FREE PDF tab/music is available for this RU-vid lesson at: www.guitarvideo... From Tom Feldmann's new instructional double DVD GUITAR OF FRED McDOWELL. Played in Open E Tuning (E,B,E,G#,B,E). For full details: www.guitarvide...
there's so much gold that can be gleaned/mined out of these old videos of dear dear Fred. it's like going back to the source. The wellspring of some of to days slide guitar and clears the blackboard of half arsed ideas we may have misheard from great players just to see their inspiration more clear from just watching old mr Mcdowell, and where maybe most of it came from. (stuff like this should not be copied note for note) make it your inspiration and interpretation of his marvelous foundation blues. and to people like Stefan Grossman for making these videos (tutorials) possible and not blocking it, hats off to you Sir hats off to you 👍👍👍👍👍
Lots of shitty comments. Well at least everyone complaining about the little tuning misstep is getting their money's worth. Free. Spend ur time playin more guitar instead of bitching. This is a great vid
I can see from the comments thread that I'm not the only one who is perturbed by the howling tuning mistake, I'm so glad I'm not a novice... This misinformation must be really confusing for those who are unfamiliar with open tunings. May I suggest that the administrator of this upload ought to add a screen pop up annotation which clears up the confusion (it's the "B" string that stays the same whilst the "A" string is the one that is tuned up to meet it). [Open E = E,B,E,G#,B,E]. Whilst on this subject, an important fact that I feel ought to have been very clearly pointed out with regard to the "Open E Tuning" is that this tuning can be very damaging to many instruments, especially if this upward tuning is employed in conjunction with heavier gauge strings. However, there is an easy remedy for this problem... Open E Tuning exactly reflects the more commonly used "Open D Tuning", that is to say each of the six strings in Open E are two semi-tones higher than Open D. This fact enables you to avoid the pitfalls of tuning your guitar upwards by simply placing a capo on the 2nd fret having firstly tuned DOWN to Open D. [Open D = D,A.D,F#.A,D]. Tuning UPWARDS to "Open A" is also mentioned in the video and, in much the same way as described above, this tuning exactly reflects the more commonly used "Open G" tuning. Again, you can simply tune down to Open G and then capo up two frets to give you the key of A. [Open G = D,G,D,G,B,D].
it is possibly to play the learning song one tune down, the change is not so big and we keep our guitars ok, in all ways very thanks, i have a ship flamenco guitar from the early 80s as my open tuned and slide guitar so im nothing motivated to tune it in open e
This is amazing to me! You play like Ry Cooder and you obviously LOVE the blues slide guitar. I loved this and I have been playing slide for 20 years. Great job.
Great lesson, Tom. Very informative. For some reason, my cat hates this. He doesn't mind Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James etc al, but he can't take Mississippi Fred at all. It must be the higher pitch.
Your tutorials are great. However, in this one when you said the 5 string and 2 string were tuned to A you actually meant B. Very misleading for some people, according to comments. You should also tell them they're simply tuning to an open E chord. Makes things much simpler.
@PeluMaad. I'll be filming a 2DVD set on Charlie Patton in Oct and also a Delta Blues lesson focusing on Patton, House, Willie Brown and Tommy Johnson. I did a 2DVD set of Son House that should be available this fall.
Mr. Feldman- I can't wait to get this one!!! MFM is the greatest! I got your Bottleneck Gospel and Blind Willie Johnson just recently, and I love them! Looking forward to you future releases for Son House and Charlie Patton. Thanks for your hard work and sharing the secrets. Hope to see you perform live soon. Take care.
Notice this cat has three picks.... 8 minutes and 22 seconds it gets a little sophisticated in a tuning Fred most of them blue players had Secrets tuning in their cord open tuning they didn't share the information competition but their style from different regions they played in so it depends on what songs you want you can turn it to this but you have a special strings to put them in is definitely not standard tuning ........ one-man Toby from Chicago came to my church and said if you play like this you be a star I never took them off on it course my experience with that playing with Master keyboards they won't tune to you you had to do to them but he was invited and they had a tune to him and he was all over the place LOL
Hey Tom! I love your lessons! Have you considered doing a DVD on the playing of Tampa Red? I play several of his instrumentals and would love to see if I'm playing them "right" and learn more of his songs. Denver Blues is the one I've had the most trouble with - since it's hard to hear exactly what he's doing with the bass. Thanks again!
Here's a thought....a 2 CD Charley Patton set....Feldman doing the bottleneck and John Miller handling the rest...or maybe call it "The Real Delta Blues" and include Son House and Willie Brown. (It really irks me that people tend to call anything acoustic "Delta"). Maybe even a duet to end the set?
I agree with everyone else that this is a great lesson, Tom. Well done. One question, though- you make a good point about "slide angle"- as you can see from the video clip, Fred is using a little length of bottleneck to get so much angle and mobility out of his ring finger- it's so short, in fact, that he can bend the first joint of his finger . My question is, do you think he's USING that finger to fret around the slide?
I saw him play close up in a Chicago club about 1970. I talked to him at intermission and he showed me his slide. It was short enough to fret with that slide finger. He said his slide was from a Seagram's 7 pint bottle. It still had the threads for the cap on it. His fingers were very long and his music was haunting and captivating.
how important is playing with thumb and finger picks? i've never used them before and I'm having trouble adapting and enjoying my playing (i'm 55 and have played mostly rock and folk all my life and just coming around to this genre------ love it btw); i get a decent sound w/o but feel i'm avoiding and not being authentic, what do you think?
Feldmann addressed his error 2 years before you put your arrogant oar in the water. Your interminable self-aggrandizing screed actually pretty much shoved the instructors comment so far down the line as to make it invisible.
10 min before you get to anything real. Should also cover right hand technique in depth as that's to me the real magic your words as well. And ya covered that in less than a minute. Stop screwing around.
