What Next?

So far we’ve covered the forward roll, and the backward roll. If you haven’t learned them yet you can see the forward roll here, and the backward roll here. The next step is to start putting these patterns to use creating cross-picked arrangements of any tune that suits your fancy. It’s best to start with something simple, and then build more and more complex arrangements. So, where do we start? We’re going to use an old, traditional melody to start, called Red River Valley.

The first place to start with any tune is to learn the melody. I’m going to repeat this because it’s very important: learn the melody. Any song that you either want to improvise on, or create an arrangement for, the only way to do that effectively is to know the melody. One reason for this is if you make a mistake during an improvisation you can always fall back on the melody, and no one is going to fault you for playing what’s supposed to be there anyway. It also gives us the material needed to do variations on the melody. If you don’t know the melody, then it’s hard to do a variation on it. When using cross-picking to perform a melody there are a lot of notes ringing together, so you have to know which ones are the melodic notes, in order to accent them, and draw the melody out of the chord, much like you’d coax a herd of cats out of a cacophonous chorus by catering catnip.

The other important part to learn is the chords to the song. If you don’t know the harmonic structure of the song then it’s hard to improvise over it or create any sort of melodic sense out of the tune/song, much less create a cross-picking arrangement. Short and simple, learn the melody, and chords. Here’s the basic melody for Red River Valley :

Red River Valley Basic Melody

You can also download the printable pdf here.

I’ve arranged the melody in the key of C in the lower register. We’re going to start by doing the forward roll, and when we use the forward roll the melody needs to be in the lower part of the chord. Memorize the melody and the chords. You should be able to play both from memory, and once you have, you’ll be ready for the next post, Carter Style: The Gateway Drug To Cross-Picking.

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Happy Picking!