Country guitar lessons in these days of the world wide web are now popular all over the world. If you are wondering what the fuss is about I will just mention some aspects of country guitar playing that excite the interest of music fans and guitar enthusiasts alike. This article will focus on a couple of the more individualistic guitar styles in country music and also talk a little about the Telecaster - the country musician's guitar.
First let us look at a guitar style that has entered the country genre through blues and rock. The slide guitar, also known as the bottleneck guitar is a lyrical way of expressing feelings through guitar music. It was developed in the early twentieth century by the early blues players, and popularized by young white rock and blues players in the nineteen sixties. Now there are many country guitar players who see the musical possibilities in this style of playing. The key to this technique is sliding an object along the guitar strings to make a whining or wailing sound. This presents the guitar player with many opportunities to play notes that fall between the frets of the guitar as well as imitating the sound of a singing voice.
The term "bottleneck" refers to the practice of many slide guitar performers of producing the sliding sound by fitting the neck of a bottle to their first or second finger. Popular wisdom has it that other players used the blade of a knife. Modern slide guitar players usually go to a music shop and buy a slide. You can play slide guitar with the guitar held in the normal playing position or with the guitar in your lap. A player can use an ordinary steel string acoustic guitar tuned in the standard way or to an open chord, or a resonator guitar which has a distinctive metallic sound well suited to slide playing.
Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.
—Oswald Spengler (1880–1936)
Another guitar style used by country guitar players is chicken pickin', developed to high art by Walon Jennings. It is used in lead guitar solos and involves the guitar player pulling on the string with his right hand fingers and at the same time damping the string with his left hand. Most country guitar players use a plectrum or thumbpick to play bass notes in conjunction with chicken pickin' on the treble strings.
Chet Atkins is a country guitar player who was adept at the chicken pickin' technique but he was most well known for his adaptation of the Travis picking technique. Merle Travis developed an impressive solo playing technique using his thumb to pick bass notes and his index finger to play melody or filler notes. Chet Atkins was so impressed with Travis' solos that he assumed that Travis was using his second and ring fingers in addition to his index finger. This mistaken assumption led to a whole new generation of country guitar players inspired by the Chet Atkins style.
If you want to take country guitar lessons you should learn about the typical sound that is associated with country guitar music. While rock and roll has as many sounds as there are guitar players, country guitar has its own sound. This is due to most country players opting to stay with the clean, unadorned sound of the Fender Telecaster. The "Tele" had a sound that made aspiring guitar players sit up and take notice combined with a design that made it a dream to play. It is a solid body electric guitar with two pickups, and was the first electric guitar to be successfully produced and sold on a large scale.
One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
In the early days of the electric guitar both rock and country guitar players wanted to be heard by the audience without feedback interfering with the sound of the guitar. The Telecaster filled the bill when it came out in 1950 and has remained a popular choice for solo guitarist ever since. Country guitarists noted for being enthusiastic Telecaster players include Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings, James Burton and Merle Haggard.
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