From Texas to the Delta is a free weekly video guitar lesson series covering acoustic blues picking techniques. Your instructor is Jim Bruce, who has many years of experience teaching guitar players of all skill levels and styles, and will have an online classroom at TrueFire soon — stay tuned!
Video Guitar Lesson:
Big Bill Broonzy was a Chicago based musician who almost single handedly created that swing blues sound popular in the 30s and 40s. Like Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Johnson and a host of others, he played with a monotonic thumb beat, but with a difference, adapting this technique to fast ragtime pieces and driving country blues rhythms. Big Bill’s thumb would often strum across two or three bass strings, which produced a powerful driving sound which lagged a fraction behind the beat creating that familiar ‘swing’ sound.
Broonzy’s technique is not hard to understand, and there are many old fine examples of his work to listen to – it’s quite easy to figure out where his fingers were. However, Bill’s sound is very difficult to copy and reproduce – have a go and you’ll see what I mean. Listen to his renditions of ‘Hey, Hey’, ‘Glory of Love’ and ‘House Rent Stomp’ to get a feel for this hypnotic sound. Take it easy and most of all, have fun with it.
From Texas to the Delta is a free weekly video guitar lesson series covering acoustic blues picking techniques. Your instructor is Jim Bruce, who has many years of experience teaching guitar players of all skill levels and styles, and will have an online classroom at TrueFire soon — stay tuned!