Stefan Grossman

Let's Get Stoned - Fingerpicking The Devils Music

The Blues has been called The Devil's Music. It can be played in many different ways. Each brings a different dimension to this timeless musical form. In this lesson we travel the roads and byways of the South in searchofvarious approaches to translate this musical form to the strings and frets of your guitar. From Atlanta to the Mississippi Delta, from New Orleans to Texas, this lesson presents diverse and exciting fingerstyle bluestechniquesand styles.

We explore the steady alternating bass of Mississippi John Hurt's Ain't Nobody But You Babe to the rough and tumble playing of Son House's Banty Rooster in an Open G tuning. Barbecue Bob'smelodicMississippi Heavy Water Blues with it's repeating bass line motif is rearranged to a partial Open G tuning (D G D G B E) and combines the Atlanta blues sound with that from North Carolina. We get a taste of New Orleans anda moresophisticated approach for the playing of the Ray Charles hit Let's Go Get Stoned. We end our journey with Goin' Down Slow. A steady bass played blues in A with melodic lead lines but played in dropped D tuning, a techniquetaughtto me by Mance Lipscomb.