Tony Rice Church St Blues "a saga of success"

[JakeEstner]

Excuse the cheeky title, just recently I was trying to make a little project of trying to alternate pick Tony Rice’s intro on “Church Street Blues.” (original transcription/strokes here) There was a thread where folks were discussing the pick strokes Tony uses:

Tony rice cross picking double down up!

Hey guys! Been trying to learn church street blues by tony rice. Cant get th double down up rolls to flow at all? Anyone else have this problem? You can see him do it here its those rolls on the G chord and c words notes [church%20street] i mean i can do them but not to those speeds and not with out it feeling mega awkward! any ideas??

I had already spent some time with this so Troy’s comment caught my attention:

@Troy

Honestly, I think pure alternate is actually simpler, and opens the door to a variety of twists on the basic pattern without requiring any substantial change in your technique - like this one which combines the forward roll with string skips and four strings:

https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/clips/broken-roll-tk1/

The thing is so wonky and syncopated and I’ve been working on the double escape thing a lot so I wanted to give myself the challenge of trying to alternate pick the whole intro. Took a little while to work out the kinks, but I think I got it!

church street blues alternate picking

Comments welcome. I don’t nail the accents as well as I’d like, and there’s still a little bit of ‘arm turning.’

Transcription here, alternate picked version

It was almost exactly a year ago that I got the original version somewhat comfortable, and that was very foreign to me at the time:

church street blues original picking, november 27 2019

(These two clips are on very different guitars, in very different rooms (the 2nd clip room is much much bigger,) with different types of picks, so it makes a tone comparison tricky.

After ‘going both ways’ here are my observations, for whatever it’s worth:

• The alt picking version is more physically challenging in terms of accuracy
• The alt picking version is much less mental work for me; I sit down and read the notes and move my pick back and forth. The original picking has a lot of subtle variations (like the difference between measures 2 and 4) that took me more work to remember.
• While it’s easier to keep a steady pulse with the alt picking, I think part of the charm of the original is the asymmetrical feel, rather than it sounding like a tight driving rhythm, it has a nice ebb and flow to it, giving a different emphasis to those low bass notes, which are always played with downstrokes. It’s probably possible, with practice, to dig into those accents and “looseness” with the alt picking, but after playing it both ways, seems clear there’s a reason he chooses to pick it that way. (The double jointed thumb probably helps too.
• The hardest thing that comes up for me, picking wise, is when there’s a downstroke on the B string then an upstroke on the A string, like here:
  
  
  
  Maybe it’s just because of the types of picking I’m more familiar with, but I find the down,down,up stuff a lot more convenient:
  
  
  
  but then that causes other problems/difficulties

Not that we’d want to overanalyze or anything.

Anyway, just enjoying getting more facility with the alternate picking thing.

[spirogyro]

Awesome job! Sounds great. I think I agree the original picking has a bit of a smoother flow but I like them both. And thanks for the transcription, I’ll definitely be learning this!
I feel you about the inside picked string skip, that’s exactly what I’m working on. 3 strings is fine, 4 strings is tough. But outside picked is fine.