The whole world was watching when Courtney Love's husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, was found dead on April 8, 1994.

Two months later, Kristen Pfaff, bassist for Love’s band Hole, died from a heroin overdose. The group were forced to put a tour on hold and pull out of an appearance at Lollapalooza.

But Love refused to let these tragedies define Hole's 1998 album, Celebrity Skin. The last thing she wanted was to write “a grieving widow’s memoir,” as she called it in a 1999 Guitar World interview.

“I think that’s the kind of satisfaction some people would really want. But I’m not in the mood for that. That’s not what I’m about. This isn’t Lucinda Williams. I’m not some confessional singer/songwriter. My whole history in this business has been to find the hook.”

A media circus. The aftermath of two major deaths. A new bass player. An intense touring schedule. Hiatus. Relocation to New Orleans, New York, Nashville, and Memphis. All contributed to Celebrity Skin.

But Love also used Los Angeles, fame, and celebrity culture as her muse. The result was a record that captured the zeitgeist.

And although she didn't want to dwell on her departed partner in the album's lyrics, her guitar work paid subtle homage through her gear choices.

The most poignant of these was a big-bodied Gretsch that few would associate with Cobain – but for the Nirvana frontman, it was the one that got away.

“Kurt would always say, ‘I’m gonna get a Chet Atkins.’ But he never did. I don’t think he could find a left-handed one. It wasn’t until he died that I went and looked at one, and it was really beautiful.”

Love's other primary guitar during this era was her signature Fender Vista Venus – a part Mercury, part Stratocaster, and part Rickenbacker hybrid – which broke new ground as only the second signature guitar ever released for a female guitarist, following Bonnie Raitt.

“I didn’t want it all teched out,” she said of its H/S pickup configuration. “I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of guitar players.”

Another key piece of gear was a solid-state 1976 Randall Commander that formerly belonged to Cobain (“He did like his Randall Commander”).

Meanwhile, the Boss DS-1 Distortion, a firm favorite of Cobain's, was a mainstay, as was the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi fuzz. Love was such a fan of the latter, she reckoned she beat her husband and Celebrity Skin co-writer Billy Corgan to the punch.

“I contend that I was the first person to actually have a Super Fuzz Big Muff, before the rest of the boys. It was when I was in this purist ’60s garage band called the Venerays, with Kat Bjelland.

“And just recently, I started using a box called the Mystic Blue. I like a good box, and I’ll try any one – if it has a good-sounding name. Especially if they made a box with some kind of girly name,” she quips. “If they made one called Cherry Apple Blossom, I’d run with it every night!”

Released on September 8, 1998, Celebrity Skin turned out to be the last album – and most commercially successful – before Hole parted ways in 2002, and featured contributions from Corgan, The Go-Go's guitarist Charlotte Caffey, and frequent Love collaborator Jordon Zadorozny.

“I genuinely did feel antisocial, and the first two albums reflect that,” she says of Celebrity Skin’s more “palatable” sound.

“But now I’m into mainstreaming. I’m just doing mainstreaming correctly… During grunge and during metal, they couldn’t sell shit to us because we were too cynical.

“There’s a way to mainstream things with integrity.”

Sometimes, you bump into high-profile players when you least expect it. If you’re anything like Tommy Emmanuel, though – who literally walked up and knocked on the door of his guitar hero – you meet them exactly when you expect to.

Speaking on The Zak Kuhn Show, the Aussie acoustic guitar virtuoso reflected on the time he first visited Music Row in Nashville as an aspiring musician and took the opportunity to swing by the abode of none other than Chet Atkins.

After heading over to the Atkins household during his pilgrimage to Nashville, Emmanuel explains, “He had a lady named Caroline working for him and I knocked on the door and she let me in. I had my guitar and I had a photo album with photos of me holding up his albums and stuff as a kid.

“I'm waiting downstairs and she gets on the intercom and says, ‘There's a boy from Australia here to see you.’ And I hear him say, ‘Is he a fingerpicker?’ She looks at me and I go, ‘Yeah!’ She goes, ‘He says he is.’ [Chet says], ‘I'll be right down.’

“I'm waiting and then down the stairs he comes, and there he is, looking exactly like he does on his record. There he is, my hero, the guy I have learned [and] stolen everything from.”

This wasn’t an ordinary meet and greet, though. Emmanuel had come prepared with his guitar, and Atkins was keen to make his fan’s trip worthwhile.

“He came straight up to me and he said, ‘You want to pick a little?’” Emmanuel remembers. “We go into a side room and I start playing Me and Bobby McGee, and he doesn't play straight away. He's just sitting there.

“He's just watching me, and I get to the end of the first chorus, and when it comes into the verse, he joins in when the second guitar comes in on the arrangement. What he played made me sound so good.

“What he played was so beautiful and so tasteful. And then when the chorus came around, he went straight to a harmony. He phrased it like I phrased it.”

The encounter gave way to one of the most important lessons that Emmanuel ever learned – something the acoustic virtuoso uses to inspire other aspiring players.

“He listened to me and it was so beautiful,” he continues. “I thought, ‘Chet was not just a great player and a great arranger and a great producer and all that, he was a great listener.’ And I learned a lesson from that.

“So, when anyone says, ‘What advice would you say to musicians?’ I always say, ‘Be a listener first, be a player second.’”

It would be the start of a fruitful relationship between the two fingerstyle maestros, who would go on to release The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World in 1973.

In related news, Mark Knopfler recently recalled the time he was called up by Chet Atkins to jam following the release of Brothers in Arms.

Not only is Brothers in Arms widely considered to be Dire Straits’ magnum opus, it’s also deemed to be a nine-track showcase of generational guitar playing that has since cemented Mark Knopfler’s place in the pantheon of electric guitar greats.

In fact, the hysteria surrounding Brothers in Arms was so great that Knopfler himself was soon receiving calls from the guitar world’s most respected figures, who all wanted to sit down and jam with the Strat-wielding fingerstyle player.

One of those figures, as Knopfler recalls in a new interview with Guitar World, was fellow fingerstyle hero Chet Akins. However, when the pair linked up to trade licks, it didn’t quite go as Knopfler had been expecting.

“I remember, Chet Atkins gave me a [call],” he remembers. “Because we were both pickers in that sense – but, of course, Chet was otherworldly. I used to go round to his office and hang out, and I’ll never forget, we once played and sang the song Kentucky all morning.

“Chet had such facility and knowledge, and yet what he wanted to do was play Kentucky – which has two chords – all morning long. He’d say to me, 'You’re pretty good, but you’re no Mark Knopfler.'”

Atkins telling Mark Knopfler that he wasn’t quite as good as Mark Knopfler was part and parcel of a jam with the Country Gentleman, who was known to crack a quip every now and then.

“He always had good jokes,” Knopfler goes on. “You know, you’d get to the end of something and he’d go, ‘Very educational.’ And then he’d say, ‘A little below above average.’ Or something like that. Very dry.

“I only remember him being slightly put-out once, when [fingerstyle guitarist] John Fahey said he’d been double-tracking. Chet was not pleased by that. And he wrote to whatever magazine it was and said, ‘You can learn to do this with your own two hands; you don’t need double-tracking.’

“I mean, Chet liked multi-tracking too, of course, but only if he was doing something even more complicated. But he could play Yankee Doodle and Battle Hymn of the Republic at the same time.”

Knopfler and Atkins’ friendship wouldn’t be restricted to the rehearsal room, though. In 1990, the pair released their collaborative record, Neck and Neck, and would share the stage together on numerous occasions.

Elsewhere in his Guitar World interview, Knopfler explains why he doesn't consider himself a guitar hero and discusses the treasured Gibson he received as a gift from a rock hero.

Tommy Emmanuel has been giving his thoughts on guitar playing following the release of his new Live at the Sydney Opera House opus. In a new interview, the acoustic guitar master philosophizes about the difference between being a guitarist and a guitar player.

“My music is not for musicians; it’s for everybody,” insists Emmanuel in an interview with The Bluegrass Situation. “I’m trying to be an all-around artist, entertainer, writer, player, performer. I’m trying to give people a bit of everything.”

“Being a guitarist is being a gun for hire. Being a guitar player is a way of life,” explains the maestro. “A guitar player is someone who loves to play for people and who loves his instrument deeply.”

Emmanuel knows a thing or two about both. He was a gun for hire in the ’80s, playing in bands for Australian vocalists John Farnham and Doug Parkinson. He is also undoubtedly a guitar player, being one of a handful of musicians conferred the title of Certified Guitar Player by the late Chet Atkins.

