Advanced Fingerpicking Solos Volume 3

Lessons

• Lesson 1: White Bird - Solo Guitar Arrangement

  This arrangement of White Bird has been a lesson many of our members have been asking us to finish since Neil first teased us with it a few years ago.
  
  The lesson starts with some percussive techniques for the right hand and includes all the verses, the chorus and bridge, as well as all of the instrumental interludes (violin solo, guitar solo and another bridge).

• Lesson 2: The Entertainer

  Scott Joplin's music has tickled millions of listeners around the world, and created quite a challenge for guitarists since its resurgence in the 1970s.

  In the late 70s I started working on an arrangement of The Entertainer by Dutch guitarist Leo Wijnkamp. I continued adding to and adjusting many parts until I finally came up with an arrangement I think Joplin would approve of.

  Like most classic rags, it consists of four 16-bar sections, every one of which is a mini-masterpiece in my eyes, and I generally have students treat these as such and want them to have the perspective that each part is a separate piece and not get overwhelmed by the magnitude.

  The original was in the key of C and this arrangement is in D, done in Dropped D Tuning.

  Patience and perseverance are the requirements here.

• Lesson 3: James - Pat Metheny - Solo Guitar Arrangement

  Pat Metheny's 1982 album, Offramp, included his tribute to James Taylor, appropriately title James. It is a catchy and bouncy instrumental in the AABA form, with a few verses of improvised solos, with an unrelated intro by keyboardist Lyle Mays.This lesson includes Neil's arrangements of both Pat's theme and Lyle's intro.

  It is very challenging, as combining the melody and chord progression, not to mention bringing in some percussion presents some big problems. There are also some chord shapes and families that are probably new to most  students.

  Take a look at the last segment, Take One for the overall effect.

• Lesson 4: Pipeline - Guitar Instrumental Arrangement

  Pipeline is an iconic surf tune written in 1962 by a couple teenagers, Brian Carman and Bob Spickard, high school buddies in Southern California who joined the surf movement as The Chantays. The song has been covered by a very diverse group that includes The Ventures, Dick Dale, Anthrax, Agent Orange, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
  
  I have performed a solo guitar version at concerts over the years but never quite arranged it formally, until now. There were some modifications that had to be done and a lot of artistic decisions to make, some of which are addressed in the ‘Goals & Obstacles’ segment. The biggest goal was to combine the bass line with the opening lead guitar lines, the Em and Am phrases. This will prove challenging to most students but is possible if you work on it very slowly until it is clean. The opening glissando, the tremolo, descending slide will also take some concentrated effort to work in smoothly.
  
  Don’t let the level of difficulty discourage you from tackling this tune, you will get a lot of enjoyment out of just working through some of the phrases and sections.
  
  Part 5 of the Pipeline lesson covers the last measures of the A Section where you are just holding a few chords, B7, C7 and Am, playing a repetitive picking pattern. The pattern can be easily played as written in the tab, or be embellished with a back roll, spreading out the 3 strings rather than playing them together. Of course this makes it much more difficult and I recommend working on most other parts first.
  
  This segment starts with a couple other fingering options for the Am Phrase.
  
  Part 6 looks at the B Section where the bass pattern is a simpler 2-note alternating one using just the root and fifth of the chords. Once again, there are some tricky fingerings for both hands, be sure to take this slowly at first.
  
  The last parts include The Arrangement and a Play Through.

• Lesson 5: Blues Land - Jerry Reed- Neil Hogan Instrumental Guitar Lesson

  It has been quite a while since we added a very advanced instrumental but now we have Blues Land by Jerry Reed. This is my arrangement of a piece I don’t think he ever performed solo and it is full of unusual techniques. We have a lot of grace notes in a few different ways, and a reverse thumb drag that may take a bit of time to master and incorporate.
  
  It is played in swing time and we get started with the Intro and Section A while I keep working on the rest.
  
  Section B of Blues Land is a bit easier than Section A, and more repetitive as well. It opens with a somewhat difficult chord and includes a bunch of sliding grace notes, even some in pairs that are syncopated with a series of them all coming on the ‘ands’ of beats.
  
  The segment also covers the Coda, really a third ending to Section A that would end the piece. Also included is a Play Through section with a metronome at 72 beats per minute.

• Lesson 6: Heliotrope Bouquet - Scott Joplin - Neil Hogan

  Heliotrope Bouquet is a piece that has captivated me since I first heard a guitar arrangement of it on the Kicking Mule album The Entertainer. I really enjoyed many of the tunes on the album, done by different guitar players, and was quick to order the accompanying tab booklet to set about learning them.
  
  As I listened more to the original piano arrangements I found many of the guitar versions lacking much of what I heard on the piano. As I started to tackle those parts from the piano music I quickly found out why, and understood why the guitarists had simplified things considerably in the interest of just making certain passages possible and close enough.
  
