Michael Bremer

Clawhammer Cookbook

There are two ways to approach writing a cookbook - and this goes for cooking food and cooking up some great music. One way is to give you a bunch of recipes and tell you, Here's how to make this dish, or here's how to play this tune. Another way is to teach you how to cook. In other words, by providing you with techniques for mixing flavors, the knowledge of when, where, and how to apply heat, and ideas on how to add your own touches, you can make the dish - or the tune - your own. This book takes the second path. The goal of this book isn't to tell you how to play tunes or how to play like anyone else. It's to teach you ways to approach, arrange, and personalize any tune - to develop your own unique style. To that end, we'll take in a healthy serving of old-time music and also expand the clawhammer palate to taste a few other musical styles. The Online Audio contains demos of all the songs and examples to aid in the learning process.