COLUMNS
HARDWIRED
by Jared James Nichols
DAVID McCLISTER
KING ALBERT
The influence of the great Albert King
ONE OF MY biggest musical influences is the king of blues power, Albert King. There are so many things that define his unique approach to playing, and I think about these things every time I pick up my guitar.
The first thing is that, like me, Albert didn’t use a pick. He fingerpicked his strings aggressively, mostly with his thumb and index finger, snapping them against the fretboard and creating a distinctive and deeply expressive sound. Albert also played the guitar “upside down.” With the instrument strung conventionally for a right-handed player, he flipped it over and played it left-handed, with the order of the strings being reversed: the lowest string was closest to the floor while the highest string was closest to the ceiling. He also played in an unorthodox tuning, which is still a mystery; the prevailing wisdom is that he tuned down one-and-one-half steps, to C# standard (low to high: C# , F# , B, E, G# , C# ).