Thanks for suggesting this, Jack! Teaching guitar lessons is not only a fulfilling job, but my students introduce me to music I’ve never heard all of the time. This is an awesome chicken’ pickin’ – hybrid picking – where you use your pick as well as finger picking at the same time. Also, you’ll get some practice speeding up your E Blues scale and hammer-ons / pull-offs! Here are a few tips:
- Practice up to the dotted line first. This song has a weird phrase structure, and it’s hard to find a good place to break it into chunks. Also, it’s a bit too long and complicated to learn it all in one shot. So, learn up to the dotted line, then practice the rest – you’ll have 2 phrase chunks to make learning this a bit more manageable.
- Use your middle finger of your pick hand to pluck. The middle finger is easily accessible while picking. Pluck on the pad of the finger, but watch out for getting under the string TOO much. This will not only slow you down, but the popping sound of the string can get a little harsh.
- Make your pull-offs stronger. When pulling off, keep the tip-joint rounded, and don’t let it flatten out. You’ll lose leverage that way. The tip of the finger should pull down off of the string and ram into the fretboard and the side of the adjacent string.
Nate from Richards Guitar Studio shows you how to play and cover the intro guitar riff to Don’t Call Me Dude by Scatterbrain. A great example of chicken pickin aka hybrid picking technique. This song uses the E blues scale, hammer ons, and pull offs. Guitar tabs included above.
Richards Guitar Studio offers professional guitar lessons in Aston PA. We serve Delaware County PA towns such as Swarthmore, Media, Springfield, Ridley Park, Garnet Valley, and Brookhaven.