Pure Brilliance: Jerry Garcia revealed the secrets to his approach to fingering
No amount of guitar lessons ever taught someone how to play with taste. As much as people can run up and down the scales whenever they play, it’s always about knowing what to play and when to lean back from the rest of the band that determines whether one is a good guitarist or someone who just wants to shred. It’s all about being a well-rounded musician, but Jerry Garcia admitted that some of his classic licks came from the time before he even wore a guitar.
When the Grateful Dead started, though, Garcia was already putting together some of the tastiest guitar lines you’ve ever heard. Whereas most artists were looking to make mile-long jams that stretched out for hours and took people years to try and parse out, Garcia went to the same school as guitarists like George Harrison, usually looking to use his guitar as a second voice in the band.
Sure, they still played those extended jams, but it wasn’t just playing for the sake of playing. It was about drawing a straight line through the song most of the time, and usually, Garcia was the guiding light, relying mostly on his amazing touch on the guitar to give him the right sound that he needed.
If you asked him, though, half of the reason why his guitar worked so well was because he started on the banjo, telling Guitar Player, “I think it has something to do with my early five-string banjo playing. Most guitar players I’ve noticed seem to use a flat fingering. I’ve somehow trained myself to come straight down on top of the string. I play mostly on the tips of my fingers, so the high action doesn’t get in my way at all”.
Granted, it’s not exactly a surprise to see someone like Garcia getting interested in the banjo first. A lot of The Dead’s greatest songs have a bit of a country flair to them, and you weren’t going to find too many other genres with amazing players as those of the bluegrass world, especially when it requires the right amount of precision on every string.
As for the way that he hit the string, Garcia’s approach of not using a flat fingering makes a lot more sense when you hear it in the context of the rest of the band. Many guitarists have that natural way of playing the guitar where you feel the tension between the fingers and the strings, but Garcia sounded more like he was squeezing notes out of his guitar instead of actually striking the string.
In fact, a lot of his approach almost sounds closer to what you would hear out of a pedal steel guitar half the time with how in tune it is. While bluegrass and banjo-dominated music is definitely an acquired taste, Garcia found a way to take that foundation and put it through the filter of rock and roll.
Then again, this wasn’t about fitting one genre into another every time The Grateful Dead played. This was about expanding the rock genre beyond its capabilities, and when it came time to take a solo, no one had ever been more one with their instrument than Garcia before or since.
