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Flatpicking - what's that ?
An Introduction with Examples.

 

After having started with the guitar one of the first challenges I tried to tackle was the way I heard Donovan Leitch play with his hits "Universal Soldier" and "Catch the Wind". In those days I owned the album "Golden hour of Donovan". It contained 60 minuts of Donovan with one guitar only. Many old recordings of Bob Dylan (iE "Annother Side of Bob Dylan") feature a quite similar playing style. Much later I realized that the style I heard and tried to play was even older for already Maybelle Carter  (The Carter Family) and many other Country&Western and Bluegrass guitar players maybe even already in "the year '64" used this special kind of accompaniment that gave their music a rock solid base. The style I am talking about consists of playing single line bass notes and chords at the same time as if two guitars were played simultanously, one of them playing chords, the other one melody lines.
Your guitar can be these two instruments. It is not easy to let two more arms grow out of your body, I tried and failed. Instead of that it is possible to play bass notes and chords in different processing frames and thus approach the same goal. Flatpicking accompaniment might be called a nice example of non-electronic multitasking. I would like to demonstrate my own experience of how the left and the right hand work together. 

 
What the picking hand contributes:

The goal is to hit single bass strings and hit chords inbetween. This can be done in at least three ways:

 

1. Picking with thumb and fingers
I mean a way of picking with the fingers found as an accompanyment style in the Alpine region folk music. This kind of picking produces some kind of "bouncing" Polka kinda effect. I don't use it much and I would count it as fingerstyle, so I won't discuss it here.

2. "Frailing"
Bass strings are hit with the thumb (I recommend a thumbpick) while the fingers strike the high note chords with a brushing movement. The right hand is closed first and while it is stretched open, the fingertips brush across the high strings. When the hand is closed again, the strings can be brushed again with an upstroke. Bass notes can be played very precisely. One big advantage this way of picking provides is the opportunity to switch over to fingerpicking effortlessly. On the other hand movement of the bass lines is limited to downstrokes only, because it is almost impossible (at least for me) to play upstrokes with a thumbpick. Frailing offers a clean, precise and decent sound for any kind of accompanyment.

 

3. Pure Flatpicking
With this I mean a way of playing bass notes and high notes with a flatpick. Most bluegrass players play this way. It makes switching between fast rythm parts  and melody easy. Chord high notes as well as bass notes can be hit with down- and upstrokes. A drawback and a real problem occurs whan you want to flatpick and then toggle to fingerpicking. This is almost impossible unless you drop your pick.

 

But there's no exception from the rule. There are ways to combine fingerpicking and flatpicking:

 

a) "Hybrid-Picking": Play the bass notes with a flatpick and pick the high notes with your middle and ring finger. Jerry Donahue plays this way as well as the guitar man playing on my Dixie Cicks DVD.

b)  Use the thumbpick like a flatpick if necessary. I cannot do it and god knows I tried. I even tried those thumbpicks that look like a flatpick with a ring. They don't work for me. Thumbpicked they produce annoying sidenoise and a weak tone, flatpicked they are too fixed in their position. As far as I know there nevertheless are some players that use regular thumbpicks like flatpicks ( I heard Johnny Winter would do so).

c)  Use a fingernail (f.E. of the index finger) as a flatpick. This is my method. It only works if I have my nail hardened with UV-cured finish but then it really works. Without that kind of treatment my nail gets shredded.

 

Now I am going to get into some details and examples. Flatpicking and Frailing can be executed on different levels of difficulty and skill. The most simple way to do it sure would be playing quarters as bass notes and hit quarter chords inbetween. This can be done with downstrokes only, even at higher speed. A bit more colour is added if there are some more bass notes played from time to time using the hammer-on techique. I have got one example:

Watch and listen how the right hand does some Frailing here (AVI video-file, size 222 Kb).

If the whole thing is flatpicked (with the nail of my index finger) it looks like this (AVI-video-file, size 256 Kb).

 

The next step would be doubles or even triplets with the chords between the bass notes. The only way to get that done is utilizing the upward movement of the right hand to hit the strings with an upstroke. The following example is based on example 1 but it has doubled chords. 
Watch example 2 "Frailing"-Style here (AVI-video-file, size 228 Kb)

 

Example 2 played done the flatpicking way may be watched here (AVI-video-file, size 280 KB).

 

Finally it is possible not only to play the chord part with down- and upswings. The bass notes can be played with upswings too. The example 2 given above could be played without hammer-ons. The movement from the notes A to B on the A string, D to E on the D string would be played with every note picked. This might take a little time and rehearsing and afterwards will sound and look like this. The  AVI-video-file has a size of  318 Kb. In the end I play a single note phrase (not notated) that demonstrates a toggle from chord accompaniment to single line playing.
Flatpicking and Frailing make any chord accompaniment more interesting and driving compared to simple chord strumming. Think of the following opportunities:

1. Alternating Bass plus the chords 
Chords can be embellished with alternating bass lines. In most of the cases the root note and the 4th under the root note are a good start. The C major chord for example can get a bass line consisitng of quarter notes of C-G-C and G. Look at the following example wich sounds  like this (MP3-file, size 81 Kb).
 

A change of G and D fits to the G major chord. Klick here  to get an impression (MP3-file, size 81 Kb)

 

And a change of D and A would do with the D major chord. Klick here to listen to the recording (MP3-file, size 81 Kb)

 

2. Play Transitions
The next step is to connect thos alternating bass lines with transitions while the chords change. This way complete bass lines that walk through the whole piece can be put together. A little example is the progression C/G, Am, G, F, G and back to C/G. I did a little example of how to play a bass line with the chords. hKlick here to listen to the MP3 file (size 201 Kb).  . 

    With a bit of an open mind and patience it almost every chord progression will provide opportunities such as shown above. 

3. Play flatpicking Solo Pieces
Finally it is possible to flatpick the whole lead melody while playing chords at the same time. Sometimes the single line melodies go beyond the borders of the D string and proceed to the G string or even the B string. this kind of playing sometimes reminds me of "carving" a melody out of the chord. Norman Blake plays some fiddle tunes this way. I am especially impressed with his version of the Arkansas Traveller.  Annother example would be "John Hardin" of the Carter family. My version of  "John Hardin" lasts thru two chord progressions, the first one frailed, the second one flatpicked. Note the increasing volume and dynamics (and lack of preciseness, shame on me) when the frailing switches to flatpicking. (MP3-file, size 575 Kb).

 

At last I should add that one interesting observation I made is the following: Many scale notes on the fretboard can easyly be fretted with single fingers while the rest of the hand still remains in a chord position. I recorded three examples but I have not yet written them down:

C-major-scale over C-major-chord (MP3 file, size 302 Kb)
D-major-scale over D-major-chord- (MP3 file, size 176 Kb)
G-major-scale  over G-major-chord- (MP3 file, sizes 156 Kb)
 

Now I've come to an end of my little treatment about flatpicking. It will be continued when new ideas come to my mind, I feel the urge to write mor and get the spare time to do it.