Tony Rice: Billy And The Lowground

Here’s an up close view with Tony Rice playing Billy and The Lowground.

This is a cool vid…

you can actually see that he’s using a tortoise shell pick.

Tony is old school, you won’t catch him with an electronic tuner. And it’s important to understand what he’s talking about with the tuning… All guitars tune up differently.

Notice some of his right hand pick movement, it’s not always up/down.

Tony does a lot of  what I call “down/down” picking which is one of the best ways

to conserve energy when flatpicking. This is not something that Doc Watson did,

as Doc’s technique is a lot more strenuous than Tony’s.

With this technique, instead of up picking up then down, Tony will hit the next string (say the G string to the B) with and continuation down stroke which is all in one motion. This allows for more volume and power and conserves a lot of energy.

I’m going to feature a more in depth look at this technique here at Acoustic Guitar Videos soon. If you are concerned about missing out on this info, sign up to the right for our newsletter and you’ll get the videos delivered to your mailbox every Thursday morning.