Brian Setzer used to be one of my guitar heroes back in the day, but his music can get repetitive.

"check out the way he switches from pick to finger style, I am gonna try and get that down."

That's one way to do it. But you lose use of your index finger for fingerpicking purposes. I keep the pick in my mouth and switch back and forth.

"What other guys other that are cool finger pickers or the such?"

Check out Stefan S. I love his technical style on this song...

I am getting more into the fingerpicking. More and more, everyday. Brian Setzer is pretty cool, but Santana does it, Lindsey Buckingham, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, B.B.King. My favorite to hear is Santana. You can barely hear when he goes from fingers to pick, and that is something is hard to do. I have just found a pick though that has the give of the fingers, but can be used for fast passages as well. I will grab the number off it and post it tommorrow if I remameber. It is a Jim Dunlop though. it's purple, if that helps.

Gordon's my man.

I saw this guy (Brian Setzer above) play at Disney World in Florida a few years ago.
I think he was playing there because of something to do with some music he did for a cartoon. I stuck around for three songs.
Dude makes you tap your foot for sure. I also dig the Gretsch guitars.

I've been a Setzer fan since his Stray Cats days. The guy is fricking awesome. If you've never listened to the Stray Cats, you should really check them out. It's just as good as the stuff he's doing now but with a bit more of an edge to it.

Once upon a time, in a different century long ago, there was a collision between different styles of popular roots music in a highly segregated white/black culture. Music that had been relegated to the genre called "race music" appealed to rebellious white teens who secretly and subversively began listening to it on black radio stations. When this blues and rhythm-n-blues music collided in the persons of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Big Joe Turner, Ike Turner, and Jerry Lee Lewis... another style was born... called rock-n-roll. But in the earliest stages, before it was called rock-n-roll, they called it "hillbilly music meets rhythm and blues". Elvis' guitarist, Scotty Moore, was a huge Chet Atkins fan and that style of guitar playing became a sub-genre known as Rockabilly. Rockabilly guitar pretty much only existed in a small grouping of guitarists like Scotty Moore and his lesser known acolytes... Cliff Gallup was the guitarist for Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Paul Burlison, who along with Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, lived mere doors away from Elvis in the early Memphis days, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, and perhaps, the low, twangy guitar of Duane Eddy. This music was born in the late 1950's and early 1960's and fell into obscurity and languished there until Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats pulled it out into the limelight in the 1980's.

I've always admired Setzer's playing. It'd be great sometime to cop a few licks off him.

I could never see myself playing rockabilly, but I think it'd be cool to toss some elements of the style into something else. You know, kinda send a few Setzer licks flying at the audience out of left field when playing a song that's in a different style. I know it could work with jazz or blues since rockabilly is basically a mish mash of Jazz/Swing, Blues and Country styles... but I think it'd be cool if someone could do something rockabilly influenced in the middle of a hard rock/metal song and make it work.

TDS " but I think it'd be cool if someone could do something rockabilly influenced in the middle of a hard rock/metal song and make it work."


Why not, Mastodon used a damn banjo on the new album.

I love when bands do things you don't normally see in their genre.

I used to have a cassette with a bunch obscure punk bands on it that a friend gave me and one of the bands actually had a banjo solo in the middle of this punk song... basically the song's guitars were playing a sped up and distorted country music rhythm, complete with finger picking.

It was actually quite surprising to see a punk group that displayed some sort of technical prowess since it's not the norm and especially that they'd incorporated a style that is outside of the music they play as a band..