In this Guitar Control video lesson, Jimmy Dillon will show you an old Appalachian traditional song and this has been covered by everybody called “Long Black Veil”.
This one is a classic traditional song been covered by a lot of people beautifully done by the band many other people it’s called “Long Black Veil” it’s one of my favorites this one by the way has a great sing-along chorus and I try to include that in my lessons so you can get an easy strong beautiful great sing-along, by the way if you if you’re a beginning acoustic guitarist this is really swell because you can just strum down, down, up, down, down, up, thing. It’s all about the field to make it really authentic but the chords on this one and I’m choosing sane G like with the high D on the B-string third finger 3rd fret B- string pinky tucked underneath.
Let’s get that nice triangle the special sauce that makes it work, this one the verse form goes I seized the strum to your B chords straightly, C, G, and you repeat that, back to your D, C, now the chorus goes to C back to G, to C, to G, to C, and stays on the G back to C, to G, then C to D back to G. So the key to these great old Appalachian kinds of songs is that nice really relaxed strum.
Now if you want to have it a little more advanced and you want to do the little passing deals you can do a hammer-on, a little things that kind of spice it up if you will you get your D-string so you’re coming down with your 1st thing around your 2nd fret of your D-string, very common kind of country blues lick but that’s what sets it up and another one you can walk up in a low E F sharp G to C, when you get to your D nice always and a nice lick come with your pinky on your 3rd fret or high E back to your D chord and open up that high E-string and then to your C and a G.
The thing to remember about a song like this is really to be authentic and really do these correctly less is more I mean the air between the notes between the chords and to let the vocal shine through whether it’s a group vocal or a tender you know like a song first we’re you telling a story right this guy this guy was in the arms of his best friend’s wife and this is alibi someone was killed beneath the streetlight so it’s a very dark murder ballad as they say so you want the strumming to reflect that she washed these hills along my way she visits mommy and then the big payoff by wondering about that ending right that’s kind of a little bit of a gospel ending when we do we do kind of funky blue stuff like this finally get to the final out the final course and then the big ending going back to the G then C. I just walk to C down all those little walk downs and walk out we all kind of bring it together and kind of the connective tissue on something like this you’ll notice that on the D-string if you want on the D chord it’s just your open D in your open A then to your C notice A, I did the cover of these last two strings here my pinky and my third finger on the 3rd fret on the C chord which I showed you in free fall very nice think about these little technical things if you’re a beginner and you’re just learning guitar don’t worry about that stuff just play anyway you know everybody knows that don’t worry about the big cowboy Steve the main thing is to get you having fun with this stuff that’s the main purpose of what I’m trying to teach here so the easy strumming all right that has to do with how you attack with your way the bridge when it goes off place your guitar players down especially acoustic you so there’s a great song.
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