This lesson features a mixed bag of seven songs that I’ve arranged in a variety of ways, employing tricks and licks that I’ve picked up over the years in my quest to find my own “style”. Each song has it’s own built-in exercises for fingerpicker’s looking to head in new directions. The old standard A Sin To Tell A Lie becomes a highly arpeggiated waltz with some fun licks up the neck. Somebody Stole My Gal incorporates counterpoint, chord inversions, and nice bass movement. The old jug band tune Sadie Green (The Vamp of New Orleans) gets revamped with a feel that bounces from down low New Orleans rumba to punchy ragtime picking and back again. A highly unorthodox treatment of Blind Willie McTell’s East St Louis

Blues gets deep into Cooder-esque syncopation, and a chorus was added to make it a little less repetitive. The instrumental “showpiece” No Hiding Place was influenced by Cool John Ferguson’s virtuosic zinger off of a Music Maker Relief Foundation music compilation (likely Ferguson’s take on the old gospel number No Hiding Place Down Here), and then taken on a bunch of detours. Those looking to “Africanize” their playing will enjoy Cory’s take on The Parting Glass, which takes this old Celtic drinking ballad on a trip to east Africa, featuring funky polyrhythms and muted strings in This lesson features a mixed bag of seven songs that I’ve arranged in a variety of ways, employing tricks and licks that I’ve picked up over the years in my quest to find my own “style”. Each song has it’s own built-in exercises for fingerpicker’s looking to head in new directions. The old standard A Sin To Tell A Lie becomes a highly arpeggiated waltz with some fun licks up the neck. Somebody Stole My Gal incorporates counterpoint, chord inversions, and nice bass movement. The old jug band tune Sadie Green (The Vamp of New Orleans) gets revamped with a feel that bounces from down low New Orleans rumba to punchy ragtime picking and back again. A highly unorthodox treatment of Blind Willie McTell’s East St Louis

Blues gets deep into Cooder-esque syncopation, and a chorus was added to make it a little less repetitive. The instrumental “showpiece” No Hiding Place was influenced by Cool John Ferguson’s virtuosic zinger off of a Music Maker Relief Foundation music compilation (likely Ferguson’s take on the old gospel number No Hiding Place Down Here), and then taken on a bunch of detours. Those looking to “Africanize” their playing will enjoy Cory’s take on The Parting Glass, which takes this old Celtic drinking ballad on a trip to east Africa, featuring funky polyrhythms and muted strings in 12/8.12/8.

Titles include: Somebody Stole My Gal, A Sin To Tell A Lie, No Hiding Place, East St. Louis Blues, The Parting Glass, Sadie Green (The Vamp of New Orleans)

240 minutes - Level 4 - Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD

Review: Judge not a song by its title. Particularly these six. For although Blind Willie McTell’s “East St. Louis Blues” or the Celtic pub anthem “The Parting Glass” may ring familiar by name, their actual performance under Cory Seznic’s “Spiced Up Fingerstyle Arrangements” is anything but routine. The lesson plan’s full setlist puts you in equally good company with Billie Holiday, Ed Sheeran, Fats Waller, the Kweskin Jug Band, Count Basie, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and the Clancy Brothers, all of whom took a collective turn at these melodies. Elvis to Dylan, too.

But reimagination is the unexpected trickster that strikes repeatedly, shaking things up creatively. That’s what gets McTell to shed his Piedmont skin for a funky, rubber-backboned strut, and “The Parting Glass” to raise its pint in polyrhythmic 12/8 time with an unusual Ethiopian twist to the motion. An invigoratingly new overhaul of old sound.

But the four-hour class doesn’t let up there on inspiring customization of classic contexts. “Sadie Green (The Vamp of New Orleans),” a rehabilitated jug band romp, now dances around the room with Rampart Street rumba moves, tinted by shades of flamenco and waltzing. So catchy, in fact, that Blind Blake crashes the party, spurring extra action with some raggy blues moves of his own. That’s the level of renovation taught here. For repertoire, technique and/or intrepid motivation for personal expression, hitching your guitar to Seznec’s star pays dividends across the board. – Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag