This class is not currently being offered in our catalog.
This class is not currently being offered in our catalog.
Join Andy Cohen to delve into the technique and style of the legendary bluesman, Rev. Gary Davis.
Gary Davis’s constructed his mental music machine, into which melodies disappeared and out the other end of which tight arrangements emerged, by playing harmonized melodic passages in 3rds, 6ths and 10ths, often over 3 against 2 rhythms, up and down the neck using open strings to shift on, with his left hand divided into two sets of two fingers, in any combination. At times his left thumb would hold down two or even three bass strings. His right thumb kept (or strongly implied without actually stating) a steady beat, one way or another. These were explicit assignments in his way of thinking, to manage several lines of music: the left hand was the ‘frettin’ hand’; the right thumb was your ‘bass hand’, as though you were playing a boogie-like bass on the piano; and the right index finger followed its own melodic contour, whatever that was. In playing this kind of music, you have to arrange the pieces-parts of each hand to be able to accomplish one thing per piece, that add up to several things at once.
