And so it begins...

Let's start with a question:

What do Elizabeth Cotten, Albert King and Bob Geldof all have in common?

Anyone?

Answer: They all played guitar the same way. Some people call it playing "upside down", but with the bass strings on the bottom and the high strings up high, it sounds more "upside up" to me.

Upside Guitar is both an exploration of ideas related to playing guitar this way, and a metaphorical smack upside the head of anyone who is convinced that the guitar can not, or must not, be played this way.

This blog is mainly meant to organize relevant videos from my Song Zoo Youtube channel. Hopefully guitarists of all sorts can find something interesting here and perhaps be inspired to see what they can learn from flipping their strings.



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What's wrong here?

 A recent article about Eric Gales in Guitar Player magazine online included this snippet: Like  Jimi Hendrix ,  Jimmy Page  and other blues-rock guitarists who were born with big hands, Gales makes great use of the technique of  fretting the low E  string  with his thumb , which effectively frees his other fingers to embellish the chords he plays with added notes and “extensions.” What's wrong here? Eric Gales plays with the bass strings on the bottom! So if you think about it, that would be require a pretty unrealistic stretch for even the biggest of hands. The author's right that Gales makes good use of his thumb, it's just that he does so to grab the  high strings  on the guitar. Unlike Hendrix, whose thumb was usually anchored as the root of a barre chord, Eric Gales uses his thumb to add funky extensions and alterations on top of his chords.  Same but different. Quite a bit different. That's part of what makes playing Upside intere...
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