THE CLAW
Learning the art of clawhammer guitar
by Molly Tuttle
ACOUSTIC JOURNEY
HELLO, AND WELCOME to my new column, Acoustic Journey. In this series of monthly lessons, I’d like to demonstrate many of the guitar playing approaches and techniques that I have found to be very useful and rely on the most for both performing and songwriting.
Let’s begin with a look at a style of fin-gerpicking known as clawhammer guitar. I first learned about this style from a guitar player named Michael Stadler out in the San Francisco Bay area. As a teenager, I became very interested in clawhammer banjo, which is a style of banjo playing associated with old-time music and Appalachian string music. I learned to play clawhammer banjo, and while teaching banjo at a music camp in Northern California, I saw there was a class called “Clawhammer Guitar,” which was something I had never heard of. That’s when I met Michael, who taught me the basics of applying this clawhammer approach to the guitar.