groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/22/2025:  06:17:59

I have no one else to communicate with about such things...so, well, since so many fiddlers' are also guitar enthusiasts...

Just to refresh or tell for the first time to people who don't rush to read my posts...lol...I recently got me a new guitar...really couldn't afford it but what the heck...I busted up my oath of many years prior and walked into a music store to help my grandson find himself a good "heavy metal" style guitar. Well he was being picky and going way to slow, trying them ALL out...lol...and I found myself wandering into the acoustic room...uh oh... grandson, since he was little, always accused me of sniffing the acoustic glue smells of the new acoustic guitars in the acoustic rooms of music stores...yes, he got that from me...since I was 10 and managed to get a new guitar against all odds, and everytime I opened up that case the smell of the glue just brought a delight to my mind...and to this day that acoustic guitar glue smell new guitars just gives me sheer happiness and happy memories of a lifetime of sitting with a guitar. So he chuckles about the real reason I go into acoustic rooms if I dare to walk into a music store..."uh-oh, Granny's sniffing the guitar glue again!"

Well anyway I was just gonna mess around to kill some time while he tested each and every guitar in there...lol...picked up a tiny little thing...beautiful mahogany GS mini, Taylor...I have no spending cash of course, and then the dogs both got sick...lol...so...yeah, crawlin' in that hole of debt over the smell of a fresh guitar, plucked straight from the tree. So I picked it up out of curiosity and was immediately star struck...played a little...walked it to the counter and got out my credit card. The rest is history. I need it like a hole in the head. I have no time for fiddling, banjo, guitar or any of it these days.

So anyway, last night I stay ed up way too late because I was remembering when I could play really hard stuff on the guitar...Scott Joplin rags, a few classical pieces, Canon Ball Rag...stuff like that...forgot them all over the years from lack of playing. So I remembered I had played S.Joplin's The Entertainer rag on youtube just for fun several years ago...on a borrowed baritone guitar a friend from TN let me borrow for a couple of weeks...boy that was tough...I was challenging myself to play some of the toughest stuff on that big ol' monstrosity of a guitar. Well I found that video, thinkin' I could watch my hands and try to relearn that. But the video portion is bad...the audio if fine, but it's not a good video...so...can't see my hands good 'nuff to snitch a few licks from that one.

So now I'm trying to figure out...how do I relearn these things...the only time for music I ever have is on a lucky night from about 10 to midnight (when I turn into a pumpkin at that time). Not much time. I'm figuring I think it looks like I played it in E the last time (who the heck knows why????). But then I see Chet Atkins played it in D...which seems to make more sense for ease of handling all of that. So...now I'm thinking to try that. Little time. Huge motivation. Need sleep. But...ugh...I wanna learn that plus some of those other cool things that are a big challenge (for me anyway) on the guitar. The little cute nice-smelling Taylor is calling me to do that!

No purpose to this post...just sayin', that's all.

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/22/2025:  06:28:02

Just to continue the conversation.... here's how I fumbled through it on the big ol' monster baritone guitar in E (of course it sounds a few steps lower on the baritone gutiar, but I fingered it as E chords and such) youtu.be/8KLQMF4xa-U?si=TnCjsqiR8y8YEcb3

Here's how Chet played it...ain't the whole thing, but still...key of D looks less awkward than in E youtu.be/kHtwF-gpluc?si=rv-cOgUTYgdCcNtB

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/22/2025:  06:31:17

Oh...I think you gotta drop down to D on that E string...as much as I love cross-tunings and other banjo tunings, I just hate to do that on the guitar...lol. It really throws me...so...maybe E after all. The awkward fingerings might be better for me than the awkward tuning.

Ok...am I soliloquizing? Maybe that's 'nuff of this talk.

