Another Thile Thread

[Barefoot Bud]

Okay, first of all this is a beautifully done song. But my question is about a certain sound Thile gets starting at 0:22. He plays the low notes and sounds like he also does a little flick of the wrist to bring in the E string too. Whatever it is, I've never experienced it in my own playing and would love to figure it out to get a fuller sound. Could someone describe this to me, because I really can't see what his hand is doing.

[Mark Robertson-Tessi]

It's essentially what you say: he's playing a melody on the D string, and in between the melody notes, he's adding strokes on the open E and A strings. This particular song has a pretty fast subdivision, so each melody note is played with downstrokes. The open string add ins are mostly on the upstrokes in between. You could try playing a pattern like this:

---- ---- ---0 | ---- ---0 ----

---- ---- --0- | ---- --0- ----

4--- 6--- 7--- | 6-4- 2--- --2-

---- ---- ---- | ---- ---- 6---

Each block of tab is one beat, which is made up of 4 fast strokes (DUDU). If you count it, it's
1 2 3 and-a | 1 and 2 and-a 3 and
All the notes are downstrokes except for the open E string notes.

Hopefully that makes sense. I can make better version later if it's not clear.

Cheers
MRT

[Barefoot Bud]

Mark, thank you very very much for taking the time to give a complete answer here. That totally makes sense. It's good to have a visual for this.

[pickngrin]

Not to derail the thread, but they're perfectly mic'ed. I love that they're running both onboard mics as well as ambient mics and blending the two. Sounds so good. Doesn't hurt that Kaul Auditorium is such a great venue.