“My role model, Chet Atkins, worked harder than anybody I’ve ever seen at practicing and making sure that every little detail was so smooth,” he recalls.

“If you want it to be good, to flow, and to be wonderful to watch, then there’s a lot of work ahead. You’re going to have to work so hard to make it that way. I never stop working on my abilities, because it’s so important.

“Everything comes down to commitment. How committed am I to be a better player?” asks Emmanuel.

Despite this, Tommy insists that technique is not the most important thing. “I often tell people who want to talk about my technique, ‘I don’t talk about my technique. It’s invisible.’ The music is what counts, not how I do it.”

His chops are awe inspiring, but Emmanuel admits he has his struggles. “My abilities fluctuate because I’m a human being. I’m not a robot; I’m not going to be exactly the same every time.

“My age is challenging me as well,” admits the 69-year-old. “There are things I could do twenty years ago that I can’t do today and I have to be okay about that.”

Even on the road, with little chance to practice, Emmanuel is constantly looking for ways to improve. “Every day was like, get to the venue, get my guitar out, start playing, work on some songs that maybe I didn’t play the night before… remember some of my other songs that I haven’t been playing, put them in the show, and constantly find ways of making it different and interesting from the night before.”

Emmanuel recently expressed his admiration for Les Paul, saying that in the last year of the pioneer’s life, Emmanuel told him “I swear, you're playing better than you were last year.” Tommy also gave us a picking masterclass alongside Molly Tuttle.

In this lesson, we’ll look at the folk-blues fingerpicking style of Elizabeth Cotten, and revisit Maybelle Carter’s famous ‘pick and flick’ approach.

You’ll discover how folk legend Pete Seeger translated banjo techniques to the guitar, and then learn how the great Chet Atkins built on the Travis picking style to make it his own.

To be a well-rounded Americana guitarist, it’s essential to have all these techniques at your disposal, along with a good knowledge of the most commonly used tunings.

This means drop D, D (D-A-D-F#-A-D) and G (D-G-D-G-B-D), so we’ll work on exercises featuring each of these tunings.

Example 1

Replicating Elizabeth Cotten’s style is challenging. Left-handed but playing a right-handed guitar upside-down, she plucked the bass strings with her first, second, and third fingers, and played melodies on the upper strings with her thumb. She frequently picked out of C and G chord shapes which is a great way to get started.

Example 2

Open tunings get to the heart of Cotten’s ‘country blues’ sound that would influence future singer-songwriters in the genre. This example is in open D (D-A-D-F#-A-D), which harks back to the Travis picking alternating bassline approach.

The picking-hand thumb plays the bassline but note how, unlike Travis, Chet Atkins who followed her and later Tommy Emmanuel, Cotten did not mute the bass notes, instead letting them ring out against the melody.

Example 3

This example uses open G tuning (D-G-D-G-B-D), another Cotten favourite. When playing in open G the emphasis is typically on the key of G so the fifth string (tuned down to G) is used as the root and the sixth and fourth strings (the two Ds) are the 5th. This strong root-5th relationship makes this a very useful tuning.

Example 4

This example looks at Maybelle Carter’s techniques with a capo at the 7th fret. Focus on relaxed thumb-finger interplay and the gentle ‘brushing’ of the picking-hand first finger on the treble strings. Make the hammer-ons and pull-offs as strong as the picked/brushed notes and make sure that the legato phrases aren’t rushed or pushed.

Example 5

Pete Seeger was a legend in the American folk scene playing old-time banjo. He translated banjo techniques to guitar, and was a deft fingerpicker who often played 12-string guitars, but this challenging example will stay on six! The alternating bassline is still there but now we have a more complex melody to play over the top.

Example 6

Pete Seeger’s accompaniment parts weren’t all about complexity and this example shows how he would take a nuanced approach to self-accompaniment on guitar. Note the connecting lines that are used to get from one chord to another, a technique you’ll also see in the guitar style of Johnny Cash.

Example 7

At the heart of Chet Atkins’ approach is the palm-muted alternating bassline, but Chet played complex melodies on top and took influence from farther afield. He also arranged well-known pieces for solo guitar and became a superstar in the process. This example features advanced chord ideas with integrated melodies.

Example 8

Atkins was also adept at moving basslines music and went beyond the alternating bass approach. This example shows how a bassline can move around even within the Travis picking style. It’s complex and may take some time, but stick with it as you are truly on the way to sounding like two instruments playing together.

Famed acoustic guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel has been a longtime Chet Atkins fan – ever since he heard his music on the radio at the age of six, to be exact. 

However, having Atkins as his guitar hero apparently came with some downsides, such as struggling to understand the hype surrounding The Rolling Stones and The Beatles when they first came onto the scene.

“You gotta remember, I'm a boy from the bush. So when I heard Chet Atkins and people like that, I heard somebody who played incredibly in tune with a great tone, great ideas, and all that sort of stuff,” Emmanuel says in an interview on the Jay Jay French Connection podcast.

“When I heard The Rolling Stones, they sounded like a bad high school band to me, I didn't get it. And they were in and out of tune.

“The singer [Mick Jagger] sounded like he didn't give a shit. And my brother and I were like, ‘What the hell do people see in this crap?’ Because we were used to hearing these polished, beautiful records.

“Of course, I love The Rolling Stones, and I love The Beatles, and I love the mojo that they bring, but it took me a long time to appreciate them because I was ignorant. I knew nothing. 

“You know, and when someone said, this is a good guitar player, and I heard him I'm like, ‘He doesn't even get it out of a case compared to Chet Atkins.’

“For a little boy, he set the bar pretty high early, you know, I heard Windy and Warm on the radio when I was seven. I could hear that he was playing everything at once. I just didn't know what he was doing or how to do it. But I knew that. 

“And everybody said to me, ‘Don't take any notice of that. It's a recording trick. You can't do all that.’ But I could hear it. I just didn't know how to do it yet.”

Emmanuel goes on to say that from an early age he was entranced with Atkins' playing and fingerstyle technique, which incorporated a walking bass, rhythm, and melody.

“I wasn't aware of this technique. I just knew what I heard. And I started finding a way of making that muted bass. And then I tried to get my fingers to play the melodies like this, while trying to keep that going, you know, and it was so hard. I was eight.”

In a 2019 GuitarWorld interview, Emmanuel reiterated how important Chet Atkins was for him to develop his intricate, melody-centered technique. “I call it a science experiment. It’s like a juggler and a card dealer all working at once and it is just too much.

“Y’know, just tell me the story, and lay it out for me. That’s what I am looking for. Growing up listening to Chet Atkins taught me to find the melody and stick with the melody.”

The electric guitar is one of the key instruments in the country music ensemble, providing as it does the backbone of the groove and often playing exciting single-note solos. Country guitar is a blend of many styles including, jazz, blues, cowboy, swing and gospel styles. 

In this feature, we will focus in on three core picking techniques with a view to developing the facility required to play some hot country lead guitar. The first of these is flatpicking, the country name for picking with down and up (alternate) pick strokes. 

The second is fingerstyle. Country guitarists often add a thumb pick as this accentuates the attack for the bass notes. The third technique is the country guitar favourite, hybrid picking. Hybrid picking combines the advantages of using the flat pick (plectrum) along with the extra facility and tone of the fingers.  

To provide inspiration for our studies we have identified six highly influential country giants. We have written a one-page study piece in the style of each of our players, which puts a spotlight on the key aspects of their style and also provides an opportunity to work on one of the three picking techniques just discussed. 

First up is Eldon Shamblin who remains one of the most influential guitarists in the western swing style. Shamblin used an early prototype Stratocaster given to him by Leo Fender for much of his career.

Our second axeman is ‘Mr Guitar’ Chet Atkins. Chet was a country guitar virtuoso and often used a thumb pick to accentuate the bass note attack and provide extra fingerstyle dexterity. 

Next up is Jimmy Bryant, often cited by Albert Lee as an influence. Bryant regulary recorded with pedal steel wizard Speedy West and the recordings of Speedy and Jimmy in action are jaw-dropping. 

Our fourth guitar slinger is Hank Garland who recorded as both a jazz guitarist and in the country style (he’s the ‘land’ in Gibson’s Byrdland archtop). For this feature, we’ll focus on his country style output with a piece inspired by songs like Sugarfoot Rag.

Next up we take a look at the lightning fingers of Roy Clark. Clark often fused surf style spring reverb with devillish rockabilly licks and our piece is inspired by tracks like Texas Twist.

