THE ALBUMS A guide to Nick's albums   NICK DRAKE MP3s Download MP3s from Apple's iTunes   MUSICAL GUIDE An annotated musicians' guide to Nick's music   MESSAGE BOARD Chat & exchange information with other fans   LYRICS Lyrics to songs from all 3 of Nick's albums   NICK FIRST HAND Nick's life in quotes   CONTACT US Comments, suggestions & contributions welcome   LINKS   HOME	Home -> Hanging on a Star -> contents -> Nick's Tunings-> next page Right Hand Techniques Unfortunately, working out Nick's tunings is only half the battle, and even though his tunings tended to free his left hand slightly, Nick's right hand picking technique was really quite astounding at times. 'Cello Song' '  The Tuning The tuning for this song is only a semitone away from standard; just tune the G string down to an F# and there you have it! The song also requires a capo on the sixth fret. Cello Song' is probably a good place to start, as it is the first track on Nick's first album and also demonstrates the variety and complexity of his right hand patterns. The highly memorable 8 bar introduction to the song is probably one of the hardest sections of Nick's music to master (I would certainly say the hardest out of the examples in this book). So don't get too disheartened if you can't quite get this section right - it gets easier from here on! The thumb sets the pace of the song with a constant pedalled D# played in quavers, whilst the fingers gradually go off in their own syncopated tangent, and just to make things even more complicated the final bar of the intro is in 7/8. Possibly one of the trickiest aspects to this section is the rapid pairs of semiquavers played by the second finger in bars 2, 3 & 4 (see below): As with much of Nick's music, it is sometimes easier to break the music down and then build up the elements of the pattern bit by bit. Fortunately, with this song it almost does this for you, as the actual nature of the intro is that it gradually builds up to a crescendo of complexity before slipping into the main phrase. So it may be worth just practising two bars at a time, starting with bars 1 & 2 with just the thumb and forefinger, then moving on when that bit has been mastered [N.B. you may have to practice bars 9 & 10 in conjunction with the two bars previous, as by this point the syncopation is such that bars 9 & 10 isolated would be very hard to make any sense of]. The last good piece of free advice I can give is quite simple - listen closely; to yourself and the record. The main section then comes in, returning to 4/4 and at the same time introducing a very different fingerpicking pattern - rather then the constant pedalled bass note of the intro, there is an alternating bass pattern (all those with any other fingerpicking experience will doubtless have come across this pattern before - the thumb alternates between playing the A# on the sixth string and the F on the fifth). The upper register also changes but remains fairly syncopated.
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