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/22/2025:  06:32:56

Oh and just one more thing...this guy is great and the Dropped D idea is looking a little more tempting... youtu.be/RCGGG9piAGY?si=YCmgWnQC_jsHrTvM

ChickenMan - Posted - 05/22/2025:  07:40:51

Peggy, dropped D is not anything like cross tuning a fiddle. It's one string. When you make a G chord is the only time you have to do something different (Em too, but that's easy). Sometimes I use my Shubb brand capo to only clamp the A through high E string and play out of D (actually key of E) like it's drop tuned only the G chord shape doesn't need to be changed.

DougD - Posted - 05/22/2025:  07:45:06

The person in the middle in that video is Tommy Emmanuel, who's pretty good himself.
Richard Smith had a bit of a headstart. Here he is, age 11, playing with Chet himself: youtu.be/KNQkMyoS1Pc?feature=shared
BTW, he's playing a single cutaway guitar with nylon strings, which Chet also liked. Have you ever heard Guy Van Duser? Another incredible guitarist who plays on nylon strings. He's on Youtue, but I looked recently and couldn't find anything that really did justice to his tone. Years ago I recorded him and Billy Novick, clarinet and vocals, for a radio series, and I think the guitar sounded better.
BTW, I think "The Entertainer" was originally published in C for piano. After it was used in the movie I'm sure hundreds (thousands?) of guitar players tried to learn it.
You're making me want to dig out a guitar and strum a chord or two. I don't have calluses though - wish I had one with nylon strings!

pete_fiddle - Posted - 05/22/2025:  13:05:56

Peggy from what i've heard of your picking, it is very good. i would just relax and learn some new stuff, but with the hindsight and experience that you already have. Enjoy your self and your new guitar !

NCnotes - Posted - 05/22/2025:  17:49:07

Nylon strings player here, love ‘em…



“The Entertainer” was played by some classical guitar friends…but nobody “figured” it out…we just read sheet music with fingering and barre chords already notated on it…



It seems way hard to figure it out!

Good luck Peggy, that’s some tough stuff!

PS - So if you want to cheat (like I would). you could just get ahold of the sheet music or tab transcription of "The Entertainer" by Richard Smith. It's such a lovely version and looks pretty ergonomic for the hands...

Edited by - NCnotes on 05/22/2025 17:54:42

NCnotes - Posted - 05/22/2025:  18:21:50

Oh, and my classical guitar friend Alan played Ashokan Farewell gorgeously…

I regret not recording him…

he moved away…



Doug, i switched to nylon from steel cuz I was getting callouses that interfered somewhat with ‘feeling’ the strings of my violin…they are indeed easier on the fingers! 

Edited by - NCnotes on 05/22/2025 18:22:35

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/22/2025:  19:42:26

I agree the guitar calluses can mess with our fiddling...but I don't like the feel of nylon strings...lol...seems my fingers can't make good contact for mashin' 'em down good...they sorta roll around under my fingers, the nylon strings seem to do.



I have used Dropped D for stuff like Moonshadow back when I had my one and only music gig in the ol' Steakhouse in SE KY...a few other things too...can't remember now what they were, but it just throws me, psychologically...on guitar. I like standard on guitar. The D playing does look a lot more ergonomic, as NC observed...I agree it does. I just don't like my E dropped to a D...call me crazy...lol...just like some people don't like to mess with fiddle tunings, I guess. I love to cross tune the fiddle, but really don't like doing that on guitar. So...I guess I'm either gonna play it in E, A, or G...not happy with what my thoughts so far in G are like...too ... open or something. I like a closed feeling for it so I guess maybe that's why I did it in E the first time and maybe I'll try to figure it out again. So far I've had no time to set my fingers onto my guitar, just worry about how I'm gonna do it...lol.



Had my weekly heavy metal lesson with grandson and it was really hard to keep up...I didn't touch his electric guitar all week either. He keeps adding more songs and I keep falling behind...lol. I'm not being a good student. I gotta try harder. To me, those "power chords" are hard to play...just so different. I'm teaching him Blackbird too, the Beatles Blackbird... and he's just about got that whole thing down.



