Dave Goodman – Fingerpicking Blues and Slide Guitar

A remarkable guitarist who is at home in both electric and acoustic idioms and has mastered styles ranging from jazz, blues and rock to country and folk, Dave Goodman is also an accomplished songwriter and singer, with a deeply personal touch which transcends stylistic boundaries. He studied music
at Vancouver College in Canada and is himself a great teacher with many years of pedagogical experience both in private lessons and larger classes.

He works closely with Yamaha and in recent years has toured internationally presenting the company's exclusive range of high-end acoustic guitars, giving concerts, masterclasses and seminars. At Le Kleebach, however, Dave's course is entirely directed at helping students become more familiar with the playing techniques he has spent the past decades mastering.

An experienced instructor with the ability to convey both the basics and the subtleties of contem–porary fingerstyle guitar without intimidating students with his virtuosity, Dave will present a wide-ranging course which will give intermediate and advanced guitarists a unique opportunity to learn from one of today’s master players. His course will draw from the following topics, which will be taught in the context of being applied to roots, blues, folk, jazz, and singer/songwriter genres.

Course Outline

The topics will be quite similar to those covered in last year's course. However, this time the repertoire will include many new pieces, which will keep things interesting for repeat students. Some of the new material will include Dave's workshops for the guitar magazine “Acoustic Player”. Because of varying levels and abilities, Dave often divides the class into subgroups giving everyone some choice in which pieces or exercises they personally would like to focus on.

Fingerstyle: getting started with various bass/thumb and fingerpicking techniques, approaches for different grooves and styles.

Tunings: standard tuning and various open tunings and their applications.

Slide (in conjunction with tuning section): slide technique, open G, open D, standard tuning. Damping, chords, comping and soloing, applying fingerstyle.

Improvisation: a look at which scales work where and with which chords and progressions and how to use all these musically.

To which extent the course will deal with theory and harmony will depend on how advanced the participants are, and how much they want to get into this.

Solo and Ensemble Performance: a look at repertoire, integrating improvisation into performance, how to accompany a soloist or singer (the lost art of comping), bringing these elements together "live” by putting participants into small groups and performing in front of the whole group.

Songwriting: for those interested, taking a look at participants’ songs, how to develop them further.

History: Dave will work some music history (mostly Blues and Jazz) into the program. This can come up at any time within the context of all previous sections. Basically working in stories and background to all above topics.

Course Language: English or German as required

Musical requirements:
Intermediate and advanced level players only.