Mr. Monline Store

Jerry Reed Hubbard, the son of cotton mill workers, was born in Atlanta on March 20, 1937 died yesterday of emphysema at the age of 71.

Mr. Reed was a dynamic performer who had distinguished himself as a session guitarist supporting Presley, Waylon Jennings and others before emerging as a major solo talent. He was most remembered for using an intricate guitar-picking style known as the “claw” because it used the entire right hand where earlier guitar giants such as Chet Atkins and Merle Travis favored a two or three-fingered approach.

What is “the claw”? Well it is not for a player with the skills of a new guitar for beginners student, that is for sure. To put it as simple as possible:

Claw(hammer) is sometimes known as frailing. It is primarily a down-picking style, and the hand assumes a claw-like shape and the strumming finger is kept fairly stiff, striking the strings by the motion of the hand at the wrist and elbow, rather than a flicking motion by the finger. Typically, only the thumb and second or first finger are used and the finger always downpicks, flicking the string with the back of the fingernail.

A common characteristic of clawhammer patterns is the thumb does not pick on the downbeat, as one might in typical fingerpicking patterns for guitar. For example, this is a common, basic time signature|2/4 pattern:

1. Pick a melody note on the downbeat (quarter note)
2. On the second beat (music)|beat, strum a few strings with your strumming finger (roughly an eighth note)
3. Immediately following (on the second half of this beat), pick a note with the thumb, usually the shorter fifth string. (roughly an eighth note)

Here, the thumb plays the high drone on the second “and” of “one and two and“. This combined with the second finger strumming provides a characteristic “bum-ditty bum-ditty” sound.

Some people, however, make a distinction between frailing and clawhammer:

• In frailing, the first fingertip is used for up-picking melody, and the second fingernail is used for rhythmic downward brushing.
• In clawhammer, only downstrokes are used, and they are typically played with one fingernail as is the usual technique on the banjo.

To play the guitar using “the claw”, is perhaps one of the most difficult methods to strum a guitar, taking tremendous amounts of practice and patience. Good luck and Enjoy