The Terror and Beauty of Jerry Donahue

Having grown up dazzled by the MTV allure of shred, I am fairly jaded when it comes to technical skills. Seeing something radically new still devastates me, though, and I'm grateful for that. Sure, I was struggling with pinch harmonics at 14, but 14 years later I was nonetheless stunned into silence when I first saw Kaki King. Just as surely, I was humbled all over again by this footage of Jerry Donahue from the (superb) BBC documentary Twang Bang Kerrang. I did not realize the technique of string bending had such expansive potential to further humanize the voice of my guitar.

I've been doing a lot of documentary digging these past two months -- both for this project and a few sundry others. I've been filling up pages of notebook but sweet hot damn, Jerry Donahue has stuck with me. That spooky fluidity is like discovering a different dimension to me, finding a depth hidden in the fretboard -- and being completely exposed by an unassuming guy in a red flannel shirt, no less. Donahue is a magician, no question.

Some exercises I've been finding helpful in limbering up to this kind of articulation:

1. "Django Scales" is a brutal drill I abandoned immediately when it was first taught to me. I have re-adopted it in recent months and sure enough, it's made a huge difference on chord flexibility and left hand strength. Django is of course Saint Reinhardt, the Gypsy Genius, who was injured early in life and lost the use of the third and fourth fingers on his fretting hand. That's a pretty serious handicap but he more than made up for it. Django Scales, then, is running through your familiar pentatonic patterns using only your first and second finger. This means you'll be alternating between two and three fret gaps and requires a more active and physical fluidity to execute a smooth scale.

2. "Walking Bends" is a surefire method to get comfortable with nailing notes via bending strings. I like to do this when I'm watching TV because otherwise, well, it's hard to justify watching TV. Start on the 10th fret of the high E string and slide up to the 12th fret, then back down. Then replicate that change in pitch by bending the string instead of sliding up. (Of course you can also be hammering on up instead of just sliding, he said, dancing about architecture. Takes all kinds.) The point of the drill is to get comfortable doing the bends accurately and repeatably. Once you're comfortable doing that, start moving the exercise down the fretboard and changing strings and watching Continuum or old Carnivale DVDs.

Once you're comfortable doing that...I recommend starting with the classic power chord position, just the root and fifth. For me, that was the easiest place to start since my first and third fingers were stronger than the other two. However, I cannot overstate how different other positions are. Muscles and tendons are learning uncomfortable new tricks once you get into bending chords coherently, smoothly, like Donahue does. For instance, doing a simple root / major third form with the first and second finger was a spaghetti mess of a challenge that left my shoulder and neck feeling worked the next day.

For further instruction, I recommend this Guitar World series, Around the Bend, parts of which are mysteriously missing sound.