Sorry for the tuning blunder with that A string. It does not stay as A but get's tuned up to B for Open E tuning: EBEG#BE

Brilliant lesson from a very talented young man.Helping to keep the old blues styles alive.He is also a very nice and helpful fella.

there's so much gold that can be gleaned/mined out of these old videos of dear dear Fred. it's like going back to the source. The wellspring of some of to days slide guitar and clears the blackboard of half arsed ideas we may have misheard from great players just to see their inspiration more clear from just watching old mr Mcdowell, and where maybe most of it came from. (stuff like this should not be copied note for note) make it your inspiration and interpretation of his marvelous foundation blues. and to people like Stefan Grossman for making these videos (tutorials) possible and not blocking it, hats off to you Sir hats off to you 👍👍👍👍👍

Lots of shitty comments. Well at least everyone complaining about the little tuning misstep is getting their money's worth. Free. Spend ur time playin more guitar instead of bitching. This is a great vid

Poss my favourite blues artist thanks for this I couldn't figure out his technique am now inspired to pick up my old git box

That's what I call a great lesson: even I can understand! Thank you.

I can see from the comments thread that I'm not the only one who is perturbed by the howling tuning mistake, I'm so glad I'm not a novice... This misinformation must be really confusing for those who are unfamiliar with open tunings. May I suggest that the administrator of this upload ought to add a screen pop up annotation which clears up the confusion (it's the "B" string that stays the same whilst the "A" string is the one that is tuned up to meet it). [Open E = E,B,E,G#,B,E]. Whilst on this subject, an important fact that I feel ought to have been very clearly pointed out with regard to the "Open E Tuning" is that this tuning can be very damaging to many instruments, especially if this upward tuning is employed in conjunction with heavier gauge strings. However, there is an easy remedy for this problem... Open E Tuning exactly reflects the more commonly used "Open D Tuning", that is to say each of the six strings in Open E are two semi-tones higher than Open D. This fact enables you to avoid the pitfalls of tuning your guitar upwards by simply placing a capo on the 2nd fret having firstly tuned DOWN to Open D. [Open D = D,A.D,F#.A,D]. Tuning UPWARDS to "Open A" is also mentioned in the video and, in much the same way as described above, this tuning exactly reflects the more commonly used "Open G" tuning. Again, you can simply tune down to Open G and then capo up two frets to give you the key of A. [Open G = D,G,D,G,B,D].

This is amazing to me! You play like Ry Cooder and you obviously LOVE the blues slide guitar. I loved this and I have been playing slide for 20 years. Great job.

Great lesson thank you.

Love!!! Love!!!! Love!!! Valeriy

Thanx Form IRAN.very beautiful technic.

Sweet post, thanks.

Thanks for so much for the information...

Great stuff, sir! lovely looking guitar you got there too....

Wow. Nice skill level. I dig this video very much. Props.

very nice lesson , Phil

nice one tom...was scratching my head about this new blues tuning eaeg#ae

Mr. Feldman- I can't wait to get this one!!! MFM is the greatest! I got your Bottleneck Gospel and Blind Willie Johnson just recently, and I love them! Looking forward to you future releases for Son House and Charlie Patton. Thanks for your hard work and sharing the secrets. Hope to see you perform live soon. Take care.

Were when extraordinary stringin mighta camedown coolio tunable Old time feelin ag love it brub!!!

Im usually tuned to open D and just throw a capo on the second fret. Excellent lesson! thanks.

excellent

Thanks

Fred knows he the man

Nice vocal!

Wow!

@lespaul19851. It's a Hauver, Stella grand concert replica. Charley Patton model.

Needed this 40yr ago lol

Great lesson, Tom. Very informative. For some reason, my cat hates this. He doesn't mind Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James etc al, but he can't take Mississippi Fred at all. It must be the higher pitch.

nice voice on this guy

Hey Tom! I love your lessons! Have you considered doing a DVD on the playing of Tampa Red? I play several of his instrumentals and would love to see if I'm playing them "right" and learn more of his songs. Denver Blues is the one I've had the most trouble with - since it's hard to hear exactly what he's doing with the bass. Thanks again!

you should do Guitar of Blind Boy Fuller I'd buy that in a heartbeat

@PeluMaad. I'll be filming a 2DVD set on Charlie Patton in Oct and also a Delta Blues lesson focusing on Patton, House, Willie Brown and Tommy Johnson. I did a 2DVD set of Son House that should be available this fall.

