Molly Tuttle - White Freightliner Blues and Rhythm Lead Switching

Masters in Mechanics
#1

We’ve edited together a new excerpt from the Molly Tuttle interview! This clip features her incredible performance of White Freightliner Blues, plus brief technical commentary:

Molly Tuttle’s right hand technique is a melding of several uniquely virtuosic picking approaches: the forearm anchor of her rhythm comping, and the palm anchor she uses for crosspicked lead lines.

“White Freightliner Blues” is a showcase for her ability to switch effortlessly between these modes, even while singing. In this clip from her Masters in Mechanics interview, she gives us a closeup look at how the switch happens.

The full interview includes tablature for Freightliner along with 41 other slow motion examples that offer an in-depth look at Molly’s astonishing flat pick fluency. Check it out here on the platform:

https://troygrady.com/interviews/molly-tuttle/

6 Likes
#3

I can watch her crosspicking all day. Yup.

2 Likes
#4

Her picking hand is absurd.

1 Like
#5

Yeah, this should not be possible :sweat_smile::sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

1 Like
#6

And here I thought fingerpicking and singing at the same time was difficult.

#7

Quick update: we wrote up a short article on how Molly fluently combines these two different techniques in her playing. Originally for Guitar World, now on our site as well. That’s here if you’d like to take a look! —

https://troygrady.com/2018/04/03/molly-tuttles-amazing-freightliner-precision/

In other news, we’re happy to report that this White Freightilner video absolutely blew up on Facebook with over a million views in the week after we posted. Go Molly!!

2 Likes
#8

Mindblowing. Nothing more to say. I just can’t get that badass picking and the super relaxed singing face together. :grin:

2 Likes
#9

Thenar Eminence is going on my list of “body parts that sound like Star Wars characters”.

Serratus Anterior was my previous favourite.

5 Likes
#10

Molly is fantastic… thanks for the amazing videos.

One thing I noticed on the video is the way she holds her pick, under the thumb joint rather that the pad.

I don’t know if it’s something worth to mention picking-wise… I tend to do that too and as far as I’m concerned I came up with that for strumming purpose (e.g for fast triplets, that kind of things), because I figured out it provides a better grip and the ability to ‘lock’ the pick by angling the thumb.

1 Like
#11

Crosspicking technique works with both pad-pad extended finger type grips as well as side-pad type grips. It’s really just a wrist movement. You could cut off all your fingers (oh no!) and the base wrist movement would still be the same.

What Molly does do is use a significant finger component to her movement, similar to what Martin Miller does. You can see it in the slow motion clips in that excerpt. I’m not sure it’s 100% necessary to play her lines, but there’s no question she’s doing it, so it’s worth mentioning.

1 Like
#12

Molly’s playing is mesmerising and to sing at the same time? Unbelievable! She got a double dose on the day that talent was handed out in class!

#13

Molly has a great tutorial on how to crosspick and play wildwood flower. Are there any tutorials on how to play this song?

#14

In our instructional material, we cover the picking techniques needed to play typical bluegrass lines that involve moving back and forth between strings, sometimes with only one note on them. Molly’s technique is fundamentally a type of wrist motion, which is a subject we’ve studied quite a bit, and have devised various hacks for learning it.

We also have complete tablature for this song in particular, including slow motion video of Molly’s technique as she plays it. In combination with learning the techniques themselves, we think that is the best way to learn songs like this.

To put this another way, a typical tutorial on “how to play” the song itself — like where to put your fretting fingers — won’t work very well if it doesn’t anticipate that challenges of learning how to do the picking motion, which is usually the bottleneck for bluegrass guitar.

2 Likes