In a 3-class series, Ken presents strategies for venturing up the neck with impunity: position playing, understanding the fingerboard, "trick" fingering strategies, and melodic fingering shapes. Fretting the 5th string and using movable shapes incorporating the fretted 5th string will also be front and center. The concepts and techniques presented in each class are all illustrated by carefully selected exercises and tune arrangements. 

Classes take place on three successive Tuesdays: 

• Tues. Oct. 15, 2024. 7:30 - 9:00 PM
• Tues. Oct. 22, 2024. 7:30 - 9:00 PM
• Tues. Oct. 29, 2024. 7:30 - 9:00 PM

Tuition: $100 for all three classes

Class I

Position playing, understanding the fingerboard, "sleight of hand" fingering strategies, and how to get melody across the strings – as opposed to up and down on the same string – usings drop- and double thumbing patterns. The focus is on “Keith-Picking” (see below) and 2-string fingering shapes. We’ll then look at how to create musical phrases by surrounding or interspersing the notes in these shapes with adjacent open or fretted long strings, the open 5th string, or – once we get above fret 5 – the fretted 5th string.

*Note: Clawhammer Keith Picking is an effective strategy for creating upwardly moving melodies; the idea is to alternate open strings on the downstroke with up-the-neck fretted notes on lower strings played by the thumb.

Class II

Expand Your Knowledge and Usage of Up-the-Neck Shapes. The focus is on up-the-neck shapes as the basis for scale patterns (when you play the strings of a given shape in a particular order via drop-and double-thumbing, this yields a certain scale sequence). Explore different shape families, play them up- and down-the-neck, and understand how they can be strung together to make melodies. See also how you can mix and match shapes from different shape families to create the phrases you want.

Class III

Drill on navigating fluidly among up the neck fingering forms and chord shapes. Extend all previously discussed concepts and techniques to double C and G modal tunings. We’ll also introduce some really cool new tunes.