Spiced up – Fingerstyle Arrangements

This lesson features a mixed bag of six songs arranged in a variety of ways with the idea of adding some spicy seasoning to the fingerpicker’s cookbook. The lesson employs tricks and licks that Cory has picked up over the years in his quest to find his own “style”. In this almost four hour lesson each song has it’s own built-in exercises for fingerpicker’s looking to head in new directions.

The old standard A Sin To Tell A Lie becomes a highly arpeggiated waltz with some fun licks up the neck. Somebody Stole My Gal incorporates counterpoint, chord inversions, and nice bass movement. The old jug band tune Sadie Green (The Vamp of New Orleans) gets revamped with a feel that bounces from down low New Orleans rumba to punchy ragtime picking and back again. A highly unorthodox treatment of Blind Willie McTell’s East St Louis Blues gets deep into Cooder-esque syncopation, and a chorus was added to make it a little less repetitive. The instrumental “showpiece” No Hiding Place was influenced by Cool John Ferguson’s virtuosic zinger off of a Music Maker Relief Foundation music compilation (likely Ferguson’s take on the old gospel number No Hiding Place Down Here), and then taken on a bunch of detours. Those looking to “Africanize” their playing will enjoy Cory’s take on The Parting Glass which takes this old Celtic drinking ballad on a trip to east Africa, featuring funky polyrhythms and muted strings in 12/8.