Doc Watson Master of Guitar
Created | Updated Jan 13, 2003
Doc Watson plays guitar with such finesse that one can sometimes imagine it would be worth plucking out one's eyes, as if being blind like Doc would improve one's guitar playing.
His mastery of fingerpicking is awe inspiring, but his most important contribution to American traditional music is surely his flatpick style of playing guitar. He attributes the high speed, expressive melodic runs of this style to his frustrated attempts to play fiddle. Using a typical guitar pick (thus the name flatpicking) he picks single notes of melody from the chord while keeping the impression of a bass line by injecting bass notes into overal sound. Much like a film of still shots bieng projected to fool our eyes into seeing moving pictures, his style fool our ears into hearing a tone not unlike a pianist playing bass on one hand and melody on the other.
He brought the guitar out of its place in the rythm section of the traditional string band and put it up front to show off its versatility.
Some people liken the guitar's range of tonality to the piano, but even more desirable because it can be carried about without the help of several friends. By playing the melodies of the old songs on guitar instead of the usual fiddle or mandolin Doc can add a great amount of emotion and tension into the music with specialized left hand or fret hand fingering. Bending strings 1, Hammering on 2, and pulling off 3 conspire to make the music lope or gallop or wind up and down the scale at a happy bounce. Slides cry with the tone of the working mans blues. And We can all thank Doc Watson for the sound. He is one of the few out of each generation of humankind, like J.S. Bach, that are blessed with such a gift that his impression on music will likely be here long after all of us are gone.
His mastery of fingerpicking is awe inspiring, but his most important contribution to American traditional music is surely his flatpick style of playing guitar. He attributes the high speed, expressive melodic runs of this style to his frustrated attempts to play fiddle. Using a typical guitar pick (thus the name flatpicking) he picks single notes of melody from the chord while keeping the impression of a bass line by injecting bass notes into overal sound. Much like a film of still shots bieng projected to fool our eyes into seeing moving pictures, his style fool our ears into hearing a tone not unlike a pianist playing bass on one hand and melody on the other.
He brought the guitar out of its place in the rythm section of the traditional string band and put it up front to show off its versatility.
Some people liken the guitar's range of tonality to the piano, but even more desirable because it can be carried about without the help of several friends. By playing the melodies of the old songs on guitar instead of the usual fiddle or mandolin Doc can add a great amount of emotion and tension into the music with specialized left hand or fret hand fingering. Bending strings 1, Hammering on 2, and pulling off 3 conspire to make the music lope or gallop or wind up and down the scale at a happy bounce. Slides cry with the tone of the working mans blues. And We can all thank Doc Watson for the sound. He is one of the few out of each generation of humankind, like J.S. Bach, that are blessed with such a gift that his impression on music will likely be here long after all of us are gone.
1Plucking the string and pushing it across the fret,bending it makes the tone go higher or lower2Plucking the string and then placing the fret hand finger smartly down on the string3The opposite of Hammering On
