How to play DADGAD like Pierre Bensusan

An audio lesson with free, high-quality tab

Guitar Techniques (Stuart Ryan), Fri 9 Oct 2009, 4:25 pm UTC

Example: Pierre Bensusan style

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[Bar 1] These long flowing lines are quite typical of Bensusan's playing and sometimes have quite an improvisational feel to them. This kind of exercise is great for getting your playing to be as clean as possible, so keep strings ringing and make hammer-ons/pull -offs super smooth.

[Bar 7] This chord may feel a little awkward. Some of Bensusan's more outlandish voicings will require a Herculean stretch so always make sure you've warmed up your hands first before stressing them.

[Bar 11] Often fingerstyle music contains subtleties which can be overlooked – eg here you have the hammer-ons and pull-offs played against a sustained chord, something you will come across in the playing of Bensusan and many others.

[Bar 17] Another long flowing line, this time one which travels up on one string - a good exercise for orientating yourself with DADGAD (or any tuning for that matter) is to play scales up and down one string, so you think more like a sax player with this process and you can visualise intervallic leaps more readily...