Study Tune: Wildwood Flower

Learning and understanding the basic melody in it's simplest form is the foundation on which more complicated arrangements and improvisational playing is based.

Carter Style

Carter-style picking is a technique named after Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family. She was the first recording artist to popularize this style, which became the driving rhythmic force behind the Carter Family's music - as well as an inspiration for generations of guitar players to come.

Carter-style is characterized by playing the melody notes on the bass strings and rhythmic fills on the treble strings. What makes this style significant is that it makes the guitar perform as both a lead instrument and rhythm instrument at the same time.

Here is an audio clip of Maybelle taking an instrumental break on "Wildwood Flower." Listen to how she carries both the melody and the rhythm. The clip is in mp3 format.

Maybelle's Break

Listen to Audio Clip

(mp3 - 627 KB)

It is interesting to note that while most modern players use a flatpick for Carter style picking, Maybelle herself used a thumbpick for the bass note and her index finger for the rhythmic strums. For Maybelle, this approach was a natural adaptation of the banjo picking style she had learned before she started playing the guitar.

Creating a Carter-Style Arrangement from the Basic Melody

We're going to show by example how this to arrange a tune for Carter style picking. Our starting point is the basic melody discussed in the previous section.

Click on the link shown to view a simplified Carter-Style arrangement that shows how it's done. The TAB file is available in both Scorch format and as a PDF document and contains both standard notation and tablature.

Basic Carter Style Arrangement

Let's look more closely at this TAB file and compare it to the one of the basic melody. The two arrangements are identical except that rhythmic fills have been added in the Carter-style. Remember that Maybelle had to make her guitar perform both as a lead and rhythm instrument, so she had to keep the beat going even when there are pauses in the melody. So, whenever there are notes longer than a quarter note (the basic beat in 4/4 time), you have to add something to keep the rhythm going.

In the graphic below, we've highlighted in longer notes the simple melody that need to have rhythm support. In the Carter-style version below, these notes are replaced with a quarter note of the same pitch PLUS some kind of rhythmic fill - either a strum or a combination of notes and a strum. This fills out the rhythmic structure and makes it more driving.

Other Carter-style Techniques

This Carter-style arrangement is very simple, and you may have noticed that it doesn't sound exactly like Maybelle's version in the recording. That's because she was doing some other things with it to make it more interesting. One technique is to convert the quarter note strums into eighth-note strums - basically going down and up on the strum instead of just down. Another technique is her use of hammer-ons and pull-offs.

We've created a more advanced arrangement of "Wildwood Flower" that uses both of these techniques and is closer to what you hear on the recording. Click on the link shown to see this arrangement in Scorch format.

Advanced Carter Style Arrangement

Crosspicking

Our next step in studying "Wildwood Flower" is to do some crosspicking on it. This is an excellent tune for learning and exploring the crosspicking technique.

What is Crosspicking?

Crosspicking uses the flatpick to pick a group of strings in a pattern that repeats. Three strings are commonly involved in a crosspicking pattern, and the strings may or may not be adjacent to each other. When played on the guitar, crosspicking sounds very similar to the "rolls" you hear from a banjo player.

The direction you pick the strings when crosspicking is a personal preference. Some players use down-up-down-up (DUDU) pattern and some use down-down-up (DDU). The notes played are the same either way, although there is a subtle difference in the sound. Most players use the DUDU technique.

We've prepared an audio clip of Clarence White crosspicking "Wildwood Flower" to demonstrate how it sounds when done by one of the greats of Bluegrass Guitar. The clip is in mp3 format.

Crosspicking Clip

Listen to Audio Clip

(mp3 - 328 KB)

Listening to Clarence, you can hear that there is much more going on when you are crosspicking. At times it might be hard to hear the melody, too. It's there, but it's surrounded by a lot of other notes, and may not be in exactly the same place as in the basic melody you sing.

A Beginning Crosspicking Arrangement

Let's take a look at a simple crosspicking arrangement of "Wildwood Flower." This arrangement contains both standard notation and tablature.

Crosspicking Arrangement