wont notice; if you screw up and the tempo falters, everybody will
look to see whats wrong. Let the metronome be the dictator. You play along with it.
A metronome is marked with numbers, generally going from 40 to 208. Those numbers
refer to beats per minute, or BPMin other words, the metronome is calibrated to click that

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many times per minute. Assuming youre in the common time signature of 4/4, that means
the metronome clicks 4 times for every measure. And if you were playing straight quarter
notes, you would play one noteor in guitar terms, one down-strokeper click.
Try it. Get a metronome and set it to 120. Take a melody you know and play one note for
every click. Does it seem kind of slow for bluegrass? Double it to 220 and.wait a minute,
there is no 220. It only goes up to 208. Now what? Stay at 120 and play two notes per click.
If you were playing straight eighth notes, as many fiddle tunes are played, that would mean
a down-up picking motion on every click. If that still seems a little slowwell, now youre
getting into the reality of bluegrass tempos. In actuality, to play a tune at a real-world
bluegrass tempo you would be playing four notes per click at 120. At four beats to the bar
that means youre playing 16th notes.
EXAMPLE:
CLICK (1)
d-u-d-u-

CLICK (2)
d-u-d-u-

CLICK (3)
d-u-d-u-

CLICK (4)
d-u-d-u-

To get the feel of this, put the metronome at, say 80, and play Blackberry Blossom or
Turkey in the Straw. That should be slow enough for you to play in time and still get the
feeling of four picks per click.
Usually, if youre counting one-two-three-four with the metronome, the tendency is to accent
the downbeat, or the one and the three: one-two-three-four. However, another way to
swing with a metronome is to accent the backbeat, or two and the four: one-two-threefour. Thats what the mandolin chop does in a bluegrass band, and what the snare drum
does in a rock band. This is also what helps create groove in a band: the bass is playing
the one and three while the mandolin plays the two and four. And the guitar player is free to
do both, playing the classic boom-chick, boom-chick rhythm pattern, where the boom is
the downbeat and chick is the backbeat, or offbeat.

RIGHT HAND/LEFT HAND

Precise synchronization of both hands is key to playing fluid, rhythmic bluegrass guitar.
When coordination is even a little bit off you get a staccato, choppy, picky sound that
manages to sound all the notes without really sounding like music. What you want to
constantly strive for is to have your hands playing as one, where the right hand picks the

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string at the precise moment that the left hand is fretting the note, and that the left hand
continues to let the note ring for its full duration. We may be talking nano-seconds here but
the rule still holdsreleasing the note before its full time value is up, or picking it before its
solidly fretted, leads to the choppy, stuttering sound I spoke of, as if someone is talking
without quite finishing each word. Yes, you know what he means but its annoying
nonetheless.
How do you do this? Mostly by being aware of it and make adjustments according to your
own intuition. There are exercises you can do, as in Sal Salvadores Single String Method
for the Guitar. But the real secret is awareness. Listen to yourself as you play. Listen for the
smooth, fluid, legato sound of two hands playing as one. The more you listen for it, the
more your hands will produce it. As Russ Barenberg says, Let your ears tell your hands
what to do.
A key concept here is something called sympathetic tension. The phrase is not mine. It
comes from Jamie Andreas (check out guitarprinciples.com). You can see what it is from a
simple exercise. Take your left hand off the guitar and play a simple cross-picking pattern
with your right hand on the open strings.

u d u

= down stroke (d) and upstroke (u)

---------------0------------0-------------------0-------------0----------0------0-------------0-----------0----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now finger a D-chord with your left hand and raise and lower your pinky on the first string,
third fret to alternate between the D and a Dsus4, like this:

d u

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---------------2------------3-----------------2-----------------3------------------2----------------3-------------3----------3----------------------3-------------------3----------------2-------------2-----------2-------------------2-------------------2---------------2----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, compare how your right hand feels when its functioning by itself with how it
feels when you bring the left hand, however slightly, into play with that D chord, especially
when you raise and lower the pinky on the first string, You might notice a slight tensing up
of your right hand in sympathy with whatever the left hand is doing, even though the right
hand is doing exactly the same thing it was doing when the left hand was resting. And this
is on a very simple left hand movement. As your left hand fingerings get more complex and
the tempos get faster, expect that your right hand will tense up even more in sympathy with
the left hand. Technically, your right hand shouldnt care what the left hand is doing, but it
does. Or, rather, you do. So its up to you to really work on keeping your right hand loose
and relaxed no matter what your left hand is doing or how fast its going. That takes a lot of
work, mental and physical, but its absolutely essential for the smooth, fluid attack and
execution that makes this music so satisfying to listen to.