Our final player is country picking genius Danny Gatton. Gatton was a master of using hybrid picking (pick and fingers together) and our performance track turns up the heat to provide an uptempo workout. 

Modern country players often tip their hats to our six trailblazers so it’s worth checking out how they affected later players such as Brent Mason, Mark Knopfler, Albert Lee and Nashville session ace, Tom Bukovac. 

Technique Focus: Practicing the swing feel

One of the areas to develop in your quest to play country is the ability to play with a swing feel. The swing groove template is in 4/4 with a heavy accent on beats two and four. So it’s essential when playing the four-in-a-bar rhythm pattern (four crotchet down strums in a bar of 4/4) that these beats are accented. The second element is adding swing to quaver passages in lead lines. 

You can practise this with alternate picking (down, up, down, up) and you should aim for a smooth and even sound. The amount of swing you add is down to personal preference and is often dictated by the rhythm section and groove of the song. Many jazz and swing players work on their time feel by practising swing with the metronome set on beats 2 and 4. 

Making the spaces between the clicks larger requires more work from your internal clock and develops good time keeping. This approach also adds a natural accent to beats two and four. You may find it hard to practice this way to start with as most people will find placing the accent on beat two and four trickier than on beats one and three.

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 3, Bass 7, Middle 6, Treble 9, Reverb 0

These ideas can be played on any type of guitar (most of our six used archtops). The classic country guitar lead tone uses the bridge pickup, with the amp set to a bright, clean tone and the reverb turned off. A compressor or clean boost can even out the picking attack. Use slapback echo set to a single short repeat, with the repeat volume just about as loud as the note you play.

Example 1. Eldon Shamblin

Our first track is designed to develop your flatpicking technique. All of these lines are played with alternate picking (down and up strokes). The licks are tailored to fit each chord. Bar 11 features the classic swing guitar technique of hammering onto a note from a semitone below (here, the b3 and 3 notes - Db and D - over Bb7).

Example 2. Chet Atkins

For our second track, we are focusing on using a thumbpick to play a fingerstyle accompaniment pattern. It will also work fingers only, but the pick provides extra attack for bass notes. If you are new to this general picking style then we’d recommend isolating the bass pattern.

A light palm mute will thicken the attack and this works well when combined with some slap-back echo. Once the bass line is memorised why not set a super slow metronome tempo and practise the technique, aiming to make it accurate, in-time and natural sounding. It may take practice to get up to performance tempo, but the results will be worth it.

Example 3.  Jimmy Bryant

For this look at hybrid picking, play the notes on the third string with a pick downstroke, and the notes on the first string using the picking-hand’s third (or second) finger. The repeating phrase in bars 6 to 9 is created by a third string down stroke and a hammer-on followed by a third string finger pluck of the first string. 

Example 4. Hank Garland

Here’s a slightly more demanding workout for your flatpicking. The melody is modelled around the form of a country rag and mostly uses the C major pentatonic scale (C-D-E-G-A). [Bar 11] features the technique of sliding into double-stop 3rds, which is a classic country guitar trope. 

Example 5. Roy Clark

Our fifth piece uses the low register to great effect. The bridge pickup selection here is essential. Dig in hard with the pick and snap the strings to provide that country twang. Hear the rockabilly influence in [bar 17]! This type of fast descending run down the open position E blues scale (E-G-A-Bb-B-D) is classic rockabilly fare. 

Example 6. Danny Gatton

Here’s a hot picking showstopper! Hybrid picking is great for playing these types of parts. We have notated the picking pattern which is the same throughout. First, play a palm-muted down stroke with the flat pick. This is followed by a plucked double-stop using second (m) and third (a) fingers, then a hammer-on.

A variation is to play the downstroke bass note followed by the double-stop with a pull-off. Begin slowly to avoid practising mistakes at speed too soon!

Dolly Parton set the guitar world alight when she chose to play a $99 mini electric guitar at her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. But it also revived the eternal question: how does she play guitar with those long fingernails? 

Personally, it's been decades since I gave up any thought of having nails that went more than a millimeter past the ends of my fingertips. But Parton manages to coax luscious tones out of her guitars while sporting long – but delicately preened – hand talons.

She's able to play with long nails as she always plays in open tunings and barres every chord, or frets exclusively low-string notes with the open strings. Now, this method limits any advanced chordal coloring, like 7ths or 9ths, but Parton doesn’t care.

You can see Parton's open tunings in action above, as she plays the title track from her 1973 album, My Tennessee Mountain Home, all while sporting her trademark long nails – you can even hear her picking hand talons clacking against the guitar's body.

In another video, Chet Atkins asks her how she plays with long nails. She jokes about how they are a pain to play with, but she just can't part with them. The pair go on to perform a great duet of Black Smoke's a Risin'.

And here’s a clip of Dolly on BBC's The Graham Norton Show talking about how she used her nails as percussion for the song 9 to 5 from the 1980 movie of the same name. No guitars involved, but just pure Dolly ingenuity.

Parton goes on to explain on the show that while her hands are manicured when she takes to the stage, she often tames them a little when she's writing.

“When I'm serious about my songwriting, I take these off and file 'em down,” she explains. “But I've learned to work them – these [right hand] work great as picks, there's no problem with this hand – but these [left hand] are the ones I have a problem with.

“I've learned to do open tuning, mostly, when I'm writing and stuff. But if I'm really serious about it, I just have to saw 'em down.”

Chet Atkins was born in Luttrell, Tennessee on June 20, 1924. His style was inspired by Merle Travis and his famed picking technique. Growing up poor meant he faced real challenges as a burgeoning guitarist, not least having to travel miles to find a power supply for his guitar amp, as his home did not have electricity.

A musical genius, Atkins took the Travis picking style and made it his own; while Merle used only thumb and first finger to pick the strings, Atkins combined his thumb, first, second and third fingers, hugely increasing his picking range.

His style was also shaped by Django Reinhardt, Les Paul, and later his friend and frequent musical partner, Jerry Reed. Atkins started his long, awe-inspiring career by playing with June Carter and the legendary Carter Family, and had his first hit in the early 1950s with his arrangement of Mr Sandman.

He also designed guitars for Gretsch and latterly became label boss at the Nashville division of the RCA Victor record company, helping to develop what became known as the ‘Nashville Sound’. In the process he made country music popular again, playing on countless hits for artists like the Everly Brothers, Jim Reeves and Don Gibson. He later recorded hit albums with both Mark Kopfler and Les Paul.

Like his protégé, Tommy Emmanuel, Chet was one of a handful of fingerstyle guitarists who could enrapture both the technique-seeking guitar-player fraternity, and the wider music-loving public. He is one of those few players who can make guitar players of any genre do an about-face with his beautiful tone, incredible technique and masterful arranging abilities.

Get the gear

Atkins used many guitars over his long career, from his Gretsch Country Gentleman and Chet Atkins models to various Martins, the ingenious Gibson CE nylon-string models, and later on instruments made by the incredible luthier Kirk Sand. 

But you can play this style on acoustic or electric guitar, and I recorded this month’s track on a Gibson Custom Shop 1934 Jumbo.

Track record

Atkins released many albums over his lifetime and sold millions of records. Try the 1997 duo album with Tommy Emmanuel, The Day Fingerpickers Took Over the World. 

Other favorite picks include Me And Chet with his friend Jerry Reed, The Atkins-Travis Travelling Show with Merle Travis, the Chester & Lester albums with Les Paul, and Neck And Neck with Mark Knopfler.

Examples 1 and 2. Chet Atkins style

[Bars 1-16] Like Merle Travis, Chet Atkins would often use the ‘thumb over the neck’ fretting and this was commonly employed on an F chord. It’s an idiosyncratic approach but integral to playing much of their repertoire so spend some time on the first four bars to get a sense of how they did things.

[Bars 26-32] From bar 26 onwards you’ll see how Atkins would ebellish chords with melody notes, as in the E7, and this formed the basis of how he created arrangements. Also check out the descending bass movement on the sixth string, from the Am all the way down to the F.

The Gretsch model 6122/Chet Atkins Country Gentleman is more often referred to simply as the ‘Country Gent’. First shipped in 1957 for the 1958 model year, it followed the appearance of the 6120/Chet Atkins hollowbody and 6121/Chet Atkins solidbody models in Gretsch’s 1955 full-colour catalogue, Guitars For Moderns. 

