GUITAR
Performance Clinic
with Jerry Belsak, Philip High, & David McLeanJerry Belsak
Jerry - who has played with such luminaries as Leo Kottke, Muriel Anderson, and Ricky Skaggs; is a former guitar teacher; and can be seen at events throughout the state - is a fabulous player that is especially adept in the "fingerstyle" genre (also variously called "thumb-style", "finger-picking", and the like). For those unfamiliar with this style of playing, Bob Baxter put it pretty well way back in 1967 when he said:
"Finger-picking is a Southern-based American instrumental guitar style. Many people incorrectly use the term 'Finger-Picking' to mean any right hand style in which the fingers pluck or pull strings. Most of these styles should be simply called 'plucking styles'. Finger-Picking is a specific and complex melody style which allows one guitar to do the work of two by placing a treble-string melody over a constant bass-string accompaniment. Most Finger-Pickers use a steel-string guitar which is preferable both for its bright, penetrating sound and for its 'quicker' narrow neck."
Of course, finger-style playing has evolved much since 1967, but we'll not go into all the diverse stylings it has spawned. However, you may be interested in listening to players such as Chet Atkins, Lenny Breau, Tommy Emmanuel, Muriel Anderson, and - of course! - Jerry Belsak.
One of the standard techniques for finger-style playing is the constant bass accompaniment played with the thumb. Try out this exercise that I first saw demonstrated by Chris Procter. The idea is to isolate the thumb accompaniment and freely play the G scale. After you can ascend with no difficulty, try descending.
One of the areas where Jerry excels is in his dramatic use of harmonics. He not only blazes through open string "natural" harmonics, but is amazingly enchanting with what some call "fretted" or "harp" harmonics. The idea is simple: Fret a chord with the fret hand, then pluck the harmonics out by lightly touching the string 12 (or 5 or 7, typically) frets above the fretted note. Try this:
Learn more about Jerry at his web-site: http://www.lexpages/jerrybelsak/JerryBelsak.html
Lesson written by David M. McLean, 05-2003
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