As for the left hand specifically, the main issues here are strength and control. An acoustic
guitar, especially one thats been set up for bluegrass (medium gauge strings and medium
action) requires some raw physical strength to fret the notes solidly and cleanly. Stringed
instrument players have even been referred to as finger athletes. So you really need to do
some work to build up that strength, especially in the left pinky, which I thoroughly
recommend you use. Some players get by without it (they just learned that way), but
seeing as youre just learning, use it. Kenny Smith said when he was learning he was told
that if he used his little finder hed be twice as fast, and Kenny Smith is a hell of a flatpicker.
Concerning control, what you want to avoid is flying fingers, the tendency of the left-hand
fingers to spring up off the fret board when changing positions or playing a quick sequence
of notes. Its simple physics: what goes up must come down. And the farther up they go,
they farther down they have to come, which means you have to be even more fast and
more accurate to stay with the tempo. On the other hand, by keeping your left-hand fingers
close to the fret board at all times, you are minimizing the amount of effort you have to

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exert, shortening the distance between notes, and increasing speed and accuracy by
staying very close to the notes you want to play. Its called economy of motion, and if you
want to see it demonstrated to a superb degree, watch Tony Rice play some time. It seems
as if his left hand glides on a track thats connected to the neck. Steve Kaufman says he
taught his fingers to stay down by playing with the neck about a quarter-inch from the door
jam. He knew he had it when his fingers stopped hitting the wood. Ouch.
Concomitant with this is to not press down harder than you have to on the strings. It takes
less pressure than you think to fret a note, especially if youre fretting properly (i.e., right up
to the back of the next fret, almost touching it). And rememberthe more pressure you put
on a string, the more effort you need to release it, which can also lead to your fingers flying
off the fret board. Avoid a baseball bat grip on the neck. Develop a feather-light touch
where your fingers depress rather than press. (Its a subtle distinction, but God is in the
details, right?)

The right hand is THE most important element in bluegrass guitar playing. Think about it. It
affects virtually everything that creates your personal soundtouch, tone, timing, attack,
volume, phrasing, dynamics. And unlike electric players, who have a grab bag of effects to
enhance their sound, you havea pick. On the acoustic guitar, your right hand is your
voice. Nothing less. So it pays to keep some concepts in mind.
1. Grip the pick loosely. David Grier says good musicianship is all about looseness. He
was referring to Mike Compton, the mandolin player. Watch him, David says, and you
wonder why he doesnt drop the pick. Take a lesson from that. Grip the pick so that if your
grip were any looser you would drop it. Really. Thats how loose you have to be. As the
piece youre playing gets more complicated, or gets faster, the natural tendency is to tense
up, to pick harder, to dig in, to try more. You must reprogram yourself to do just the
opposite. The faster it is, the more you relax.
As to how you should hold the pick, its up to you. The classic way is between the pad of
the thumb and the first joint of the index finger. But some amazing playersDan Crary,
Albert Lee, Eddie van Halen, Carlos Santanahold it with three fingers (thumb on top and
index and middle finger on the bottom). No argument from me. Hold it the way it seems
most natural.