The more budget-friendly single-pickup 6119/Chet Atkins Tennessean similarly made its advertising debut in 1958, completing this set of four classic Gretsch signature guitars. Hailed by Gretsch as a recording sensation and TV star with “an army of enthusiastic admirers," Chet Atkins (Chester Burton Atkins, 1924-2001) was, in more ways than one, instrumental in helping the electric guitar gain mass acceptance during the post-war years. 

In a similar vein as his friend Les Paul (Lester William Polsfuss, 1915-2009), Chet widely promoted the instrument via popular media, and played a vital role in the evolution of modern guitar playing styles and recording techniques. 

Both Chester and Lester’s influence on the electric guitar is legendary, though these days most people are probably more aware of their signature instruments than their music. As studio engineers and tinkerers, they were practically minded and full of interesting ideas when it came to guitar design, but Chet had significantly more input into the development of the Country Gent than his earlier signature models.

When he first began collaborating with Gretsch in 1954, the bulk of the design was already in place for his hollowbody and solidbody guitars, which borrowed heavily from Gretsch’s pre-existing Streamliner and Round Up models, respectively.

Thus, intent on helping create a signature guitar he could be truly proud of, Chet worked closely with Gretsch, eventually settling on several new concepts for his top-of-the-line model, including simulation f-holes to reduce feedback, a wider 17-inch thinline body, a subtler “mahogany grained” stain finish, trestle bracing and Neo-Classic/half-moon ‘thumbnail’ inlays.

Also among his requests was the inclusion of two newly developed Filter’Tron humbucking pickups – something inventor Ray Butts had been working on in conjunction with Gretsch and Chet as early as 1954.

Chet had long been dissatisfied with the sound of Gretsch’s ubiquitous DeArmond Model 2000 pickup (marketed by Gretsch as the DynaSonic), which he felt was too bass-y in the neck position and overly bright in the bridge position. 

Measuring anywhere between 7.5 and 13kohms, these powerful, punchy single coils are inherently different to the gritty sparkle of Filter’Tron humbuckers (which normally read around 4k), and the Country Gent was the first of Chet’s models to be fitted with what would soon eclipse the DynaSonic as Gretsch’s de facto standard pickup.

As well as being a preference of Chet’s, the Country Gent was favoured by George Harrison, who owned two double-cutaway models from the early '60s. 

Following The Beatles’ TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 when a reported 73 million Americans tuned in to watch, the Country Gent instantly became an icon of rock ’n’ roll and production multiplied. 

It was retired from the Gretsch catalogue in the early '80s when Chet allied with Gibson, taking his own name, and ultimately the Country Gentleman name, with him.

Chet Atkins (1924-2001) is probably the most important guitarist ever to be associated with the Gretsch guitar brand. His original line of signature models, which were launched in the 1950s, were seen in the hands of some of the most influential guitarists known to rock ’n’ roll.  

Eddie Cochran, Duane Eddy and George Harrison were all famous exponents of Gretsch Chet Atkins signature models in the early days, and in later years these guitars continued to be the go-to instruments for countless professional players across a broad range of styles from country, blues and rockabilly right through to hard-rock and punk. 

A master of the electric guitar, gifted engineer and producer, popular recording artist and radio/TV star – Chet Atkins was as important to Gretsch as Les Paul was to Gibson. 

It happened to be Jimmie Webster – Gretsch’s innovative guitar demonstrator and promoter – who first approached Chet in 1954 about collaborating on a signature model. 

As a D’Angelico archtop player and compulsive tinkerer of audio electronics, Chet certainly knew his way around a good guitar and his standards were high. From the off, he had a hand in developing the instruments that bore his name, ultimately leading to some of the most timeless designs known to the guitar world.

6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body/Nashville

Chet Atkins’ involvement with Gretsch began in 1954 with the 6120 Hollow Body. Although he would have significant influence on the design by requesting the addition of a metal bridge, metal nut and Bigsby tailpiece, the bulk of it was already in place by the time Chet arrived, courtesy of Jimmie Webster. 

Derived from the Gretsch Streamliner 16-inch electric archtop, the prototype was labelled ‘Streamliner Special’ and featured Gretsch Round Up-style western motifs and an ‘Amber Red’ orange finish. 

Although he was photographed with it, Chet rarely played the 6120, instead preferring his 6122 Country Gentleman – a guitar that he had significantly more involvement in the design of from the beginning.

In 1964, the 6120’s name changed from Hollow Body to Nashville in reference to Chet’s musical legacy as manager and producer at RCA Studio B – recording home of the ‘Nashville sound’ and hitmakers such as Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers and Dolly Parton.

6121 Chet Atkins Solid Body

Following the release of the Gibson Les Paul Model in 1952, Gretsch entered the solidbody market in 1953 with the single-cutaway Duo Jet. The following year, the company released two similar (chambered) solidbody models: the sparkle-finish Silver Jet and western-themed orange-finish Round Up – the latter being virtually identical to the Bigsby-equipped, maple-topped 6121 Chet Atkins Solid Body.

Discontinued by 1963, this guitar is the rarest of these four Chet Atkins signature models. Despite his status as a leading country guitarist, Chet was not a fan of the western-themed motifs of the 6120 and 6121 models and these appointments were toned down within a few years of the instruments’ 1955 Gretsch catalogue debut. 

Although both guitars retained their orange ‘Amber Red’ finish, the steer head peghead inlay and steers and cacti-engraved fretboard markers were changed to a horseshoe emblem and subtler block inlays during ’56, while the G-branded top logo disappeared in ’57.

6122 Chet Atkins Country Gentleman

Released in 1957, the 6122 Country Gentleman electric hollowbody measures 17 inches across (a full inch wider than the 6120) and at around two inches deep was Gretsch’s first thinline archtop. 

The 6122, 6120 and 6121 all began life as single-cutaway instruments but switched to a double-cutaway design during 1961, at which time the 6120 and 6119’s large open f-holes were replaced by 6122-style simulated f-holes. 

Chet was dissatisfied with the sound of the DeArmond Model 2000 (‘Gretsch-Dynasonic’) pickups as seen on his 6120 Hollow Body and 6121 Solid Body signature models, finding the neck pickup to be too bassy and the bridge pickup overly bright. 

Having worked with electronics engineer Ray Butts in the development of the Filter’Tron pickup, it was soon settled the 6122 would feature the new humbucker. The results were impressive enough that Gretsch decided the 6119, 6120 and 6121 would follow suit in 1958.

6119 Chet Atkins Tennessean

Featuring a single Filter’Tron humbucking pickup adjacent to the bridge, the 16-inch wide 6119 Tennessean hollowbody archtop was launched in 1958 and was considered a less fancy alternative to the 6120. 

Chet Atkins was photographed with a 6119 on the cover of his 1960 album Workshop and was known to favour the Tennessean as a working instrument, as did George Harrison who recorded and gigged with it during 1964 and 1965. 

Unlike the other three Chet Atkins signature models featured here, the Tennessean did not change to a double-cutaway design during ’61, although it did receive imitation f-holes in line with the other hollowbody archtops. At the same time, its single Filter’Tron humbucker was supplanted by dual HiLo’Tron single coils. 

The 6119 can also be distinguished by its ‘Dark Cherry Red’ and/or 6122-style walnut-coloured ‘mahogany grain’ finish, as opposed to the bright ‘Amber Red’ orange of the 6120 and 6121.

To say Les Paul was an innovator would be the greatest of understatements. Although we might take his inventions and ideas for granted, his influence on the development of music - and the way it is recorded - is immense.

He saw the technological limitations of his day not as an impediment, but as a source of motivation to think outside the box and find his own solution.

That sort of thinking led Paul to create his own alternative to what he saw as the tinny, thin-sounding guitars of the day. With the help of Epiphone, Paul developed a solid-body electric guitar that he affectionately dubbed "The Log." While The Log was promising, it paled in comparison to what Paul would develop with Gibson years later.

Their collaboration, the Gibson Les Paul, would change popular music forever; it remains one of the most iconic and respected guitars ever created. Similarly, when Paul became dissatisfied with the sound of his own hit records (He was a highly influential jazz and country guitar player), he looked for ways to create a fuller, richer sound.

This led to experimentation with multi-track recording, not to mention a series of game-changing hits with his wife, Mary Ford. 

Today, the 105th anniversary of the late, great Les Paul's birth, Guitar World pays tribute to one of music's greatest creative minds by checking out nine of his greatest guitar moments - at least in terms of what's available on YouTube. Enjoy!