Tommy Emmanuel comes to KY quite a bit, Doug. He's an official Ky Thumb picker...trouble is he doesn't come to my area...but my friends have attended his workshops in Louisville quite a few times. I just have such travel anxiety I can't go there...I can't stand the trip between here and Louisville. So...I've never been, but I know people who have seen him a lot, talked to him, played in his workshops, etc. He's absolutely wild. Gotta be the best guitarist alive today, seems like.

Edited by - groundhogpeggy on 05/22/2025 19:42:52

ShawnCraver - Posted - 05/22/2025:  19:46:23

impressive picking there peggy. more of that!

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/23/2025:  04:07:12

Thanks Shawn...that was 18 years ago, apparently, or so...lol. Now it's time to try to relearn/remember how to play that one and some others i've long since forgotten.

NCnotes - Posted - 05/23/2025:  04:39:11

Wow I just watched it - it’s awesome Peggy!!
Yep not worth changing your tuning, it’s great just the way it is…
I think it will Fly easily on the little guitar!

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/23/2025:  05:30:35

Thanks, NC...hope so. I fear my reality now is that I will never have time or focus to get back what I've lost on any instrument...it's hard dealing with our daily lives. It's all up to me...and I just can't do it...so it's rough. No time for music. Hubby suffers very bad...it's just all tough, very tough.  

I made three videos with that baritone guitar that night...we had a get togther and our friend had brought it up to me to play for a while, until we could get back together again.  Here's something easier I played on that baritone that night, at that little birthday party we had ...  just to get a picture of the sound of that thing...I did like it, but it's hard to manage.... now I've got the opposite...a tiny baby guitar...  hope some day I can make some videow with that one...but I played Freight Train too and a couple others I think...maybe one other . Freight Train is easier...lol.  youtu.be/PN_jiRsISlY?si=Yiaa5jnMrwrk9f5w

Edited by - groundhogpeggy on 05/23/2025 05:41:30

DougD - Posted - 05/23/2025:  08:06:42

Peggy, I finally found the link to your "Entertainer." Very nice job, and it seems like there are some phrases that go quite well in E. I don't think I've ever even seen a baritone guitar. I Iike the richness of the sound but miss the projection of the melody. That kind of playing, which seems popular these days from what little I've seen, reminds me more of classical guitar playing than the kind of "earthier" stuff of the earlier KY players though. You can see it in the movement of your thumb.

DougD - Posted - 05/23/2025:  14:58:11

A little off topic, but related to "Freight Train." The pattern fingerpicking that was done by high school girls with long straight hair during the "folk boom" and called "Travis picking" or "Cotten picking" really had little to do with the way those people actually played. It should have been called "Baez picking."
I had the opportunity to see both of those people play very close up. I saw Merle Travis twice - once at the Philadelphia Folk Festival as a groundling at a big outdoor daytime stage. He was playing an acoustic guitar that I think was a Martin D-28 body with a custom Bigsby neck. He was just a tiny figure on a distant stage. But in 1967 he played at the NCO club in Saigon. He was accompanied by a Filipino bass player and playing a big bodied electric guitar. There was no stage, just floor level, and I was in a folding chair, front row center, only about three feet away. I'm way too slow witted to really learn anything that way, but I did pick up a few performance techniques.
Even better, in the Fall of 1978 our friends the New Lost City Ramblers invited us to be part of their 20th anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, along with Pete Seeger and Elizabeth Cotten. We all got together the night before to plan the show and rehearse, and after dinner Mrs. Cotten sat in an easy chair in the living room and played for awhile. I sat on the floor, literally at her feet and watched. Of course she was playing upside down and backwards, so once again I didn't learn anything, but I still remember the gentle beauty of her playing.
Two great fingerstyle guitarists, but completely different.

