"(The upstroke guitar playing section) comes from Ronnie and me hanging around for a while in Mexico,
'cause we started to learn all those fandangos, where you pull back on the strings from the top down."
- Keith Richards, 1985, quoted on [www.timeisonourside.com]

dear Kind Patient Learned & Good-Lookin Guitar Experts,
what is Keith talking about here, please and thank you very kindly?

I believe what is being referred to here is the use of the fingers of the picking hand to stroke the strings upwards, i.e., towards the low E, which gives a cascading effect since the fingers are not stroking the strings at the same time but one after the other. It is a common technique amongst flamenco guitarists

okay thank you kindly but ... why in that case does he talk about "pull[ing] back on the strings from the top down"?
what you're describing (and the "upstroke" in the quote) sure sounds like "from the bottom up",
not "from the top down". (i do realize that guitarists talk this way sometimes - LoFL, a lot of the time, even!)

I wouldn't pay to much attention on Keith's phrasing on this one...
reminds me of: ah - ah - acapelliga........Arthur who?

Yes it didn't make much sense, did it
I was about to answer what ChrisM wrote, depending on the first line of Keith's quote - but the 2nd line doesn't fit in

smile: cool, so it's a case of guitar-ese. thank you all, that's what i suspected. :E

you pull back on the strings from the top down."


Highest to lowest tones, maybe?

"No Anchovies, Please"

okay yeah, that would be a rationale for saying it that way - thanks Elmo Lewis!
in some interview Keith started talking about why he enjoys piano - the fact that it's all laid out in front of you -
and then he got this real perplexed look, talking about going through life with a chunk of wood hanging from your neck
and having to peer over the edge all the time to see wtf you're doing ... like it's just hit him how weird that is ...
and it's like upside down to him too, poor tyke. it's a struggle baby



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-07-05 20:08 by with sssoul.

This is tricky to explain I think.

Perhaps it is confusing because of guitar nomenclature, which calls the "highest" string (in terms of the highest musical tone) the 1st string. In standard tuning, the 1st string (the high string) is E, the 2nd B, the 3rd G, the 4th D, 5th A, 6th is low E - the lowest string tonally. Notice that 1 is "higher" (tonally) than 6. Even though the number six is greater (higher) than one.

BUT when a right-handed, standard-tuned guitar is held sideways by a right-handed guitarist...
The "high string" or 1st string is closer to the ground (and hence it's really lower, in spatial terms) than the "low" string - the 6th string.

So... the most common way to strum a guitar is downward, which basically produces an arpeggio from a chord's lowest note to its highest. An upstroke strum would create an arpeggio from high note to low.

Hope this helps. Hope this even made sense.

yes it does, thanks schillid - i even got Elmo Lewis's short-form version, but it's good of you to elucidate!
it's also interesting that the three first guitarists who replied don't see it that way -
the upside-downedness of the point of view is evidently not ubiquitous.
i wonder if it's contagious. :E

Lol - if you'd explained it to me, face to face, like you did above - I'd say:
what????the hell are you on about?

just mention fandango - It'll be: ok, lets go 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

i thought it was "1 - 2 - quatro - four" :E

Sometimes that "Keef-talk" is hard to figure!

"No Anchovies, Please"

Anyway you want it - I didn't specify the language of the numbers ;]

Maybe this will help!

[www.rocksoff.org]

"No Anchovies, Please"