Your tutorials are great. However, in this one when you said the 5 string and 2 string were tuned to A you actually meant B. Very misleading for some people, according to comments. You should also tell them they're simply tuning to an open E chord. Makes things much simpler.

Bon sang! Quel sont!

Top🤘🤘🤘🤘🎸🎸🎸

That's a really nice shirt :)

On the first recordings by Alan lomax fred is in open D

Hill country blues!

Hello what would be the advice of nuts height and bridge height to convert an acoustic guitar to slide?

I enjoy a lot but I haven't the level... Very nice

Any reason you couldn't just do this in Open G ( no capo ) assuming you could sing it there?

This tuning and slide progression is common in Sacred steel.

I dig the shirt man. Very cool. And I'm so drunk so I will listen to this and hopefully make some sense of this!

We've seen Bonnie Rait do this style on electric. Are the thumb pick and finger picks absolutely required?

Thank you for this lesson. Hey, at 10:15 and 10:18 he appears to be doing some index finger drag or something like that? Can you say what that is?

Do I need lighter strings cos I’m scared mine are gonna snap I use 12/53 is that too thick?

So Fred is the god of blues slide

13:59..i seee it comin...lol knowledge...basss line

Where’s the shake em in down lesson please? Can’t find on KZfaq. Are there any others? Thanks

Hi Tom can you tell me what guitar you are using ?

Unwind third string?

Tom, would you know the manufacturer of Fred McDowell's guitar. I do not recognize he logo. I remember the body was red.

What's Wrong with Tuning to the 4th instead of the 5th???🤔🤔🤔It's still Open E.

Here's a thought....a 2 CD Charley Patton set....Feldman doing the bottleneck and John Miller handling the rest...or maybe call it "The Real Delta Blues" and include Son House and Willie Brown. (It really irks me that people tend to call anything acoustic "Delta"). Maybe even a duet to end the set?

I always just tune down to open D then Capo at second fret.

I agree with everyone else that this is a great lesson, Tom. Well done. One question, though- you make a good point about "slide angle"- as you can see from the video clip, Fred is using a little length of bottleneck to get so much angle and mobility out of his ring finger- it's so short, in fact, that he can bend the first joint of his finger . My question is, do you think he's USING that finger to fret around the slide?

how important is playing with thumb and finger picks? i've never used them before and I'm having trouble adapting and enjoying my playing (i'm 55 and have played mostly rock and folk all my life and just coming around to this genre------ love it btw); i get a decent sound w/o but feel i'm avoiding and not being authentic, what do you think?

Chug bro. The word you're looking for is chug. Great Video

Notice this cat has three picks.... 8 minutes and 22 seconds it gets a little sophisticated in a tuning Fred most of them blue players had Secrets tuning in their cord open tuning they didn't share the information competition but their style from different regions they played in so it depends on what songs you want you can turn it to this but you have a special strings to put them in is definitely not standard tuning ........ one-man Toby from Chicago came to my church and said if you play like this you be a star I never took them off on it course my experience with that playing with Master keyboards they won't tune to you you had to do to them but he was invited and they had a tune to him and he was all over the place LOL

Open E chord

The link is a no go...

It's Eddie Marsan's long lost brother.

A string tunes up to a B.Not as stated in video.

Ok shit that tuning was way confusing. I had to fucking google it....

He do not play no rock n roll. The only rocking he does is in a rocking chair.

No actual instruction is given until 11:40....FYI....lots of talking

I think you should focus more on teaching and less on playing.

Feldmann addressed his error 2 years before you put your arrogant oar in the water. Your interminable self-aggrandizing screed actually pretty much shoved the instructors comment so far down the line as to make it invisible.

10 min before you get to anything real. Should also cover right hand technique in depth as that's to me the real magic your words as well. And ya covered that in less than a minute. Stop screwing around.