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2. Play right at the back of the sound hole. If you play right over the sound hole or up at
the front, toward the neck, you get a mellow, open sound. Pretty and sweet, but not the
classic bluegrass sound. When you play more toward the bridge, at the back of the sound
hole, you get a harder, punchier sound while still capturing the warmth of the wood. It also
seems, at least to me, that the strings have more tension behind the hole and less give,
which I find helps the pick to move more smoothly at faster tempos. BUTthis is not to say
you should never play over the sound hole or up toward the neck. There are many
occasions (a pretty ballad, a waltz, chord-melody arrangement) in which you want that
sound and you should by all means use it. You may have to make some small adjustments
in your technique (I find it requires a slightly different hand position) but thats all part of the
learning process.
3. Yes, anchoring is OK. Many guitar methods insist that no part of your right hand should
ever be touching the face of the guitar while you play. And their reasons make sense. If
your hand is not anchored in any way, it has complete freedom to move across the strings.
True. And if you can do it, do. Just rememberthis is bluegrass guitar. You dont have an
amplifier or a volume knob. All your power, drive, volume, and dynamics have to come from
your right hand. And to do that, most bluegrass guitarists Ive seen, though by no means all,
have some contact with the face of the guitar when they play. It isnt really bracing or
anchoring, which implies stiffness and immobility. You DO want your right hand to be free to
move. But bluegrass guitar playing does require a bit of digging in, a bit of force, and
giving your right hand a point of reference helps. Tony Rices pinky and third finger touch
the guitar. Steve Kaufman, Russ Barenberg, David Grier, Robin Bullock, Mark Cosgrove,
Doc Watsonthey all have some contact with the face of the guitar at various times. Dan
Crary plants his wrist on the bridge pins and plays from there.
In the end its whatever works to produce the sound you want to get. But anchoring
is fine, as long as youre not really planting your hand so the movement is restricted.
4. Play from the elbow, the forearm, the wrist, or the hand? Yes. This is one area where
every great player seems to be different. Doc Watson plays with a rigid forearm and
generates his picking motion from the elbow. Russ Barenberg seems to play with a very
fluid wrist motion. Tony Rice and Wyatt Rice use their thumb joint to create a smooth
picking sound, so it seems as if their right hand is barely moving. When youre playing
rhythm all elements are involved, right up to the shoulder. In lead playing its whatever helps
you get your soundagain, as long as its loose and relaxed.

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SPEED
Yes, you have to have it. People will say you dont have to be a speed-demon to be a good
musician. They will say that playing the right notes, in tune and in time, is far more
important than being able to execute a blistering string of 16 th notes. And they are
absolutely, 100% correct. Taste, tone, timingthey are what make music music. But youre
playing bluegrass music and theres no getting around it: this is high-energy music and a lot
of it is played at very quick tempos. Speed has to be in your bag of tricks.
How do you get speed? There are different schools of thought but the one I recommend
(with an exception, as you will see) says that the secret to playing fast is playing slowvery,
very, very slow. Your objective should always be good tone and good time, so never play
faster than you can play in tempo and without making mistakes. The principle in effect here
is that you have to work in concert with the way your neuromuscular system learns. Moving
your fingers faster than your brain can absorb the mechanics of what youre doing will not
build reliable technique. And reliability is what your after. Technique is not a lottery. It isnt
hit or miss. Technique is the mechanical process that sounds the right notes in the right
order at the right timeevery time. It has to be there when you need it, without question.
When you step on the accelerator you cant be wondering if the car will respond. So the
process has to be thoroughly and indelibly ingrained in the mind-body dynamic that
produces precise physical coordination.
And this happens when you play very slowly, with complete attention and awareness, so
that everything you do is fully absorbed until it becomes part of your unconscious, until it
becomes, dare I say it, easy. The great players make playing fast look easy because it IS
easy for them. Theyve MADE it easy.
(And when I say slow, I mean SLOW. Set a metronome at 60 and play one note per click,
remaining completely aware of whatever tension you may be feeling and getting rid of it at
that tempo. Then move the metronome to 70 and do the same thing. And so on. (Much
more on this at Jamie Andreass website on the principles of correct guitar practice, which
REALLY gets into the art and science of practicing.)
My one exception to this is that if you always play at tempos with which youre completely
comfortable, youre going to reach a point where youve reached the limit of whats
comfortable for you. Getting from playing 16th notes at 100 bpm comfortably does not
automatically and necessarily translate into playing 16 th notes easily at 138 bpm. At least it

