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How Long Blues, Part 1

This lesson is part of the course Fingerstyle Blues Guitar with Orville Johnson.
Get immediate access to this lesson and all of the lessons in this course when you subscribe.
 
About This Course
 
Learn to play fingerstyle blues, with a bottleneck slide and without, through songs from blues legends Mississippi John Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy, Lightnin' Hopkins, Tampa Red, Blind Willie Johnson, and more.
 
 
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“Heavy Time” Fingerpicking
 
“Heavy time” is a style of blues fingerpicking that is more driving and forceful than the somewhat bouncy feel of alternating bass fingerpicking, as played by Mississippi John Hurt, Willie McTell, and others. In this lesson, Orville shows you a tune that illustrates the “heavy time” feel. Heavy time is all about what your thumb is doing—in this case, the thumb constantly pounds the beat, four beats per measure. Another thing that makes this style different is that the melody notes are played just with the index finger. Orville walks you through the piece phrase by phrase.
 
 
 
The Fingerstyle Blues Guitar Subscription Includes:
  • 32 extensive Fingerstyle Blues Guitar video lessons
  • In-depth instruction in fingerstyle and bottleneck blues
  • 23 complete fingerstyle blues songs to play
  • Notation and tablature for all lessons
  • High-quality video with multiple camera angles so you can see closeups of both hands in action.
 
 
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Additional courses only $10/month each!   •   Save 20% with an annual subscription
 
 
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How Long Blues  
 
How Long Blues  
 
How Long Blues, Part 1
How Long Blues, Part 1
 
Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell were a 1930s piano and guitar duo who made many recordings, including “How Long Blues.” Orville’s arrangement of “How Long Blues” is rather unusual, however. It’s in the key of D, but Orville plays it in open-G tuning and uses his arrangement to get you thinking about playing in different keys in open tunings, not just the key the tuning is named for or tuned to. He plays and sings his arrangement of “How Long Blues” and then shows you the chord voicings he uses, and how to modify standard-tuning chord shapes to find chords in open G. Then he walks you through his basic arrangement and talks about using damping with the fingers of your picking hand to get a nice crisp articulation of the melody notes.

  "How Long Blues" (Available to subscribers)
 
 
 
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