I never ever managed to get the hang of fingerstyle, especially playing with a thumbpick  like Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed. However, I recently decided to give it a go again and persevere with those stupid little plastic appendages. So, after about 1,000 takes here is my first little effort at fingerstyle. I don't think Tommy Emanuel has anything to worry about and both Chet and Jerry are probably turning in their graves but I had fun and that's all that matters.

Recorded in my little makeshift studio in the basement - The Bat Cave. Rhythm guitars are my lovely small bodied Takimine PSF95 Santa Fe and the lead is my old 1980's Takamine cut away electric classical EC132SC. Can 't seem to stop the pull offs sounding like someone pinging a rubber band or flicking a wobble board though.

Recorded with a Rode NT1A on the neck and and AKG C1000S on the body near the bridge. A little compression a reverb but no eq or any of that technical nonsense.

Oh, and sorry the drum programming is so crap. Actually, they are TOTALLY AUTHENTIC for the first 20 bars. It's only from bar 21 they start to go downhill ;-)

Enjoy.

Swinging 69

Here is my effort to learn the Hellecasters classic Highlander Boogie from the album The Return of the Hellecasters.

It hasn't escaped my notice that all of my guitar heroes started out by copying their heroes. However, that is one part of my musical development that I completely skipped. Until recently (when I started learning some Jerry Reed tunes) I had never learned any licks or songs exactly like the originals. So I decided to finally banish this demon and give it my best shot at copying some fantastic and inspiring pieces of guitar virtuosity. 

Highlander Boogie definitely fits the bill. The main theme is a great little hybrid picking motif. However, it is the solos that completely blew my mind. All three of them are fantastic studies in their own right but collectively they are totally awesome as a single song. The Will Ray solo really screwed with my head trying to learn the double handed slide licks. But it was Jerry Donahue's multi string bending that finally made my head explode. It probably wasn't they best thing to do trying to learn this stuff stung with 11 - 49 on one guitar and 10 - 52 on the other. Those behind the nut bends nearly broke my fingers! It got a bit easier when I switched to a set of 9's  (but not much easier though).

I definitely couldn't have learned this without the excellent Hal Leonard transcription book.

I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed learning it.

Highlander Boogie

alan dick

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