1. Les Paul, Eddie Van Halen, B.B. King and More - All Star Guitar Jam

Ever wanted to hear what would happen if Les Paul, Eddie Van Halen, B.B. King, David Gilmour, Brian Setzer, Steve Miller and Waylon Jennings got on stage together and cut loose? Well, in the video below, you can hear (and see) how Les Paul's inventions and playing style have been passed down through generations of guitar heroes. It's fascinating, and a total blast to watch.

2. Les Paul - The Paulverizer

Here, Paul demonstrates one of his greatest inventions, The Paulverizer. With this "little black box," as he calls it in this video, Paul could "take my guitar here and multiply it into an orchestra." Imagine seeing a rock band today without a pedal that performs this function.

3. Les Paul and Chet Atkins - Stompin at the Savoy

What people often forget about Les Paul, amongst his countless inventions, is that he was an incredibly talented guitarist. This video, shot at New York City's Iridium in 1996, shows perhaps the two most influential country pickers of all time sharing stories and, in the video's second half, creating some truly gorgeous music together.

4. Les Paul and Mary Ford - Alabamy Bound/Darktown Strutters Ball

This video, taken from one of Paul and Mary Ford's five-minute TV spots from the early 1950s, is fascinating. Though the hokeyness of the spot places it "squarely" in the Fifties, the two songs Paul and Ford lay into, with Paul's frenzied playing and Ford's multi-tracked vocals, still sound fresh 65 years later.

5. Les Paul - Sleepwalk

This video, also shot at the Iridium in New York City, shows that even in his final years, Paul never lost it. Performed with the Les Paul Trio, this version of Sleepwalk has some of the most pristine, evocative playing you will ever hear. Not bad for a guy who was celebrating his 90th birthday the night this video was shot.

6. Les Paul and Mary Ford - The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise

In this video, taken from another one of Paul and Ford's early Fifties TV spots, Paul is simply on fire. Though the term "shredding" only entered the popular lexicon a few decades ago, it's hard to describe Paul's mesmerizing playing in any other way.

7. Les Paul - Dark Eyes and more

Shot at the time when heavy metal was first starting to rise to mainstream prominence, Paul's playing in this live video is simply incendiary. The speed and chops Paul displays in these performances could've made anyone from Eddie Van Halen to Kirk Hammett blush.

8. Les Paul - Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Chances are, unless you've spent your whole life under a rock, you've heard Somewhere Over the Rainbow at some point. But chances are you've never heard a version that sounds like this. Paul's haunting, jazzy leads do wonders for the unforgettable melody and make it an emotional listen.

9. Les Paul and Steve Vai - Summertime

Shot at the Hollywood House of Blues in 1998, this meeting of two guitar legends is a classic example of old school meeting new school. With far fewer notes, Paul is able to gamely keep up with Vai's blinding pace and craft a beautiful musical contrast.

Chet Atkins made countless recordings as a studio musician, producer and solo artist. Many of his recordings—particularly those of the artists he produced in Nashville, like Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers—laid the foundation for early rock and roll.

Though Atkins played many styles, he is most often associated with country music and acoustic guitars. By using a combination of thumbpick and fingers, Chet created his signature “fingerpicking” sound. This month, I’m going to look at two patented Chet Atkins techniques.

FIGURE 1 shows an approach Atkins often used when playing scales. With the fret hand near fourth position, ascend/descend A Mixolydian (A B C# D E F# G), grabbing each successive scale tone on a neighboring string and mixing in all available open notes.

It should sound similar to playing a scale on a harp, or on a piano with the sustain pedal held down. Keep your fret-hand fingers depressed as long as possible so that notes overlap, and follow the indicated picking/fingerstyle indications to get the full effect. This “harp trick” is common in the lines of country players like Albert Lee and Brent Mason, and can be done with any scale, provided the open strings are “in key.”

The last note of each chord in FIGURE 2 is a harp harmonic, another technique pioneered by Atkins (and later taken to new heights by Lenny Breau, Ted Greene and Tommy Emmanuel).

On beat four of each bar, you will see “H.H.” Touch a fretted string with the plucking-hand’s index finger precisely 12 frets higher than the note appearing parenthetically in tab, then pluck that string behind your index finger’s point of contact, using the thumb (or thumbpick) to produce a chiming “octave overtone” harmonic. The preceding notes of each chord are played using traditional fingerstyle technique (without harmonics).

Atkins often wove the aforementioned techniques (and more) into stunning solo guitar arrangements rooted in Travis picking (named after Travis). This somewhat country-like fingerstyle approach involves thumbpicking alternating bass notes (usually the root and fifth) on different strings while sounding melodic parts (typically built around a fretted chord shape) with the plucking hand’s remaining fingers.

In FIGURE 3, a 12-bar blues in A, you’ll see this technique in action with a variety of A7, D7 and E7 shapes. Familiarize yourself with each chord voicing first, study the structure of each bass note pattern and practice repeatedly (while chord shapes are held down) until the bass line feels automatic. Then slowly add the melody notes, focusing on one bar at a time until you have it perfected.

I’d like to kick things off with a look at my approach to the song, “El Vaquero,” written by the great Chet Atkins and Wayne Moss, which I recorded for It’s Never Too Late.

A vaquero is a cowboy, and, as the name implies, this song has a “western” feel, with a Spanish/Mexican flavor. I first heard this song as recorded by Chet for his Hometown Guitar album, on which Wayne played the rhythm guitar part and Chet added the melody, or lead, part on top, along the lines of FIGURES 1 and 2. To execute the rhythm part properly, use the standard Merle Travis fingerpicking technique, wherein the notes on the bottom three strings are picked with the thumb, with light palm muting, in an “alternating bass” fashion, and the notes on the top three strings are picked with the index and middle fingers.

My goal with this tune was to find a way to play the song as a solo piece, so I had to devise a way to cover both the rhythm and melody in one guitar part. FIGURE 3 represents my take on the first six bars, and throughout this section (as with most of the song), my pick-hand thumb alternates between the bass notes in steady eighth notes. While doing this, my index and middle fingers pick the melodies and harmonies, often with the index picking the G string while the middle finger strikes the B string; if the index finger needs to move up to the B string, the middle finger will then be used to sound the notes on the high E, as the fingers work together (in most places) on adjacent strings.

In bar 1, notice that I use a hammer-on to move the melody note from C to D on the B string right on the downbeat of beat three. Using a hammer-on here works well because of the consistent alternating bass. In bar 2, I take a similar approach, using a pull-off from C to the open B string on the downbeat of beat two. The second time through (second ending), this B-string melody is a little different, as it ascends up to a high E over the A chord in the last bar of the example. Be sure to play through this figure slowly and carefully, with focused attention paid to the subtle syncopations between the “bass” parts and melody.

FIGURE 4 recalls the subsequent five-bar section, wherein the bass notes ascend in half steps every two beats, from F (Dm/F), to Fs (D/Fs), to G (G), to Gs (E7/Gs), setting up the return to Am. Notice that the highest note of the melody replicates this movement on the first string. The first section of the tune ends with FIGURE 5, as somewhat unusual chord voicings for E(f9) resolve to Am.

What I always recommend to anyone getting started with fingerstyle guitar is that you must start with the thumb first. The thumb takes care of most of the “backing”—the persistent rhythm that propels the song along—while the index, middle and ring fingers, and occasionally the pinkie too, add melody and harmony notes on the higher stings. But, first and foremost, you want to get your thumb working independently.

STEP ONE

Put those rebellious fingers down onto the face of the guitar, and do not let them up! In fact, sometimes when I’m teaching a student, I will take a piece of gaffers’ tape and tape their fingers to the face of the guitar so that they can’t move!

The objective is to spell out each chord with the notes sounded with the thumb, starting with the root note. When playing fingerstyle, I prefer to utilize a thumb pick. If we play a progression of C-F-G, the thumb will sound, in sequence, the root note, the third, the fifth and the third once more (FIGURE 1). The only pick-hand digit involved here is the thumb, and I am lightly muting all of the strings by resting the edge of my pick-hand palm across them next to the bridge pins. This type of pattern is called alternating bass, and the sound is often described as “BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick.”

You can, of course, use this approach in any key, so here it is in the keys of Ab and A (FIGURE 2). The voicings of the chords used here are different than those in the first example, thus demonstrating that one can easily apply this technique to different keys, string groups and areas of the fretboard.

Another factor is that my thumb is held straight out, parallel to the string, instead of coming at it from above or with any crook in the knuckle of the thumb. This is not as easy to do as it may seem; you need to practice picking with this thumb “posture” in order to play with a good sound and consistent groove.

