No kidding. You know, I never thought too much about Jimmy Page’s picking-hand technique. I did have that Hal Leonard book of transcriptions of each instrument on a separate staff, with the tablature for bass and guitar and whatever one calls that drumming notation style.
The thing that kills me now, when it comes to “Communication Breakdown,” just how wide those barre chords are.
Yeah, I can make those on the Ibanez, sort of, but it’s really the opposite of playing pianos or organ: on those, to get speed, you have to have no tension at all and just sort of let everything flop down at the keys, and trust that you know the tune and all that.
But, at the fretboard, you’re contracting the flexor tendons in that hand. The picking/plucking hand? Yeah, same as pianos or organs, more or less (which is probably why I favor the Knopfler/Wes approach: less to think about, and am already used to using whatever finger is open to grab the next note in an improvised line).
Yeah, I know about how to hook the thumb around and grab the lowest string.
I don’t know how the shape of a Telecaster’s neck works with that. Only guitars I’ve ever played and owned are the 1974 Gibson SG Special, with a really low action, since sold, and now the Ibanez AF-55, which is, of course, a hollow-body archtop, and in this case, bridge and neck pickups of unimportant characteristics.
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I do find that the main challenge is not just in the plucking/picking hand, but also controlling intonation with the fretting hand.
It’s very easy to “slack” oneself into a very wide, BB King style vibrato. Whereas, for me, I’d rather use that only as an option, and otherwise be very precise at the fretboard.
To the point that one doesn’t really need frets, but I now see that the frets are necessary to accomodate everything available to the instrument.
