Crosspicking on the Acoustic Guitar in Bluegrass and Old-Time Music

Crosspicking is a technique in which the flatpick is used to pick a
group of strings in a pattern that repeats. Typically, three
pitches are played repeatedly against a four-pulse rhythm so there
is a continual shifting of the pitches and of the accented pulse.
The result is something similar to a banjo roll, with notes seeming
to come from everywhere. Micky Cochran put it like this: “Crosspicking bombards the listener with a
barrage of notes. As is similar to bluegrass banjo, crosspicking
guitar doesn’t seem to pause for a breather. A continuous
succession of notes pours forth establishing the melody while
filling in all of the spaces with harmony notes. Not only does the
guitar support itself, with spaces filled harmonically, but
crosspicking technique works effectively for supporting other lead
instruments and vocals.”

George Shuffler, who spent 18 years as a member of the Stanley
Brothers in the 1950′s and 1960′s, is said to be the pioneer of
crosspicking. The crosspicking technique has been mastered by guitarists like Doc
Watson, Clarence White, Dan Crary, Norman Blake and Tony Rice.

Crosspicking can be used with two open strings against a single
string upon which you are playing melody notes on the frets. You can
throw a crosspicking pattern in here and there, mixing it in with
your other flatpicking techniques.

Let’s try a crosspicking exercise. We’ll use all open strings for
this, the D, G and B strings. For the strokes, I’ll represent the down strokes (the pick motions away from your face) with the letter “d” and the upstrokes (the pick motions toward your
face) with the letter “u.” George Shuffler crosspicks with a
pattern of two down strokes followed by one upstroke. Pick each
individual string in this repetitive pattern:

DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB

Play the D string with a down stroke, the G string with a down
stroke, and the B string with an up stroke, like this:

ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu

But remember, crosspicking is a pattern of three pitches played
repeatedly against a four-pulse rhythm, so in common time (4 beats
to the measure, each quarter note receiving one beat), the pattern
would look this when each string picked is a quarter note with four
quarter notes per measure:

DGBD – GBDG – BDGB – DGBD – GBDG – BDGB – DGBG

The picking pattern would be:

ddud – dudd – uddu – ddud – dudd – uddu – ddud

Now let’s try something that will probably be a bit challenging. I
learned this from one of Steve Kaufman’s instructional videos.
Crosspick the repeated pattern of DGB, but instead of using the
typical “ddu” stroking, play with alternating up and down strokes,
just like if you were picking out a fiddle tune. So, although you
are playing the repeated pattern of the three strings, your stroke
pattern is:

Learn How to Play Acoustic Guitar Step by Step

When you’re just starting to discover how to play the guitar, you may learn how to play acoustic guitar first. Experts suggest that you should for the acoustic kind first before jumping over electric guitar because the first kind is easier to understand. Fortunately, because we are living in an era where technology is on its peak, you can bump into various resources for you to understand how to play the instrument with ease.

Literally, thousands of Internet websites are available to guide a beginner on the learning stage. One will not just be guided on how to properly hold the instrument or tune it, even complicated processes like reading notes of various songs are taught as well.

Understand the Process of Reading Simple Chord Charts

Beginners should start on the basic processes if they wish to competently learn how to play acoustic guitar. The very first thing to do is to read simple chord charts. The moment when you’ve perfected learning this topic, you can discover hundreds or even thousands of tunes that you can play. Chord charts are related to diagram that contains vertical lines in order to represent the strings and the horizontal lines are those that represent the frets. On the strings are numbered dots used to symbolize fingers as they are press to make the chord. Once you’ve understood the hands and fingers position for the chords and their respective strumming techniques, you are half-way the road to proficiency. In no time, you can competently learn how to play acoustic guitar.

Master Reading Guitar Tabs

Tablature which is usually referred to as “tabs” is a kind of music notation specifically made for the guitar. Don’t confuse this to chords because tabs are read in a horizontal manner rather than in a vertical kind like that with chords. The numbers will show the fret that you must press on to make the note that you would like to get. When you learn how to read guitar tabs, you can start learning how to play a song.

Learn the Scales

Although you can argue that this lesson is normally found on piano classes, it is vital that you learn the basic scales and apply them on regular basis. The foundation of most melodies is the scales so after you learn about them, you will be able to learn how to play acoustic guitar songs easily.

The moment when you have mastered the scales and can already do them on your fingertips, you will for sure be very pleased to know that you are learning how to play your favorite song in a very fast manner. And this is the time when you will appreciate all the works to learn how to play acoustic guitar. The sound of guitar can invoke different feelings so you can trust the instrument to accompany you in any sentiment that you are currently experiencing.

Many people enjoy the fact that they can create beautiful music on their own; you will for sure appreciate this the moment when you became an expert in playing the guitar. To speed up the process of learning, learn through the use of DVD Guitar course online.