  About six months ago I decided to revisit my re-workings and shoot for something more accurate, figuring that I was probably a better guitar player now, 40 years later. This arrangement is one of the results of that mission. After a few requests from the TG Community I might as well go ahead with a lesson on it. Any big project must be taken in small steps so we will roll these parts out occasionally.
  
  In Section B of Heliotrope Bouquet the mood picks up a bit and is less pensive and introspective. It kicks off with a diminished chord leading into a bouncing, lilting melody, broken up with slight pauses and sixteenth note rolls into each next thought. It is very important here to get the chord down that you are rolling into early, before starting the roll. Sections A & B are the parts composed by Louis Chauvin.
  
  Section C is where Scott Joplin’s contribution to Heliotrope Bouquet started. There is definitely a change in style, although he quotes a bit of Chauvin’s opening strain in the midst of this typical “Joplinesque” sound. This section includes a difficult passage where the guitar needs to play a doubled eighth note run that is much easier on the piano. We may explore ways of simplifying this as people get back to me with their progress reports.
  
  The last section is a little easier than Section C, although there are more hinge-like moves where one finger covers two strings at the same fret for a beat. There also are some of the piano moves that are unusual on the guitar, namely playing eighth note parallel octaves.

• Lesson 7: This Masquerade - Solo Guitar Arrangement

  Masquerade by Leon Russell has been a favorite of mine since Carney was released in 1972 (along with Tight Rope and a handfull of others). I really never thought about playing it until I met Corina (who had grown up as a huge fan of The Carpenters) in 2013 and it became a staple of our set of songs. After many requests to do a lesson on how I play an accompaniment to a vocalist, it seemed logical to take it another step–the solo guitar version, as that is what I do pretty regularly.

  This lesson is done in Leon's original key of C Minor, but the best way to get there on the acoustic guitar is play in the user-friendly key of A Minor and capo to the third fret. I talk about a percussive accompaniment and paying close attention to the phrasing variations in different verses. There is also a short segment on improvising a lead over simple chord changes, which can be quite challenging even without a complicated lead.

  In general, this is how I approach almost everything I play, and the variations materialize organically. You have to find a way to making this your own and not hold the tab sacred.

• Lesson 8: Unforgettable - Solo Guitar Arrangement

  Unforgettable is one of Nat King Cole's biggest hits and probably the song most identified as his own. Written in 1951 by Irving Gordon, who also penned Prelude To A Kiss for Duke Ellington, the song was re-imagined in the 1990s as a duet with his daughter Natalie. 

  This lesson is presented with a different approach compared to most of ours. We work with just a lead sheet, like from The Real Book, where we just have the chords and melody in standard notation and Neil shows how he creates arrangements by combining the two. You do not have to be able to read the notation as it is all talked through slowly and demonstrated clearly, but it helps to have some understanding of jazz chording, as well as fingerstyle techniques.

• Lesson 9: It Was A Very Good Year - Solo Guitar Project

  This lesson takes a do-it-yourself approach to creating your own arrangement of It Was A Very Good Year. We start with the original lead sheet as Ervin Drake composed in the key of E Minor and follow with a short lesson on reading standard notation in order to transpose it to a better key for a guitar instrumental. The student is guided through writing out the melody in the key of A Minor (staff/tab paper included), looking at different chord voicings to facilitate incorporating the melody notes, and adding accompaniment techniques to complete the project.

  I suggest not looking at or printing the Tab version until you have watched the lesson and made a decision on trying it with the standard notation.

• Lesson 10: Killing Me Softly - Solo Guitar Arrangement

  Roberta Flack made this song an all time R&B classic over 30 years ago, and it’s still just as popular and relevant as ever. In this lesson we tackle a solo arrangement of Killing Me Softly, which will take us on an exploration of melody, harmony and rhythm. By learning and analyzing each part of these three musical elements separately, you’ll be able to fully understand not just how to play this song, but how to craft your own arrangements using the same guitar techniques and harmonic ideas we discuss in this lesson.

• Lesson 11: Angi - Davey Graham - Guitar Lesson

  After many years of wrestling with the best way to approach a lesson on Davey Graham’s classic acoustic masterpiece Angi, I finally found a path that I think will work.
  
  In this lesson we start at the beginning, the way Davey (Davy at the time) recorded it on his 1961 EP with Alexis Korner, 3/4 A.D.
  
  Most people play this with lots of variations and improvising but this lesson starts with the basic techniques needed to play the three sections Davey laid out, all of which are pretty basic. Some of the challenges include the pounding, muted bass, a la Big Bill Broonzy, and the syncopation in Section C, where it is very easy to lose track of the beats.