We are getting close to the end here and luckily I am getting close to finishing this inquiry project. Surprisingly, I have managed to stay on track for the most part and will likely be finished learning the Mississippi John Hurt song this time next week! I feel like I have learned a lot in the last week and that the I am getting used to the flow of this blues style. It took my a bit of time to get the alternating bass notes down to the point where I don’t have to think about them. Once that happened, though, I felt a switch had be flipped and the rhythm just fell into place. The following videos are are from what I’ll call my “6th lesson” -the first from the start of the day, and the second from later on. I’ve found that a significant amount of progress can be made, in terms of increasing muscle memory, by practicing in 20-30 minutes segments. So the first video is from the the afternoon, and the second is from the early evening.

As you can see, better than the first video last week, but still a ways to go until I can say I can play this song. The hardest part has been moving from the C chord, which I start with, to the F chord. The F chord in this song is played with thumb wrapping around on to the E string and makes for quite the awkward position. After a bit more practice following this video and a break to let my fingers relax, I recorded this next clip:

Still got work to do on that transition, but I’ve made a bunch of progress. I did listen to the actual recording of this song a couple of times this week and was a bit upset about the amount of detail that’s missing from the music book I’m work from, but it is clearly providing me with enough of a learning curve already. Part of what’s kept me motivated to keep on working away on this stuff is the fact that once I know how to play this song, it should be much much easier for me to dive into learning his other songs. One step at time though!