So LN if you're taking lessons from Rick that suggests yer a fellow Canuck?

When I was a young buck learning to play, I thought it was stylish to figure out really difficult fingerings for guitar parts. (The intro lick to "Brown Eyed Girl" comes to mind, for some reason I found a really convoluted way of doing it) Thought this would make me a better player--in a sense it did, maybe, but not a smarter, better sounding or more tasteful one! Gradually I discovered that the easiest way to get from point a to point b on a fret board is also the most graceful.

Anyway, after 10 years or so of playing, I took some lessons from a guy named Paul Bourdeau who showed me the real goods on chord voicings. One of the points he made was that the sound most pleasing to the ear in a chord progression, is what you get from just changing one or two notes at a time rather than repositioning your whole hand. This is good news for lazy types like me. Another useful tip was to make use of open strings as much as possible because they're the ones that sound the truest, particularly on the banjo I suspect. And the final useful tidbit--I'm not sure which teacher I got this from actually--was that you can play any note in any key as long as you don't dwell on the ones that aren't "right"--you just gotta end up in the right place. I think this is one of the secrets to learning to pick creatively.

Dang that was exhausting. Hope I can see you play some time.

Bill