In this lecture, I just want to take a few minutes and try to explain the country blues guitar style. And when I say the country of blues guitar style, I mean the traditional style played by performers from the 1920s into the 1930s and beyond into the 60s Folk revival. And more specifically, it's a finger pick approach to playing the blues on the acoustic guitar. The simplest way to explain this is that you're playing the guitar like a piano, you're going to be playing two parts at the same time. And that's what makes this style so much fun is you can basically accompany yourself and really fill in some space, especially if you're singing too. So the way we do this is real, real simple.
Now it's easy to explain but actually getting Get into this a little tougher, but trust me, it's not as hard as it seems. Your thumb on your right hand is going to be like the left hand on the piano, it's going to play the bass notes and your first finger. And you can also use some other fingers too, but primarily your first finger on your right hand is going to be like your right hand. on the piano, it's going to play the treble or the melody. And there are times when the thumb crosses over and helps out with the melody and there are times even when you can use the finger on the bass strings. But for the most part, you've got a division of labor there between your thumb and your first finger.
Let's talk about the thumb first. In acoustic or country blues, you've got two general styles of of thumb base. One is what's called monotonic. monotonic bass means you're playing one bass note throughout the song. So if we're playing in the key of E, I'm making an E chord here. You've got a bass pulsating Feldman that's monotonic.
The alternating bass means you're playing two different bass notes alternating. And one of the most common is what's called a six, four, you're going from the sixth string to the fourth string. So in the key of E, you're going to be playing that with your with your thumb. Every key that we've got, we can play a monotonic bass and we can play an alternating bass and that's the next part of this lesson series. I'm going to go through all the chords and talk about the keys that we're going to be playing in and explain to you which notes you can use for both. So that's the bass, the bass part of this with the thumb.
The first finger is going to be playing the treble notes. And so for playing in the key of C, and we've got an alternating bass gone. The first finger is playing the first string, second string and even the third string. And you'll see as we go through each song, there's something you're going to be playing with your thumb. And there's something you're going to be playing with your first finger and sometimes using your second finger. The trick is, of course, playing them both together.
And a lot of people make the false assumption they think. And I thought this when I first started playing this kind of guitar is that the two parts are independent of each other. That means the left hands doing one thing, the right hands doing the other thing and you got to do them both separately at the same time. The truth is, they're actually working together. And there's a lot of places where what you're picking with your thumb and your finger happen together and I call this pinching. So if you start out with this I'm playing that in the key of C, I'm pinching the fifth string and the first string.
I'm not pinching it with every note, but I'm pitching it a lot. There's a lot of places where the two work together. I call it pinching. I'm not sure what the official musical term for that is. But when I was trying to learn the style of guitar, the moment I figured that out, it was like a light came on. And I understood and really started taking off playing this kind of music.
So the pinches when we start learning the songs, look for those places where the two notes are pinched together with the thumb and the first finger. So in the key of C. There's a couple places where I pinch the fifth string and the first string together and then some times the fourth string and the second string, you know, it just depends on the song and what your left hand is doing. Now, country blues music is very much a chord oriented style of guitar. And to be able to play it, you've got to be able to play the chords and that's going to be the subject of the first really important section of this lesson series.