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/23/2025:  18:13:04

There's so many fingerpicking styles that need playing...never enough time for any of them. I think when a person plays Libba Cotton tunes they have no choice but to somehow fudge it in some way that resembles the picking as best as possible. I like Merle too...never saw him up close but Eddie Pennington and I had email conversations and then I met him at a small concert he had and he let me play his guitar...lol. He's considered the best/most authentic Travis picker/thumb picker...Eddie knew Merle and the ones...Mose Rager or the ones that taught Merle. Then there's blues picking styles that I used to do once in a while..I'm right now in a Scott Joplin mood and just hope I can get time to play more of that...but re-learn it first of course...that's a picking style all different than anything else, just to get all those syncopated notes sounding...it doesn't seem like picking exactly...it's just all different. I used to pick some Boogie here and there too...just haven't had time for some of that stuff but I used to play one a lot called Back Porch Boogie...this little teensie guitar is begging for me to play a buncha that old stuff again...my fear is I just don't have the time these days. But the guitar keeps lookin' at me.

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/23/2025:  18:45:33

Ok well I think there's just one more on baritone guitar...sorry to be putting these up...this is Yew Piney Mt...done in a weird style...seems weird for me...lol. youtu.be/c6bBSBNaS5E?si=a8oNmQImwATp-XVE Not too good on this one. Well anyway, maybe the next time I'll have some itty bitty guitar tunes recorded. Hurray for giant and teensie guitars and all the inbetwix ones too.

alaskafiddler - Posted - 05/24/2025:  11:51:17

quote:

---

Originally posted by groundhogpeggy

I agree the guitar calluses can mess with our fiddling...but I don't like the feel of nylon strings...lol...seems my fingers can't make good contact for mashin' 'em down good...they sorta roll around under my fingers, the nylon strings seem to do.



 

---

The classical guitarist great, Agustin Barrios always played with steel strings. 

I mostly use metal strings, though do sometimes play nylon string. They don't require mashing down good, just light touch. Similar though, most steel strings don't require mashing down, though heavier gauge/higher tension and/or high action might require more pressure to contact fret. I notice more issue with lower tension in the feel of response in right hand.

I've had finger calluses for 50 years playing string intruments; I assumed everyone who plays regular has them? I never found them to be an issue with my fiddling.

Edited by - alaskafiddler on 05/24/2025 11:59:21

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 05/24/2025:  12:33:22

I always mash down hard...can't help it. When I've tried to help people get to a chord, and I situate their fingers and press them down the people always react like it hurts...lol. But to me, since that past almost 62 years now...I've mashed down pretty hard on my strings. Never tried nylon, except in the stores, and they did wiggle around too much when I've tried to mash them down. My callouses from guitar do create a groove angled like the guitar string...and if I don't let that groove settle out for maybe 20 minutes, it does mess with my fiddling. This was my issue when I was in the little amateur BG band...it was kinda tough for me to go from playing guitar for 20 minutes or so and switch to fiddle immediately...the grooves angled for guitar playing did cause me a difficult time fighting with them to get my fiddle angles right...kinda like what happens I guess in a bowling alley when a lousy bowler plays for a half an hour before the good bowler comes in...the grooves in the lane are enough of an influence in the balls trajectory that the good bowler has a lot of compensating to deal with...lol...that's sorta the issue I have if I play guitar for a while and then immediately go to fiddle. The strings wanna go into the grooves.

I've had so little time for playing here lately that my callouses were wearing down to where it just hurt to play and I can't play clean. Not guitar anyway. For me at least, guitar takes pressure to get a good clean sound. I have a guitar exerciser I've used for years to keep my fingers strong enough to feel like I can play guitar ok, but I gave it to my granson, since he's gettin' into heavy metal now...he likes it so he can keep it if it helps him too.

The first day I got a guitar, I played until my fingers blistered, bled, and then bruised and finally swelled up. My great Aunt who arranged for me to get a guitar then, when I was 10, was in shock...like...she thought I had gone crazy and was gonna kill myself with that guitar. They were all begging me to stop playing and let my fingers heal. Then along came Bernie on the tractor, cut the engine and asked me to play him something... I managed to fumble out Wildwood Flower and he said, "She's really got it, don't she?" And he fired up the ol' International engine again and left and I felt so proud...bloody bruises and all...

Anyway my life has gotten to where caring for hubby is taking more and more time and effort...I make more stupid mistakes and playing is something I can't get to. It always causes problems when I try.