{"id":2258,"date":"2009-07-26T21:36:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T01:36:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-08-06T00:00:07","modified_gmt":"2009-08-06T00:00:07","slug":"unlocking-the-secrets-to-jerry-garcia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/unlocking-the-secrets-to-jerry-garcia\/","title":{"rendered":"Unlocking the Secrets to Jerry Garcia&#8217;s Soloing Style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V72qQhm12K8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nThis weekend the band I&#8217;m in with a few Townsman played semi-acoustic at a house concert. In 25 years (and then some) with the core of us playing together, I don&#8217;t think we ever played as acoustic as we did on Saturday night: both of our guitarists played primarily acoustic stringed instruments (our other guitarist, <strong>Jim McMahon<\/strong>, played 12-string acoustic, mandolin, and something called a charango) only mic&#8217;d, not using any pickups, which we thought would defeat the purpose. The two of us even sat on stools, which I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d ever done in concert before, not even when I played in a primarily acoustic band with <strong>Townsman E. Pluribus Gergely<\/strong>. It was cool. I felt like one of the guys from <strong>Badfinger<\/strong> in <em>Concert for Bangladesh<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There were some other <em>firsts<\/em> for our band that resulted from that gig, but perhaps the most significant one was it was the first time we ever covered a <strong>Grateful Dead<\/strong> song. The hosts for our show are Deadheads, and we wanted to give them a treat. The obvious choice was &#8220;Bertha,&#8221; a Dead song that hints at a Motown beat and contains no extraneous &#8220;space&#8221; breakdowns. For some reason, I was the obvious choice to take the solo. In preparing for the solo, I asked myself, <em>What would Jerry do?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Although I didn&#8217;t have time to match his facility in moving up and down the neck in his loopy approach to the pentatonic scale, I could focus on a couple of keys that would unlock the secrets of Jerry&#8217;s soloing style:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Give all notes equal rhythmic weight, minimizing rests, syncopations, and the like.<\/li>\n<li>Maintain a pleasant, easy-going facade while soloing, avoiding the urge to make any kind of Rock Faces.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These two simple keys aided my performance. I stumbled on one segment of my solo and another time I unsuccessfully fought the urge to crack a sarcastic smile, but for the most part I felt like I&#8217;d learned something. Should I have the opportunity to play this or another Dead song in the future, <em>what other keys might I find in unlocking the secrets to Jerry&#8217;s soloing style?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend the band I&#8217;m in with a few Townsman played semi-acoustic at a house concert. In 25 years (and then some) with the core of us playing together, I don&#8217;t think we ever played as acoustic as we did on Saturday night: both of our guitarists played primarily acoustic stringed instruments (our other guitarist, <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/unlocking-the-secrets-to-jerry-garcia\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}