Andrew Lardner
patreon
Silver City Bound
🕑 Added 2021-09-01 14:00:08 +0000 UTCHappy September friends. This month lets dive into some Lead Belly.
This take is transcribed from Lead Belly's Last Sessions, 1948, roughly a year before his passing. It is an incredible box set worth adding to your collection. Most of what I want to say about this you'll hear in the lesson video, but if you skip it here are some of the really cool points, and things I learned this month.
Lead Belly used a unique arrangement of strings on his guitar. We often think of 12-string guitars as having the top two pairs of strings tuned in unison, and the low 4 each in octave pairs. Lead Belly had a spacing of 2 octaves on his lowest string, so the higher pitched string of the pair actually matched the pitch of the open pair of strings on top. He also tuned the third-string pair in unison, likely giving more strength and clarity to any melodic lines that were played there.
Lead Belly would have played this in a manner very similar to Big Bill Broonzy, using only thumb and index in the right hand and frequently playing heavily damped drones in the bass.
Please enjoy this piece, my favorite Lead Belly tune. It was a wild ride transcribing this one and trying to capture his very nuanced style.
My YouTube recording: https://youtu.be/CUL3WC_O8Fg
The Patron-only Lesson: https://youtu.be/PveGENZ5U50
And as always the transcription is attached below.
Comments
Andrew Lardner
Thank you Malcolm!
Malcolm Kirton
That’s wonderful! I can see you put a lot of care and effort into studying his style. For me, it all began with Lead Belly. Thank you for this great transcription.
mark blomquist
Great performance Andy and thanks to Haley for her wonderful vocal! Always look forward to the first of the month to see what you have in store for us.