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hasnt for me. What I recommend is this: at some point in your development, when you feel
youve acquired solid control, relaxation and musicality at tempos that are comfortable for
you, start setting the metronome slightly beyond your comfort level. Play at that tempo for a
while and see where youre having trouble. Then work on those fractures at the slower
tempos. Then bump the speed back up again, test your work, and continue the process
until that new, slightly uncomfortable tempo starts feeling comfortable. And so on.
One other thing you might try: For the last five minutes of your practice, take a tune you
know really well and play it crazy fast, way beyond your comfort level, and concentrate on
staying relaxed at that level, regardless of what it sounds like. What this does is get you
acclimated to quick tempos so they wont completely throw you in a real-world situation.
Part of the problem with playing fast is that if you never do it in practice, any time you get in
a live playing situation its going to feel really unfamiliar and beyond your ability, causing you
to tense up even more, with all the attendant problems that will ensue. Playing crazy, out-ofyour-depth fast for a small amount of time every day gradually desensitizes you to the fear
of a fast tempo, if nothing else. At least youve been there, its familiar. And if you keep
concentrating on relaxation and not on the mistakes youre making, over time youll find
youre actually hitting some notes at a tempo you thought was way beyond you.
Againonly do this briefly. The vast majority of your time should be spent on slow, steady,
gradual progress where youre always trying to make it sound like music.

For this reason I also recommend a hierarchy of practice situations, going from most
effective to least effective in terms of simulating a real, live performance situation, which,
after all, is what youre practicing for.
1. Jamming with others comes closest to the real thing. In a sense it is a performance, to
the extent that youre performing for the other players in the jam. It also puts you in a band
context where you have to be mindful of how your playing meshes with what everyone else
is doing. Youre also playing at the real tempo, so you get a reality check on what stage
youre playing is really at. BUTits not the real thing and you are free to experiment and
make mistakes in the company of those who are doing the same thing. Nobodys paying
you money or expecting you to entertain people and play perfectly, so the pressure is off.
Jams are the best laboratory for working on your playing. I cant tell you how many great
bluegrass players spent their early years going to bluegrass festivals and jamming for three
days straight, week after week, all summer long. If you want to get good fast, thats how to
do it.

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2. Play along with records. Again, although its a solitary pursuit you are playing with a band
and the tempo is real, so at least youre dealing with the elements of a live performance.
3. Play with a practice tape youve made. Play the chords to a tune you want to learn into a
tape recorder. Play the rhythm part for as long as you can stand it. Then play it back and
solo to it. Again, at least youre being forced to keep your playing in sync with an external
element.
4. Play with a metronome. Again, at least theres an element outside of yourself you have to
pay attention to.
7.

5. Play by yourself. The least effective but, hey, at least you have a guitar in your hands
and youre moving your fingers. (By the way, playing watching TV isnt bad either. You
can try to play along with the music from whatever show youre watching. You can even
do some ear training by trying to play exactly what you hear, like a shows theme song
or some jingle from a commercial. Or, while youre watching a scene you can try to play
some music thats appropriate to whats happeningdramatic, romantic, humorous,
fast-paced, etc. It all helps.)

SCALES AND EXERCISES: YES? NO? MAYBE?

Scales are the building blocks of music. What reason would there be not to learn them?
Well, Doc Watson and Norman Blake are good reasons. Both are world-class flatpickers
who probably dont know a whole lot about music theory. David Grier is a good reason. He
playsfor my money, anywaythe best bluegrass guitar on the planet today, and yet he
claims to just be finding new ways to get from G to C. Robert Shaffer is a good reason. He
won the Winfield Flatpicking Championship in 1999 and said in a workshop he couldnt
play a C scale if my life depended on it. I doubt thats really true, but its clear he doesnt
spend a lot of time on theory.
The point: you dont need to know every scale and mode to play bluegrass guitar. If you
flatpick a fiddle tune youre pretty much doing a scale exercise anyway. A lot of fiddle tunes
with fast eighth-note runs are that way. (In fact, open a book on guitar technique and theyll
give you fiddle tunes to play as exercises!) Even if you just play the melody to a song,

