Apr 19, 2011

Teaspoon slide technique

Upon popular request, finally, here's a blog about this unique technique of slide playing guitar using... a teaspoon..!

Most internet searches on teaspoon guitar pop material about a guy named Hannes Coetzee. Apparently he is very big in his native country (South Africa) and rightfully so, since his mastery of this technique (called  "optel and knyp"..?) is amazing.


Here's a video of Hannes playing his most famous tune live:



To get a feel of how hard this technique must be here's another video of a guy who is giving it a very decent go at playing All My Loving by the Beatles:



The whole idea is to keep chords fixed with your left hand and play melodies on the high strings with the spoon. It sounds a bit like Hawaian music but surely very distinguishable in its own right.

Teaspoon guitar playing sure is impressive to look at though I'm not sure how it will sound if you're only listening to and not looking at the player. Also, I guess if you're a fairly decent singer you'd prefer delivering lyrics with your mouth to playing the teaspoon riffs.

All in all however, it looks innovative and hard to master and so a skilled player like Hannes deserves the respect of any folk musician.

Cheers,

3 comments:

  1. To all my loving akoygetai san peinasmeno gati ligo?!
    Mas anoixes tin orexi me ta koutalia...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2/3/12 08:27

    "optel en knyp" translates to "pickup and pinch"

    ReplyDelete