blistered my fingers studying SRV technique

[nuke]

I admit to being a Stevie Ray Vaughan music mangler. I grew up in Texas, and saw him in various night clubs, then small music halls and eventually arenas as his career grew. As a teen and young man, I tried to cop his style, never could really grasp it back in the 1980's. But I learned a lot of other blues, from really good players I knew and from recordings.

I generally avoided playing SRV, out of respect knowing I just didn't do it well enough.

Lately, with the advent of computers that can extract the stems out of recordings, slow down tempo, shift pitch up or down with few side effects, and of course, many more years of guitar muddling under my belt, I've been tackling some of the players who eluded me as a young man. Back then, we only had LP's and cassettes (or the even worse 8-tracks). There weren't any "tab books" and certainly nothing like youtube and I couldn't afford a VCR when I was young.

For the first time since I was a teen, I have given myself blisters on my fretting fingers. Really listening to those isolated tracks carefully and figuring out what he was doing was ear-opening as well as finger-blistering. I'm playing 10-46 strings in standard, I have no idea how he did it with 13's and only a half-step down. His bends are so intense, yet bang-on controlled, whether deep bends, or just subtle touches, short bends, long bends, pre-bends, release-bends. Just really amazing level of genius.

And so, so physically challenging to duplicate. Gave in to my OCD to learn and try to master the technique, earned myself a few blisters and some sore fingers.

Never stop learning.

[Reeltarded]

Booyah. Totally awesome. Inspiration is the best. You will remember the days when you really convinced yourself. It's very satisfying.

Protip: Bass frets. I use .008s, but still. I refret Strats with common Fender bass fret material. It plays like scallops. Rosewood is less touchy than maple. 1960 was a great year for Fender necks.

[pullshocks]

That’s great. I don’t know how true this is, but I’ve read that SRV had a method to graft skin into his finger tips from his forearms using superglue……
I never tried 13s but I did move up to 11s and ended up liking them really well.

[ampdan]

Just go to the source. Albert King.