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youre using the scale of the key youre in. You just dont know it. So in effect youre
learning scales every time you play. (Play Angeline the Baker and youll be an expert at
the pentatonic scale without ever having heard of it.)
If you practice scales and exercises, pick ones that will help you play what you actually play.
For instance, a bluegrass player would be better off playing eighth-note scale exercises in
major and minor keys than spending weeks learning whole-tone scales and diminished
runs, which dont really come into play in the standard bluegrass repertoire. Even for the
major and minor keys, you would probably get more practical use out of those in A, G, D, E,
and C than in the flat and sharp keys, seeing as bluegrass players usually avoid those by
using a capo. Or practice exercises that build right hand speed and strength, since you can
never have too much of that in bluegrass.
Of course, if you want to be a complete musician, than scales, modes, arpeggios and
theory are all there to be learned, and they sure cant hurt. But with limited time, its best to
practice what will help you with what youre doing right now.
MUSICIAN 1: Do you read music?
MUSICIAN 2: Not enough to hurt my playing.

INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL
Youre living at a time when bluegrass musicians have a wealth of so-called
instructional materials to draw from. This was not always the case. When I started playing in
1959 I would learn things by putting a 33 1/3 rpm (revolutions-per-minute) LP (long-playing)
vinyl record (remember those?) on a turntable (remember those?) and slow it down to 16
rpm, picking up the needle (would you know what it was if I said stylus?) putting it back
down again, and repeating the process until (a) I learned the lick, (b) the needle broke, or
(c) the grooves had been worn so much the record wouldnt play any more. Today there are
audio tapes, video tapes, DVDs, and mountains of tablature in the stores, through the mail,
and on the Internet. Search the name of the tune and youll have the tablature right there in
front of you. If you wonder how Tony Rice or Dan Crary execute a certain lick, you dont
have to drive 15 hours to a festival and wait around in the heat or the rain to watch them
play. Just order the video.

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This is good. It certainly shortens the learning curve. And theres absolutely nothing
wrong with copying your favorite players. Its how most people learn. So I would
recommend themup to a point.
You have to remember that all these players, though individually great, play with
markedly different approaches to the instrument. What if Tony Rice says to cross-pick one
way and Russ Barenberg says to do it another? What if Steve Kaufman says to play Old
Joe Clark using strict alternate picking and David Grier says to use slides, hammer-ons,
and pull-offs? And then Brad Davis says you can be even faster and cleaner if you use his
double-downstroke approach, which flies in the face of everything youve heard so far?
This goes on and on. Everybody is going to tell you what works for them, which may
or may not work for you. Obviously, you have to experiment and see, but the point is: too
much information can be even more harmful than not enough. Instructional materials can
become addictive, and before you know it youve acquired piles of the stuff that feels more
like homework than music. It can seem overwhelming, not to mention confusing when
everybody is saying something a little different.
So you have to be discerning. Theres nothing wrong with exposing yourself to lots of
different players. You can pick up something from each of them, which hopefully will all go
into the development of your own style. But you may not want to spend too much time
learning everything they show you note for note. Maybe just look at the video and watch
them play without worrying about the accompanying tablature. I have a David Grier video
that I just watch periodically to absorb his approach to the instrument. At one point I did
learn the tablature but Ive forgotten it because it wasnt me. If I went back to it I would only
learn it so I could adapt it to the way its comfortable and easy for me to play the tune. This
(a) immediately makes me more creative instead of simply taking musical dictation, (b) it
makes me dig to find what works for me, and (c) by so doing helps me develop my own
style. When Im done Ive made the song mine, which is just what David Grier did when he
decided to play it the way hes showing you. Thats the way I can play like David Grier.
That, I think, is how instructional materials can really work. As Dan 20 820 8 says,
in the end its all about you teaching yourself the guitar. Thats the stuff you wont forget
because it has grown organically from who you are and what you feel.
Another thought: if youre going to buy instructional material, buy just one or two
books or videos and really master them. Keep going back to them, rather than just moving
on to the next thing that looks interesting. As guitar player s we can be like kids in a candy
store: I want that! Oh, that looks good too. And how about some of that! They all promise to
make me a better player. Yes! More, more more!! That way lies madness, or at the very
least a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. Practice starts to feel like homework,

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which is the ultimate irony because when we started playing as kids, homework is what we
blew off so we could play the guitar!