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Hi. Oh behalf of Expert Village, I'm Reno at Reno's Music Shop in Camp Verde, Arizona,
and I'm going to tell you about flatpicking guitar. The rhythm guitar and the lead guitar
player are doing more work than anybody else in the band. Because when the mandolin player
is playing his lead, we're still going like this. We're pumping on a rhythm left and right.
We're throwing in little runs behind him. So any chance we get to rest, we want to take
that chance. Even if it's just between two G chords, I lift my fingers off just for that
half a second of rest. It, I'm able to sustain my rhythm longer. And if I forget the chords,
I can just bam. Kill the strings. Okay, so I'm just a drummer, big deal. We're still
keeping rhythm and that's our job, is rhythm. The most important part of what you do as
a guitar player in a bluegrass setting is keep the rhythm. Don't let it go for anything.
You can forget chords. You can forget what note you're doing. But don't lose that rhythm.
So when we play, we do up and down. We always know where that downbeat is. Even if we don't
hit it, we want to keep playing.
Always keep that count in your head. Use a mechanism, stomp your foot if you have to.
Nod your head. Sway your body. It doesn't matter. Nobody's grading you on how you look
when you flat pick. It's not a beauty contest. We just want to hear that nice rhythm. We
want to hear those nice fat notes.