Carter Style: The Gateway Drug To Cross-Picking

In the last post I talked about the importance of learning the melody and chords to a song, or tune, that you are working on. Once again, I can’t stress this enough; which brings us to Carter Style.

Without getting into the whole history of it, Carter Style was created by Maybelle Carter, of the Carter Family, as a way to play lead on guitar. Many guitarists, such as Doc Watson and Clarence White, site her as having been a huge influence on their lead guitar playing. Carter Style is a way of playing a song, or tune, as if the melody were a bass note. Most bluegrass rhythm guitar is performed by playing a bass note, then a strum of the chord, then another bass note, and then another strum, for a four beat time signature, like this:

Carter style takes this idea, but plays melody notes in the lower register (like a bass note), and then strums the chord between melody notes. The most common song people learn when they start this style is Wildwood Flower. Here’s an arrangement of the tune:

The melody note is played, and then the chord that would usually be used to accompany the melody is strummed between the melody notes. Now, let’s take a look at the melody alone.

Compare the two, and notice in the Carter Style arranged version the chord strum shows up whenever the melody note is being held for more than one beat. Each melody is different, so you have to find the held notes to put in the chord strum. In the last post we took a look at the traditional melody Red River Valley, and here it is again:

At the beginning of each measure is a note that is held for two beats. To arrange this in Carter Style we would strum the chord after each of those notes. When playing this style you need to finger the chords as you’re playing the melody so that your fingers are in place to strum the chord, rather than trying to jump to the chord after each melody note. This isn’t too difficult because most of the melody notes are notes in the chord. You also want the chord to ring as you’re playing the melody. It’s almost like you’re accompanying yourself as you play, and ….well, you kind of are. Here’s Red River Valley arranged Carter Style:

There you have it! Carter Style arrangements are easily translated into cross-picking arrangements (which we’ll get to soon), but first we’ll apply a variation to the Carter Style using a technique called octave displacement in the next post, titled: The Not So Carter, Carter Style Variations.

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Happy Picking!