Hello and welcome to the free lesson portion of our monthly e-mail
newsletter. I could not be more excited about this month’s tune.
When I first learned “Salt Creek” I truly could not get it out of my
head -- I fell asleep and woke up humming the first two bars over and
over. The tune does have an infectious melody with really neat chord
changes and, if by some chance, this tune is not in your repertoire
then stop reading this and start learning this here tune!
“Salt Creek” has perhaps
emerged, even more than “Blackberry Blossom” and “Black Mt. Rag,” as
the ultimate flatpicking standard. The melody falls quite nicely on the
guitar neck (especially with the capo on the second fret), and the
tune’s bluesy groove leaves a lot of room to create cool bluegrass
breaks.
To coincide with this month’s release of the new Tony Rice biography Still Inside (available at www.flatpickingmercantile.com),
I’ve selected to present this tune with a few Tony Rice style licks
thrown in here and there. Tony Rice recorded “Salt Creek” on his
release entitled Guitar back in 1970, and since then he has
attached himself to this melody. It seems to be well suited toward
his style of guitar playing. To this day, Tony still jams out on this
tune and always seems to come up with something new and exciting.
In my lesson I have
supplied two versions of the tune. The first version is a fairly
straight forward version of the melody. It is a combination of many
versions that I have been exposed to through the years. In the second
version I tried to stick to the melody while incorporation Tony Rice
style runs and licks. I, of course, do not play like Tony Rice!
The second break is not
really intended to be learned from beginning to end. Feel free to do
so, but, to me, I feel this kind of solo is more of a collage of Tony
Rice ideas mixed with some melody phrases. I recommend to isolate some
of your favorite runs in the solo and try to incorporate them into
your own playing.
In today’s flatpicking
world their are a lot of players who try to sound just like Tony
Rice. This is not entirely a bad thing, but what Tony himself would
teach is to look to your favorite players for creative inspiration
rather than direct imitation. By learning Tony’s solos note-for-note
you gain tremendous insight into how he puts his melodic ideas
together. Then, go ahead and steal the ideas, add an extra note or
two, or change the timing a bit to add your own flavor to it, and
presto you have a new “Tony lick!”
I hope you enjoy picking
through my arrangement of “Salt Creek.” If you have any questions,
comments, or concern on this e-lessen or past lessons, or if you have
great ideas for future FGM e-lessons just drop me a line at [email protected]
