Goodbye Walker Percy - tab?

[Deleted]

Hello.

I heard the song "Goodbye Walker Percy" by Brooks Williams from an "old" National "catalogue-cd", and would like to be able to play it. I searched the internet for a tab but until now couldn't find one. Does anybody know if a tab exists? This is a vid of the tune I'm talking about:



By the way, is the tuning in D?

Regards, Jan.

[slide496]

Didn't find a tab either. Think its open D.

[Michael Messer]

Hello Jan,

The tune is in the key of D, and the guitar is in open D tuning.

You don't really need a TAB, you can see all the moves in the video. This is basic open D folk blues guitar playing, and it is very well played.

Try and work it out, it is good practice for your hands and your ears.

If you get stuck, we can help...

Shine On
Michael

[slide496]

I learned piedmont incrementally a phrase a time, committed it to memory and the next week I learned the next phrase, but when I started slide it was many years later and I started with tabs and sort of forgot how to teach myself the other way. I am sure there was a method to the teaching, part of which was you played the phrase with the teacher over and over during the lesson.

If you already have an aptitude as a musician, then IMHO you might naturally have a non written self- teaching solution and a trained ear, but if you are developing those skills it might be difficult to do that.

So I guess my question is how does one go about doing that ?

[Deleted]

Hello.

The reason why I prefer to learn a song from tab is this: a fingerpickingsong consists of three parts (as far as I know): the notes that make the melody, the notes that make the bass-part, and the notes that make the "fill". Getting the melody is (mostly) easy, (for example, I could play the "core" of the mentioned song in a few minutes), putting the bass notes in (and keeping them there :-) is a little more difficult already, but the hardest ones are the "fill"-notes, the notes that are hardly there, but are very important. It seems to me that these last group do kind of "make" the song a song, in other words, they can make the difference between somebody who hears you play say "this is a beautiful song" or "hmmm, well, nice". Problem is that these fill-notes are the most difficult ones to spot when listening to a song or watching it being played on a video. That's why I prefer tab. That is, if the selling artist did include these fill-notes into the tab, instead of leaving them out without saying. I have experienced that I mastered a songfrom tab exactly as it was written, but when I heard the original back, I thought "I'm doing the same thing, but still it does sound very different". Well, I found out that the fill-notes are responsible for that. You just mastered the skeleton (although the exact right skeleton), but you miss the flesh to make it real, so to speak (as a Dutchman in a foreign language).

Regards, Jan.

[Michael Messer]

Hi Jan,

I totally understand and agree with what you are saying about the components that make up a fingerpicked tune, but I do not agree that the way to learn to play is use TAB. It is a useful tool for learning, but by no means essential. I have never learnt anything from TAB. I tried a few times when I was first into playing acoustic blues, but I soon lost my patience with it and used my ears.

The piece that you are asking about is not complicated to play, but because of what you are saying, I think it may be too complicated for you, even with the TAB. I would advise you to learn some rally simple fingerpicked tunes where your thumb rocks between strings 1 and 4, and your first finger picks a melody on the top string. From there you can develop and add what you call 'fill notes'.

I have been playing acoustic blues for nearly four decades and teaching it for the past 15 years, and one thing I have learned from my teaching experience is that it cannot and must not be rushed. 'Learn to walk before you learn to run' is the truth. To build up your fingerpicking or to play any musical instrument, you have to repeat simple moves thousands of times to implant them into your brain so they are as natural as breathing or walking. This cannot be rushed and building up your fingerpicking from very simple patterns that you practice daily for months before moving on, is the way forward.

The reason Brooks Williams is so fluid and relaxed with that piece of music is because (a) he has been playing slide guitar for long time, and (b), he has probably played that tune hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

Have fun with it and don't get too stuck in trying to play complicated pieces until you are totally fluent with some simpler pieces.

I hope that makes sense....

Shine On
Michael

[washboardchris]

Hi, If you are learning note for note then you are stifling your own creative process.Try playing in the spirit of the piece but adding something of yourself.It is quite possible that Brook's Williams dosent play the same tune the same way every time. I have known some very impressive players who could play what they have learnt from tab but cant play anything that they have not learnt note for note from tabs without understanding what was goung on in the tune or putting anything of themselves into it. I have never learnt anything from tabs in forty years of playing but found I learnt more by using my ears.Its surprising what you can learn when trying to work out a song(You may make a mistake but if its a good sounding mistake you have learnt something.

[Keith Ambridge]

I've learned more stuff since having access to you tube than I ever learned from tab.
I tend to find the simplest version (not the best) of a tune I want to learn, get the basics sorted and then add your own twiddly bits as time passes.

[slide496]

Maybe I am wrong but the vocabulary of the thumb seems to be different in slide than a strict fingerpicking. One of my main issues has been breaking with the steady alternating bass
in slide, and looking to more of a variety/vocabulary with the thumb in an arrangement.

[Malc]

I reckon Keith's dead right about you tube. Loads of stuff to learn just by watching and listening. I gave up using tab after learning Special Rider Blues from it .I found that I just couldn't play it without the tab in front of me even after I had learnt it. The tab became a crutch.

[Michael Messer]

Hi Harriet,

You are right that with many slide players the thumb patterns are less rigid. Brooks is not really holding time with his thumb, but Jan needs to learn to hold time before he can be loose with it.

Shine On
Michael.

[slide496]

I hadn't found tabs for slide of much use before Tom Feldmann started teaching, but he will generally note changes in tempo, any variation in the thumb use in the tabs -but not the brushes and the dance so much - he more demonstrates the usage in the latter.

I've found it to be a great way to learn, and it has helped train my ear, develop a vocabulary, and an understanding of timing - not relying on the thumb to keep time and not keeping to a set speed and tempo.

And to get back to the thread point on fills etc the teaching with tab reference has helped me spot those things a little better when I view something like the Brooke Williams piece and how fills, runs, bass, melody work all together - like a complete paragraph, not a sentence.

[jodygc50]

I see that this is an old thread, but if you're still looking for tab Brooks has it up on his website now.