STEP TWO

Now let’s bring the other pick-hand fingers into play. We’ll leave our pinkie down against the body of the guitar to serve as an anchor. Some guitarists prefer to use a “floating” pick-hand (no anchor), but I recommend anchoring the pinkie because doing that works well for me. The pinkie will help keep your pick-hand steady at all times.

In the next exercise, we’ll repeat the thumb pattern used previously, but now we’ll bring the index, middle and ring fingers into play, to pluck notes on the top three strings, filling out each chord. These chords fall on beat one of each bar and ring throughout the bar (FIGURE 3). This exercise represents the very beginning of developing independence between the pick hand’s thumb and fingers.

STEP THREE

This step is a little more challenging, in that we’re playing a syncopated rhythm between the thumb and fingers, emphasizing the upbeat of beat two in each bar with a chordal accent. This is a great way to get started with learning to create independent rhythms between the steady beat laid down by the thumb and the accents occurring above on the higher strings (FIGURE 4). Like using two hands on a piano, the thumb and fingers have to work in tandem here to create the complete musical presentation.

STEP FOUR

Now let’s replace the chordal accents with arpeggios, wherein the notes of each chord are played individually and in succession. The fingerpicking sequence for each arpeggio is middle-index-thumb-middle, sounded on the B, G, D and high E strings, respectively. This is integrated with the alternating-bass thumb pattern we looked at earlier (FIGURE 5). Once you have a handle on this, try speeding it up and adding a few variations here and there.

FIRST SONGS

Once you can perform these primer examples comfortably, you’re ready to play your first songs in this style. One that I always teach first is the old tune “Freight Train” by Elizabeth Cotton. The first version I ever heard of this song was by Chet Atkins, who performed it in the key of E. Most people, however, learn the song in C, which is Elizabeth Cotton’s original key.

The reason I like teaching “Freight Train” first is you don’t have to run all over the fretboard to find the melody; it’s right there within each of the chords. My first step in crafting a fingerstyle approach to any tune is to find the melody notes in relation to the corresponding chords. Once I’ve located the best place to play the melody, I can combine the melodic line with the steady chordal rhythm (FIGURE 6). On the E7 chord, notice that I use a partial barre with the index finger to sound the F note on the high E string. Play through this example slowly and carefully before gradually increasing the tempo, striving to keep a steady rhythm with the thumb throughout. I suggest you work on this etude in small bites. For example, start with the melody over the C chord, then work on the melody over the G chord, and then piece those two parts together.

After you’ve practiced this piece diligently, you’ll hopefully reach the point where you’ll stop thinking about the motor skills involved and instead just focus on hearing the music coming out of your guitar. And that is a wonderful moment!

There are different ways to make “Freight Train” more interesting, and one is to bring in a few different chords (FIGURE 7). In bars 5 and 6, instead of staying on G7, you can play Dm in bar 5 before switching to G7 in bar 6 and end that bar with G7b9 for added harmonic interest.

Another twist would be to insert Am and Am/G in bar 11 before moving to F in bar 12, along with ending bar 12 with F#dim7, used as an approach chord to C/G. And I can’t resist throwing in the flashy “Chet Atkins” double pull-offs triplet run at the end (bar 15).

When I play “Freight Train,” I like to start in C but then modulate to E (FIGURE 8) and play it more in Chet’s style. Notice that here, I play in a more swinging rhythmic style with an implied eighth-note triplet feel. It’s fun to then modulate back to C and interpret the song in a “Mother Maybelle Carter” style with a “frailing” strumming approach, also known as “clawhammer” (FIGURE 9). For good measure, you can close it out with a little bit of “Wildwood Flower”!

This is a style that I like to apply to the old standard “Waltzing Matilda” as well, as that tune lends itself perfectly to this fingerstyle approach. I like to begin that tune with a less structured rhythm (FIGURE 10) before switching to the frailing technique, as well as other fingerpicking approaches.

CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS

Another great way to be creative with a well-known tune is to employ chord substitutions, for which the possibilities are endless. Years ago, I studied jazz great Ted Greene’s book, Chord Chemistry, which has so much great information in it, demonstrating many interesting ways of getting from one place to another, harmonically. A great example of this is Ted’s arrangement of “Watch What Happens,” wherein the melody ascends the high E string but the chords underneath are all re-harmonized (FIGURE 11).

Knowing a little bit of music theory can be very useful in finding substitute chords, and it really helps to know your intervals. Intervals are based on simple math, counting up or down through a scale to find the major or minor third, the fourth, sharp fourth, etc. If you want a raised fifth (#5), play through the major scale up to the fifth and then play the note one fret higher, which is also known as an augmented fifth. You learn these things along the way. Also, a m7b5 (minor seven flat-five) chord is sometimes referred to as half diminished, and is often written, as a chord symbol, with a circle with a diagonal slash through it, followed by a 7.

“RACHEL’S LULLABY”

One of the world’s most well known fingerstyle songs is the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” written and performed solo by Paul McCartney. There are elements of “Blackbird” that are characteristic of the music of J.S. Bach. By learning “Blackbird,” you learn so much about fingertsyle guitar, and about music, too, such as melody against chord, song structure and more. It’s a mini masterpiece!

“Blackbird” was the principle inspiration for my song “Rachel’s Lullaby,” which I wrote for my daughter and recorded for my album Accomplice One. When she was a little girl, Rachel fell in love with “Blackbird,” and every time I picked up the guitar at home, she would ask me to play that song and would sing along with it, at two years old! When I wrote “Rachel’s Lullaby,” I took all the feeling I had for “Blackbird” and poured it into my own melody. Some of the chord voicings that you find in “Blackbird,” such as root-fifth-third (low to high), are also inherent in “Rachel’s Lullaby” (FIGURE 12).

Although “Rachel’s Lullaby” is nothing like “Blackbird,” musically speaking, the underlying feeling is similar, and both songs are in the key of G. In terms of pickhand execution, notice that the alternating thumb continually drives the rhythm of the song along, while the syncopated melody resides on the top strings. And the secret to the ringing quality of this pattern is the constant presence of the open G string, interspersed with chord voicings high on the fretboard.

Listening to Chet Atkins provided some of the best lessons I ever had, because you could always count on Chet to play the melody the right way, while also coming up with ideas to embellish and make his arrangements sound interesting.

Once you have the verse down, move on to the first bridge section (FIGURE 13), which begins on an F(#4) chord, the #4 note provided by the open B string. While the alternating thumb pattern continues in a manner similar to the verse, I additionally bring in some strumming with my index finger, à la “Blackbird,” as well as raked chords (drag the pick, or a finger, across all the strings, from low to high) sounded with the thumb alone.

At the second bridge (FIGURE 14), bars 1–6 are played with the same fingerstyle approach, switching at bar 7 to raked chords, moving from Em to A7sus4 to D7sus4(b9). When I play the Em, I like to fret both the A and D strings with the tip of my index finger, which, for me, makes the performance a little bit easier.

For the ending of the tune (FIGURE 15), I switch to a more traditional Travis picking approach (a technique named after legendary fingerpicker Merle Travis), moving away from that steady rhythm in bars 5 and 6 to accentuate the high part of the melody. In this song, as with most of my compositions, I’m always looking at different ways of sounding one note against another, and having them ring together. That has always fascinated me.

You need to practice chord shapes like those used here, wherein the chords are held and the notes sustain, so that your fretting hand will get stronger and more dexterous. Practice until your hand starts to ache, stop and relax, and then resume. The same principle applies when playing the harmonic rows on the guitar, because a lot of fret-hand strength is required to hold those shapes firmly. Clarity and great sound take strength and control. In order to just hold this shape (FIGURE 16), you will need to work to build up the required strength in the fret-hand.

TUNING

One of the most important things that I think is often overlooked is tuning. I spend a lot of time tuning before I go onstage. I change my strings quite often, sometimes every night, if I feel the guitar needs it. If a set of strings sounds great, I’ll leave them, because they are all settled in. If you are really in tune, you will enjoy playing so much more, and you will also be able to depend on the entire guitar, especially way up the neck, giving you what you need from it.

To check the tuning of the guitar, I like to run through a series of unusual chords (FIGURE 17), chords combined with natural harmonics, and voicings high up on the fretboard. For example, if I move from A/C# to Am/C to E7sus4/B (FIGURE 18), the guitar has to be tuned just right for each of these chords to sound true and intonated properly.

