Guitar | Rebecca Frazier | Beginning | Period 1 | Week 2 (July 14-19, 2024)
Flatpicking fundamentals are the key to achieving the warm, clean, and precise sounds of bluegrass guitar. From the ground up, we will build our skills with helpful exercises and drills. We will learn musical ways to approach picking technique, rhythm patterns, basic scales/theory, and bluegrass idioms. Please bring an acoustic guitar (with steel strings, if possible), a firm flatpick (not bending, if possible), a capo, and a tuner. No prior guitar study is required, but a knowledge of a few basic chords (G, C, D, A, E) will be helpful.
About the Instructor
Rebecca Frazier gained notoriety as the first woman on the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, and has since become known as “a genuine triple threat as singer, songwriter, and flatpicking guitarist.” (Nashville Scene) In 2017, Paste Magazine included Frazier in their piece titled “7 Women Smashing the Bluegrass Glass Ceiling.” Frazier was the first woman to be nominated for Guitar Player of the Year by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBGMA) in 2018, and was nominated again in 2019.
Frazier is widely known for her work with award-winning Colorado-base bluegrass outfit, Hit & Run. The only band to win all three Rockygrass, Telluride, and SPBGMA Festival Band competitions, this successful touring act has graced stages of prestigious festivals and venues in 42 states and Canada, and eventually migrated to Nashville in 2007 with two studio albums under their belts.
After experiencing the loss of a child and a subsequent break from touring, Rebecca focused solely on her writing for 2 years. The result is her transparent Compass Records release, When We Fall. The album places Frazier right in line behind the bluegrass women that preceded her—the driving track “Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow” is reminiscent of early recordings of Alison Krauss, while instrumentals such as “Virginia Coastline” and “Clifftop” give a tip of the hat to guitar legends Tony Rice and the late jazz guitarist Emily Remler, about whom Frazier wrote her Honors Senior Thesis at the University of Michigan. When We Fall reached #3 on the Roots Music Report National Bluegrass Chart and garnered praise as “Best Bluegrass Album of 2013” by Bluegrass Situation. Nashville journalist Craig Havighurst dubbed Rebecca Frazier “East Nashville real deal bluegrass.”