"Cascade" is an uptempo fingerstyle song made famous by Chet, and played successfully by greats like Ray Cummins, Richard Smith, and a few others. Key word is FEW others. I find it a very difficult piece, with a lot of alternate picking, and open strings on upper fret positions. It's hard for me to untrain instincts when picking open strings next to fretted strings up there. The chords are simple and it's easy to follow along in rhythm, but the picking is another story.
I've learned the many different licks phrasing thanks to using Guitar Pro, and downloading the sheet music from Ultimate Guitar. The music shows notation and tabs, and Guitar Pro plays it so you can see it visually being played while listening. It's been a great tool for me. You can slow it down and repeat selected bars and measures, so it enables you to really focus on a problem area. Even with this big advantage I still can only fumble through at 1/2 or 3/4 speed, depending on the degree of difficulty of a given passage. I"m even unable to finger the first part of the opening lick properly because of the difficult finger spread, so I've found another way. It looks easy watching someone else doing it, but it's nye onto impossible for me. Chet liked to use as many open strings as he could, and it's kind of important for this song to sound right.
There are many talented pickers here on the GDP, and I was just wondering if anyone has tackled this one successfully. Moral support and suggestions would nice.
Someday I hope to win and will post an audio clip. Right now it would be too embarrassing.
Here' a video of Ray Cummins' version. Ray Cummins, Cascade
