Jack Straw - Grateful Dead (Cornell 1977) - Jerry Garcia Guitar Tab Transcription

Jack Straw - Jerry Garcia Guitar Transcription
(Live at Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 5/8/77) · Grateful Dead


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Jerry alternates between normal and hybrid picking (chicken picken') throughout the song. I originally included notes on all of the picking/ finger patterns used in each section but decided to remove it because there's just too much subjectivity.

A few high level notes:

-The bridge ("I just jumped the watchman") is mostly hyrbid picking
-The chord-based improv (starting at the end of the 1st solo) is a combination of hybrid and/or finger picking. Pull strings with middle and index finger while staccato picking (lowest note is usually picked).There are multiple ways to approach this (e.g., pick+middle vs middle+ring, playing muted upstrokes with fingers, etc), so see what works for you. Whenever you hear the strings snapping on double-stops/pull-offs, that's probably chicken pickin' or finger picking. However, the whole song sounds fine straight picking if chicken pickin' isn't in your repertoire.

Check out the following Jack Straws for more examples of chicken picken'/ hybrid picking: the 2nd solo from 5/11, the middle of 5/28 (more Mark Knopfler style), and 10/14 (more traditional hybrid picking).

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Enjoy!