How to Play Meat Shakin' Woman with Ari Eisinger Part 1/2
Hi! My name is Ari Eisinger and I’m going to be playing and teaching some songs by the Great Blues Blind Boy Fuller. I found when I was studying Blind Boy Fuller’s music preparing for this video and taking down every last note he was playing whether it was the one I expected or not, that a lot of times it wasn’t the one I expected. And contrast to other players with a more regular rigid, you might say guitar style like Mississippi John Hurt where you can always tell which base notes coming up next because he is always playing the exact same pattern and where your thumb gets everyday base note on every beat. Blind Boy Fuller is you might see more all over the place with his right hand.
I think one of the reasons for this is that the national steel guitar is really resonant. And if you play a lot of notes, it’s going to sound a little too fool. So, sometimes if you want to sink a page for playing for instance you may play a base note with your thumb before the bit. Well, not play some base notes but just have your index finger and perhaps your middle finger to take over. That’s okay. The sound is fat enough to sustain the flow of the music. And if you just put all the base notes in, it would sound much too crowded. It wouldn’t be syncopated. So, that’s one of the things that surprise me when I was listening to it and there’s a lot of cases where you think there will be usual base note and well I kept rewinding the tape and I don’t know, I just couldn’t hear it. And I concluded it wasn’t there. He’s just using his index finger. I’ve tried to make the tab as accurate as possible which makes it all the more difficult to learn. So, I hope you’ll just take the time in doing note for note and doing note for note again until it makes sense to you.
Let’s get in tune. I have the guitar tuned a whole step low because that’s more comfortable getting range from my voice so I am afraid that if you’re going to match the notes exactly well as you play, you’re going to have to tune a whole step low. And you may have to get your action raise to do that. In any case, here is the notes, the E string less a whole a step which is really D, that’s E string, the A string, D, G, B and finally the high E. That’s not really E, it’s really D but it’s easier just to think of the string as E, A, D, G, B, E as usual. So now, I’m going to play Meat Shakin' Woman for you.
[Demonstration]
Before we get into the picking, let’s have a look at the chords, it’s C, F and G but it’s a particular C, F and G. The C is played like a normal C chord with two editions. One is you’re putting your pinky on the top string, the high E string at the third fret and the other is that you’re getting two strings at once. The fifth and the sixth strings. You’re fretting both of them at the third fret with your ring finger. That’s the C chord and the F chord, your thumb comes up around the neck to get the first fret of the sixth string. And aside from that, it’s a normal F chord. You also have a regular garden-variety type like G chord and G7th. So, those are the chords. And now for the song, this is the basic lick and what you’re doing is you’re using C, you’re using F. And for brief time, you’re on a no chord because you’re just getting a note that’s nowhere near the chord which is on the fourth fret. So, you’re going in the C chord. So, it’s the 6th string, the 1st string and the 4th string. So, the base is this. When you come off the chord in your pinky or your ring finger if it’s more comfortable for you it goes and gets just briefly the 4th fret of the 2nd string. And then you are back into the chord and then for one it will go briefly to an F chord and back to the C. And do it again.
[Demonstration]
Now, that’s a brief base run and on your right hand, you can just use your thumb for this and then the base goes, in a Blind Blake manner you’re getting the note between the beats followed by the next beat, but you also have a treble note on top of the second of those two base notes in that Blind Blake style thumb roll. That’s in a G chord then you’re back to C and then you go to C7th and you have some nice thumb syncopation on that. So, you are going, then you go to your F chord and the base is 6th string, 4th string, 4th string, 4th string. It sounds strange to say but it sounds real good when you’re playing this tune, and then back to C , and then just do something similar to the original lick but then you go. You put a part of that and part of the other lick in there. So you’re going, and then comes an extended base one which you can just use you right hand thumb for. And more or less on the G chord and then again you leave the neck and you just go to, leave your chord and you just go up to the 4th fret for that little note. And then you come down on the 4th string third fret and then you do another Blind Blake style run on the G. And you’re back in C, C7th, F and then the first fret of the 4th string in the Blind Blake where it all gets you back to C. So, I like to do it just slowly all the way through. So, let’s go to the split screen for that.
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