“HOPE STREET”

“Hope Street” is a song that really tests the tuning of the guitar. There are many small chord voicings that move around the fretboard and are all played against open strings, creating “doubled” notes here and there, so the guitar really needs to be tuned precisely for each of those chords to sound really good (FIGURE 19). The G/B chord in the final bar of this example is a good barometer, because the low B note, fretted with the thumb, needs to sound right against the open D string and the high voicing on the top three strings.

Another good example is the lick I play at the end of the tune’s bridge (FIGURE 20), wherein a natural harmonic (N.H.) on the low E string rings against sustained pairs of higher strings.

MERLE TRAVIS AND CHET ATKINS

Merle Travis came before Chet, but if you want to delve into the origins of Merle’s style, listen to Ike Everly, the father of the Everly Brothers, as Merle got many of his ideas and playing approaches from Ike. Another guitarist who was a big influence on Merle’s style was Mose Rager. Travis “stole” as much as he could from these players, in the same way that I’ve stolen as much as I can from him! As musicians, we’re all petty thieves—that’s how the language of music gets handed down.

Merle, Ike and Mose all played in the style where the middle finger, ring finger and pinkie of the pick hand are all anchored to the guitar, with just the thumb and index finger striking the strings. Where the thumb alternates quickly across the lower strings, the index finger rakes across the higher strings in an upstroke motion to add the melody (FIGURE 21). It’s almost like a honky-tonk piano sound. Travis did it with great feeling, tone and ideas.

Chet Atkins took this approach in a different direction and made it much more athletic. A lot of his early recordings were so brilliant, none of us could believe our ears. For example, when Merle played “Nine Pound Hammer” and switched from that tune’s E chord to A, he still hit the low E string; he just kind of “plunked” away on it (FIGURE 22).

Chet’s approach was much more orderly and precise (FIGURE 23). Travis would play the next part like this (FIGURE 24). Let me recommend this to you: if you want to see someone play in Merle Travis’ style most authentically, you’ve got to check out Thom Bresh and Eddie Pennington. Those players can teach you more about Merle Travis’ playing than anybody on this planet.

The thing with Chet is that he started to play after hearing Merle Travis, developed his own style, and then heard Django Reinhardt and discovered Andrés Segovia and classical music. Chet actually studied with Segovia for a while, until Segovia found out that he played an electric guitar and refused to teach him after that! So Chet acquired all of that knowledge and experience in all of those different styles.

FLATPICKING: “WHEELIN’ AND DEALIN’ ”

Appearing on my Accomplice One album is an instrumental I wrote called “Wheelin’ and Dealin’,” which I purposely wrote in the style of “Eastbound and Down” by Jerry Reed, which was featured in the film Smokey and the Bandit. I perform “Wheelin’ and Dealin’ ” with a flat pick, and my “straight pick” style is pretty much made up of consistent alternate (down-up) picking (FIGURE 25), or whatever is needed at any moment. This song is fast, played in the typical bluegrass style with a lot of drive that’s provided by the pick hand.

HYBRID PICKING: “DRIVE TIME”

Now let’s try something a bit harder, a tune of mine called “Drive Time,” which I play with the capo at the second fret. The song is performed as if it were in the key of E but sounds in F#, due to the capo transposition. I play a lot of the melodic parts either with the pick or with my fingers, utilizing a technique known as hybrid picking, wherein flatpicking and fingerpicking are combined (FIGURE 26). The idea when using hybrid picking is to make the flatpicked and fingerpicked notes sound as similar as possible, so that the sound overall is blended and seamless.

HARP HARMONICS

A lot of people ask me about my use of harp harmonics, a technique so named because it emulates the sound of rolling arpeggios on a classical harp. The technique incorporates a combination of conventionally fretted and picked notes and artificial harmonics (A.H.) played alternately in a rapid manner, so that it is difficult to distinguish which of the notes are the harmonics. I learned about this technique and style from Chet Atkins and the brilliant Lenny Breau. Ted Greene did harp harmonics very well, too, and because of his vast chord knowledge, he played some really fantastic, creative harmonic arpeggios that sounded like no one else. I think Lenny took the technique to a level that no one has ever even come close to. Thank you, Lenny, for your legacy and for what you left us!

The idea is to get notes ringing like bells, with as much sustain as possible. If you do it with a flat pick, the pick must be held between the middle finger and thumb, so that the index finger can lightly touch the string exactly 12 frets higher than the fret-ted note, creating the sound of the artificial harmonic. If I use the thumb pick, though, I can get a cleaner sound, and my middle finger is now free to fingerpick, as well.

A good place to start is with an E9 chord (FIGURE 27): the pattern is harmonic, open note, harmonic, open note, etc., and by “open note,” I mean a normally picked fretted note. All the harmonics are picked with the thumb pick, with the index finger touching the string 12 frets higher than where the note is fretted, and the other notes are picked with the ring finger.

A good way to practice and master this technique is to play only harmonics at first (FIGURE 28), using E9 and F9, and then switch to the “harp” technique halfway through. A great twist is to introduce another pitch, via a hammer-on (bars 4–6). And you can create a longer row by starting with three normally picked notes on the bottom strings (FIGURE 29). If you’d like to start on the higher strings, begin with consecutive harmonics (FIGURE 30).

A song I perform at virtually all of my shows that incorporates many harp harmonics is “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which, musically, is a perfect vehicle for the technique.

PRACTICE REGIMEN

I’m often asked if I have a standard practice regimen or routine that I use. I’m very much not a routine kind of person. I like to practice what I need to practice. I play what I love, and that has served me well.

There are many different ways to practice, and the best way, to me, is what I call “sincere practicing.” That means to play the song as if you are onstage and people are watching you, and your life depends on it! I try not to waste time while I practice, just noodling along. I might play something that is difficult over and over, just so I can break down the difficulty level for myself.

I might play a fast tune like “Cannonball Rag” and go over it 100 times, purely to build up my finger strength and endurance. But one of the very best ways to practice is to jam with another player, someone who will push you and challenge you to come up with something new in the next five bars.

I also practice improvising: I’ll take a 12-bar blues and start playing, and I won’t stop even if I mess up and make a mistake. I imagine I’m onstage and fronting a band, so there’s no turning back, no stopping to fix your mistakes. Putting yourself in this mindset is, to me, the best way to practice.

Last month, I kicked off this series of columns with a look at the Chet Atkins/Wayne Moss masterpiece, “El Vaquero,” which I covered on my latest release, It’s Never Too Late.

Chet and Wayne cut it as a two-guitar piece, but I’ve arranged it for one guitar, and it can be a bit of a tricky challenge to cover both the melody line and rhythm accompaniment simultaneously.

Throughout the piece, I utilize standard Merle Travis–style fingerpicking technique: the bass notes, sounded on the bottom three strings, are picked with the thumb (I use a thumb pick), usually in an “alternating-bass” fashion, and the notes on the top three strings are picked with either the index finger, middle finger or both together.

The general fingerpicking approach, which I apply throughout 95 percent of the tune, is that the thumb-picked bass notes fall in a steady eighth-note rhythm (“1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”), while the melody line and chordal accents, sounded with the index and middle fingers, fall on the eighth- and 16th-note upbeats between the downbeats. You’ll find that many of the bars include 16th notes, and in these instances the index- and middle-finger movement falls in the spaces between the eighth notes.

Last month, we took a look at the verse section of “El Vaquero,” so this month I’d like to explore the bridge. FIGURE 1 starts off with the last two bars of the verse, to serve as a point of reference; the bridge itself begins at bar 3. Right here, the song modulates from the key of A minor to A major, and I begin the section by playing alternating bars of A and E7.

I embellish the A chord by simply sliding down one fret to G# and then back to A; in the subsequent bar, I play a chromatically ascending series of 10th intervals, or 10ths, sounded on the G and low E strings. The harmony of a 10th is the same as that of a third, except the higher note is moved up one octave. I use 10ths here to reference E/G#, which serves as a good way to move back into the A chord.

In bar 5 of the bridge (bar 7 of FIGURE 1), a relatively complex melody is played over the F#7 chord: keep your fret-hand index finger barred across all of the strings throughout this bar, as doing so will facilitate moving between the melodic line and the moving bass, all the while allowing the notes to sustain into one another.

This is followed by a straight Bm barre chord at the second fret, with the open high E string allowed to ring on top of the chord. Bm is followed by a transition to B7 (the “two major” chord, which may also be thought of as the “five of five”), and once again the index finger barres across all six strings to facilitate the added melodic line.

