- Carter Family picking
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Carter Family picking, also known as "'thumb brush' technique or the 'Carter lick,' and also the 'church lick' and the 'Carter scratch'"[1], is a style of fingerstyle guitar named for Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family's distinctive style of rhythm guitar in which the melody is played on the bass strings, usually low E, A, and D while rhythm strumming continues above, on the treble strings, high E, B, and G. This often occurs during the break.[2]
With the technique Carter "helped to turn the guitar into a lead instrument"[3] and she, "was among the first" to use it as such[4]. Maybelle had first played the autoharp and five-string banjo[5], and the style appears based on the frailing style of banjo playing, as, "she played a bass or melody note on the downbeat with a brush stroke on the upbeat [backbeat] played with the back of the fingernail of the index or first finger," and is the rhythm Bill Monroe adapted for bluegrass music two decades later[1].
See also
Sources
- ^ a b Sid Griffin and Eric Thompson (2006). Bluegrass Guitar: Know the Players, Play the Music, p.22. ISBN 0879308702.
- ^ Traum, Happy (1974). Bluegrass Guitar, p.23. ISBN 0825601533.
- ^ Holly George-Warren, Laura Levine (2006). Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music, p.4.
- ^ Susan Ware, Stacy Braukman (2005). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 5, Completing the Twentieth Century, p.105. ISBN 067401488X.
- ^ Adelman, Kim (2003). The Girls' Guide to Country: The Music, the Hunks, the Hair, the Clothes and More!, p.63.
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