Building Powerful Solos DVD Review
BLUEGRASS UNLIMITED - SEPT 1997
DAVID GRIER BLUEGRASS GUITAR: BUILDING POWERFUL SOLOS
Homespun Tapes
VD GRR-GT01
Right now, you just can’t find a bluegrass musician who’s any hotter than David Grier, both in terms of their popularity and demand for their services, and for the intensity of their creative expression. No guitarist since Tony Rice has emerged to thrill bluegrass fans, especially guitarists, with a style that sizzles on the edge of innovation while retaining melodies and a richly satisfying musical depth. Such popularity also breeds a legion of pickers anxious to uncover the technical sides of
a player’s style. Some are content to know just the particular pattern of notes the artist put together in sequence for a particular recorded solo or melody and recite it back note-for-note. That’s a valid, often valiant effort that has served as the springboard for many guitarists who need a role model.
For the best parking lot pickers, though, the goal is more subtle and refined. They need to understand why a player selected that pattern of notes; why it worked over that particular set of chord changes; what musical rules or boundaries it crossed.
The first part is always easy. Plenty of instructional tapes—most of them, in fact—put the musician in front of the camera and have them run through a popular tune of theirs. There’s usually little attempt to go beyond the “how” of what’s being played to the “why”.
Unlike his first (and still excellent) video, that’s not the case with David Grier’s second guitar video. Here we have a musician who not only has grown up musically and has a lot to say on his guitar, we have a man who’s done dozens of flatpicking guitar workshops, been asked a thousand questions about his playing, and been an instructor at Steve Kaufman’s annual flatpicking camp. Getting to the “how” David Grier does what David Grier does, while style is a challenge, isn’t as daunting when Grier’s spent so much time thinking about it and explaining it himself.
The result is one of the best, if not the best, guitar instruction videos I’ve ever seen. Grier convincingly breaks down the key elements of his style using familiar tunes as the blackboard for his teaching, not as the lesson itself. He starts off working on crosspicking patterns from “Bill Cheatum” and “Liberty,” two tunes immediately familiar to almost every flatpicking guitarist, and also brings in “Nine Pound Hammer” as a great teaching vehicle.
At his best, Grier’s playing captures a very vocal, fluid technique, and he’s made an excellent effort at translating that onto musical notation and tablature here. David likes to fill up his soloing with a lot of “fat” sounds. The ringing of a single note, to his ear, can often be enhanced with a ringing opening string, a double stop or arpeggio. Sometimes it’s how he dramatically slides into the note, or slips away from it, elements of his style that free him from the tyranny of endless strings of 8th notes. (He once told me he thought a lot of bluegrass flatpickers sound like typewriters going clack-clack-clack-clack as they solo.)
The material included here delves into the heart of his approach to these problems. Double-stop slides, slurs, bends, and a technique he calls “raking”. Which the electric guitar magazines would deem “sweep picking” all get his attention here.
For fans of his original tunes, the first video remains a better choice because it includes a better selection of Grier originals, but this video does include two great songs: the stunning “Engagement Waltz”, and “The Meeting”, both from “Lone Soldier.”
Technically, there’s little to find fault with here. Homespun’s done a fine job with the video and audio work, and has included a complete and accurate booklet of transcriptions. I wished they’d take a cue from some other music instruction companies and include title slides at the start of each sequence to make it easier to fast-forward through the tape to find a specific song. The use of those transparent icons with song titles like the symbols the networks are using in the lower right-hand corner of your TV screen would be even better.
If you’re a bluegrass guitarist, you should seriously consider this tape just because it will open up great new technical areas in your player. WARNING: If you’re floored by David Grier’s brilliant playing, go buy this tape. Then send the wife, or husband, and the kids out to a movie or off to grandma’s for the weekend, because you’re going to be hogging the VCR for a couple of days. Highest recommendation.
(Homespun Tapes, Box 325, Woodstock, NY 12498) DJM
DAVID GRIER BLUEGRASS GUITAR: BUILDING POWERFUL SOLOS
Homespun Tapes
VD GRR-GT01
Right now, you just can’t find a bluegrass musician who’s any hotter than David Grier, both in terms of their popularity and demand for their services, and for the intensity of their creative expression. No guitarist since Tony Rice has emerged to thrill bluegrass fans, especially guitarists, with a style that sizzles on the edge of innovation while retaining melodies and a richly satisfying musical depth. Such popularity also breeds a legion of pickers anxious to uncover the technical sides of
Building Powerful Solos
For the best parking lot pickers, though, the goal is more subtle and refined. They need to understand why a player selected that pattern of notes; why it worked over that particular set of chord changes; what musical rules or boundaries it crossed.
The first part is always easy. Plenty of instructional tapes—most of them, in fact—put the musician in front of the camera and have them run through a popular tune of theirs. There’s usually little attempt to go beyond the “how” of what’s being played to the “why”.
Unlike his first (and still excellent) video, that’s not the case with David Grier’s second guitar video. Here we have a musician who not only has grown up musically and has a lot to say on his guitar, we have a man who’s done dozens of flatpicking guitar workshops, been asked a thousand questions about his playing, and been an instructor at Steve Kaufman’s annual flatpicking camp. Getting to the “how” David Grier does what David Grier does, while style is a challenge, isn’t as daunting when Grier’s spent so much time thinking about it and explaining it himself.
The result is one of the best, if not the best, guitar instruction videos I’ve ever seen. Grier convincingly breaks down the key elements of his style using familiar tunes as the blackboard for his teaching, not as the lesson itself. He starts off working on crosspicking patterns from “Bill Cheatum” and “Liberty,” two tunes immediately familiar to almost every flatpicking guitarist, and also brings in “Nine Pound Hammer” as a great teaching vehicle.
At his best, Grier’s playing captures a very vocal, fluid technique, and he’s made an excellent effort at translating that onto musical notation and tablature here. David likes to fill up his soloing with a lot of “fat” sounds. The ringing of a single note, to his ear, can often be enhanced with a ringing opening string, a double stop or arpeggio. Sometimes it’s how he dramatically slides into the note, or slips away from it, elements of his style that free him from the tyranny of endless strings of 8th notes. (He once told me he thought a lot of bluegrass flatpickers sound like typewriters going clack-clack-clack-clack as they solo.)
The material included here delves into the heart of his approach to these problems. Double-stop slides, slurs, bends, and a technique he calls “raking”. Which the electric guitar magazines would deem “sweep picking” all get his attention here.
For fans of his original tunes, the first video remains a better choice because it includes a better selection of Grier originals, but this video does include two great songs: the stunning “Engagement Waltz”, and “The Meeting”, both from “Lone Soldier.”
Technically, there’s little to find fault with here. Homespun’s done a fine job with the video and audio work, and has included a complete and accurate booklet of transcriptions. I wished they’d take a cue from some other music instruction companies and include title slides at the start of each sequence to make it easier to fast-forward through the tape to find a specific song. The use of those transparent icons with song titles like the symbols the networks are using in the lower right-hand corner of your TV screen would be even better.
If you’re a bluegrass guitarist, you should seriously consider this tape just because it will open up great new technical areas in your player. WARNING: If you’re floored by David Grier’s brilliant playing, go buy this tape. Then send the wife, or husband, and the kids out to a movie or off to grandma’s for the weekend, because you’re going to be hogging the VCR for a couple of days. Highest recommendation.
(Homespun Tapes, Box 325, Woodstock, NY 12498) DJM