Notice the cool and somewhat unusual E(b9) voicing in bar 11, fretted with a barre across the top four strings at the ninth fret. In the last two bars of the section, I play a chromatically descending bass line that moves from A to G# to G and then back up, referencing the chord progression Am E/G# C/G. As you can see, there are many complex areas of this tune, in terms of the melody and required picking pattern, so study the piece one bar at a time and slowly build up the tempo.

Here’s some rare footage of two guitar legends at work. It’s Chet Atkins joined by Mark Knopfler in a 1987 performance.

The duo plays the standard “I’ll See You in My Dreams” followed by a rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

The former track appears on Atkins' and Knopfler’s 1990 collaborative album, Neck and Neck. This footage is taken from the duo’s performance at The Secret Policeman's Ball at the London Palladium in 1987.

The Secret Policeman's Ball is a long-running series of benefit shows that raise funds for Amnesty International, and features performances from musicians, comedians and more. Watch below and enjoy!

After flying under the mainstream radar for years, Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel is enjoying the recognition his millions of YouTube views are bringing him.

His strategy for success is simple: Tour relentlessly -- and be so damn good that people can’t ignore you.

And it's working.

We recently caught up with Emmanuel when he was in Europe on his seemingly never-ending tour. We talked about his latest album, Little By Little, and his many influences -- and he even answered questions from readers.

GUITAR WORLD: You've slowly gone from a being relative unknown to one of the most respected guitarists in the world. To what do you attribute your success?

I think there are many people ahead of the line in front of me as far as respect, notoriety and success goes. However, I'm very grateful and very happy with where I am in my life and career. The thing I love about traveling and playing concerts is the life experiences I have every day. People are inspiring to me and they really energize me and remind me that my mission in life is to play for the people and not get sidetracked by worries or pressures. I don't have a formula for success, but the formula for failure is trying to please everybody.

What advice do you offer people who approach you after your clinics and concerts looking for help with their playing and music careers?

The most commonly asked question is, "How does my son or daughter get started doing what you're doing?" I think it's so important to have good music to play. You don't want to waste time and energy on songs that don't mean anything. You need to find songs that are strong in every way. Good melody, good structure, good feeling and memorable.

What is the most difficult of your songs to play?

There are a few songs I wrote in the '70s that I still struggle with, playing-wise. They are technically very difficult and complicated, and I can only play them if I practice them solidly for a few days.

What was the process for your latest album, Little By Little? How do you approach writing, and what mics do you use to get your acoustic tone?

The album took some time, as I kept coming back to it with new songs. That's why it ended up as a double album. There were also some good jams in the studio that I recorded, and they made it onto the album as well. Each song that I compose is an individual. I don't approach each song the same way. On this album, we used Neuman KLM-184 mics and a Rode Australian-made mic as well. We also recorded direct from the pickup in my Maton guitar and miked my AER amp as well. When Kim Person comes to mix, she puts the reverb on the amp signal and leaves the microphones dry. That way you achieve total purity in the acoustic sound of my guitars.

Time for some questions from readers. Ethan in Newton, Massachusetts, asks, "How do not get lonely being on the road all the time and always finding the will to tour almost every night of your life?"

I think I'm getting better at it. I have a wonderful team around me and I never really feel lonely on the road. I have always been a loner, anyway. However, I'm meeting new people every day, so my life is full of interesting people and new challenges. The only time I feel like I'm struggling is if I get run down or feel uninspired. However, every night, I'm really hoping for the magic to happen and it usually does! Some nights, I take the show in a direction that shakes things up and causes me to do and say crazy things, just to make it interesting for me and the audience.

From Kaenan in Georgia: "What components do you think a guitar player needs to be successful in the music business, without having to sell out to get there?"

I think any musician who wants to have a successful life in music must have good songs and lots of heart in the music. The public want something that's real, and they want to feel it. So it must be able to connect with the audience through your music and your gift.

From Alexander Caraballo: "Who are and were your major influences? Also, your fingerings are amazing. Any advice on that?"

My influences are so many: Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, Jerry Reed, Django Reinhardt, George Benson, James Burton, Albert Lee, Roy Nicols, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Billy Joel, Mark Knopfler, drummers, piano players, musicians from all countries, races and cultures. As for my fingerings, I try to work out the best/economical way of playing songs when I arrange them. Finding the right key to play a song in is so important.

From Kelly in New York: "Did your abilities come naturally or did you really have to work at it?"

My abilities are in a constant state of improvement. What I try to do is expand my mind. Be open to new things all the time. I'm always honing my skills, hoping to play better every day.

From Daniel Johnson in Kentucky: "In the YouTube video of you playing "Guitar Boogie," it looks like you're catching barre shapes with just one finger. It often looks like you are playing an A minor with one finger, diagonally. If I'm right, how did this unconventional approach come about? Does having the rest of your hand open for this shape help?"

There is no A minor chord in "Guitar Boogie." There is an A7. If that's what you mean, then yes, I find ways of getting as much chord out with minimum amount of fingering. I need my other fingers for the improv! I'll have to look at the video to be able to give you any more help.

Iqbal in Indonesia and Debra in New York ask, "What is your practice regimen like? How do you approach practicing? Any tips to keep up your chops?"

Just play every day and sometimes record yourself and listen back. You'll hear what you need to work on.

From Thomas in Missouri: "What does it take to become a Certified Guitar Player?"

I don't know. Only Chet Atkins knows, and he's in heaven.

Viktor from Bulgaria asks, "I heard you ended up in the hospital recently. Are you OK? What are your plans for the future? Also, are there any techniques you think are of particular importance for guitarists to learn and work on?"

I am in good health, thank you. I have many recording plans for the next two years. Some collaborations, too! I think we all have to work on time, groove, tone, touch and always looking for the good songs!

From Joe in Ashland, Massachusetts: "How did you get to be so unbelievable?"

I don't know how to answer that question.From David Hinckley in Burlington, Massachusetts: "If Chet Atkins were still around, are any players he would bestow the legendary CGP (Certified Guitar Player) title upon? You were one of only three or four guys Chet ever gave that title to, and it's quite the honor to receive. Congratulations!"Thank you! I wouldn't know who Chet would call a CGP these days, but I admire Richard Smith very much. He is a great player, composer, teacher and performer.

As an example of Brooklyn Cowboy Kitsch and flat-out guitar coolness this first-year Gretsch Model 6130 Roundup is sure hard to beat!

Perhaps it was overcompensation for being up north in the big city, or maybe just an example of '50s exuberance, but when Gretsch decided to create a solidbody guitar for the country/western market, they really went all in with this one.

The guitar features a host of "yee haw" appointments, including a pine top finished in “western” orange, tooled leather sides and engraved fingerboard inlays featuring cactus and steer's head images. To top it off, the tailpiece includes a cowboy belt buckle showing a campfire scene.

All the typical Gretsch features from the mid-'50s are present as well; the pickups are DeArmond Dynasonics. The bridge is the fully adjustable Melita, which was introduced right at this time. The control layout is four knobs and a single switch.

Although always described by Gretsch as a solidbody, the Roundup -- like its Duo Jet and Jet Fire Bird siblings -- is actually semi-hollow. The bodies were built like little archtop guitars, with a plywood top mounted to a piece of sculpted mahogany that was chambered from above. This resulted in a guitar much lighter than the Les Paul that inspired it, but with a different sound as well.

The Roundup is a superb twang machine, with a muscular tone more akin to a hollow-body Gretsch than to the average solidbody.

Around this time, Gretsch also scored an endorsement deal with up-and-coming Nashville guitar star Chet Atkins. The two guitars Atkins sponsored -- the 6120 hollowbody and 6121 solidbody -- were launched shortly after the Roundup was introduced. The Atkins solidbody shared many features of the Model 6130, and indeed many people confuse the two models. The larger 6120 Chet Atkins Hollowbody became THE classic 1950s Gretsch to most players; the small-bodied Roundup and Atkins solidbody were sold in far fewer numbers and are quite rare today.

This first-year model 6130 still carries the original owner's name (in Dymo tape label) on the headstock and the original tooled leather strap, a testament to the individual guitar’s history. As both a wonderful old Gretsch and a testament to America’s enduring fascination with the Western imagery, the Gretsch Roundup is one classy piece of 6-string cool!

Find out more about this particular guitar right here.

Retrofret Vintage Guitars of Brooklyn, New York, has been selling and servicing rare and vintage instruments since 1983 under the expertise of owner Steve Uhrik, associates Peter Kohman and George Aslaender and head technician Mamie Minch. For more info, visit retrofret.com