Clawhammer Guitar

Hi Everyone,
 
Hope folks are doing well. I wanted to take this blog post to talk about a cool technique, Clawhammer Guitar. Most of our lessons are oriented towards strumming easy guitar songs, and getting beginners started on various techniques. However, one of our teachers, Steve, is a top exponent of the clawhammer guitar style.
 

 
Clawhammer guitar is quite similar to clawhammer banjo. Strings are sounded by a downward stroke of the hand, using the back of the index or middle finger nail to strike the string. This motion comes from the hand and forearm as a unit, rather than flicking the finger out and down.
 
The unique thing about clawhammer is the role of the thumb. Rather than sounding on the downbeat, as in travis picking and other folk guitar styles, the thumb sounds on the AND of two. So the basic clawhammer rhythm can be phrased as bum diddy, bum diddy. Or One, Two And, One, Two And. The hand comes down and the index or middle finger strikes the string on beat One. On beat Two you bring the hand down again for either a rhythmic brush or to strike another melody note. In this motion the thumb also plants on the desired string. Then on the And of two you press the thumb down against that string, which propels the whole hand/forearm unit upward in preparation for another stroke, and also sounds the string the thumb was planted on. Its much easier understood by watching, so check out the embedded videos.
 
Clawhammer guitar is fun because once you get the basic pattern down its effortless. Your right hand does largely the same thing every time, you put your left hand where it needs to be, and everything just grooves along. The basic pattern will take some practice, so its advisable to make it second nature before moving on to any complicated pieces.
 
Clawhammer can be used to play various types of fiddle tunes, as well as song accompaniment, as Molly Tuttle shows below. If you are looking for something new to add to your own songwriting, this might be it, so i encourage you to check the technique out. Its a load of fun.
 

 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Playing Methods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.