Big Love Help

[seteca]

Originally posted by BlueGrass
I just can't do 2 @ once, lol. Even trying to practice it is hard................ It is a mechanics thing, my fingers are not use to doing 2 different things at the same time.

Well you basically said it there yourself! Your fingers and thumb are not used to playing like that so it must seem extremely awkward trying to.

Most people seem to prefer to learn the bass line of a Travis-picked song first, and then add in the other parts one by one. But there's no rule or anything. Just do whatever you have to do to make it sound right. The way I learnt to play Big Love was to play the bass notes and the melody notes slowly, and together, like a classical piece, where it all (intentionally) sounds like one guitar. Then as I my confidence with the left hand finger positions grew, I gradually increased the speed. I then started to dissociate the bass line from the melody and rhythm parts by starting to use the fixed-thumb/moving-hand method. That was obviously tricky to get the hang of, and getting that transition from the A to E (and vice-versa) strings to go flawlessly was the hardest part. Once I'd got that sorted out, it was only a matter of increasing confidence and thus speed.

When I first started playing Big Love (~1998/9) I'd been playing guitar for about 11 years, and it still took me years to master it. So don't worry if you're having trouble....it's not meant to be easy! Just keep practicing!

(By the way...it's of course totally up to you to decide what you wanna play, but just bear in mind that Big Love is one of Lindsey's most technically advanced pieces and is a tough song to learn in general, so make sure you can (at least technically) play some of his easier stuff (e.g. Django, Landslide, Go Insane) before you move onto this. JMHO though.)

Good luck!