Country-Tele: In The Style of Johnny Hiland

This is a cover of "In Your Face" made by Johhny Hiland.
You can find it on his CD called "Johnny Hiland". An amazing CD for pickers...highly recommendable.

Get backingtracks at https://app.box.com/shared/h9upvbn8gn

Being able to make this video was a long & hard goal for me to reach. Climbing the Hiland speed-picker wall took me 4 months and many crises during that period. Each day with at least 1-2 hours of practice.

This edition is only 95 % of the original speed (115BPM).
And even then I had to remove some of his ultrafast "no open strings" licks and change those into something I could handle. Some may advise me to play it at slower speed..but I felt it would spoil the characteristics - but for sure tones and precision may be better at a lower BPM. But I opted that out.

I also had to switch to using thumbpick - and found out I needed to re-invent a thumbpick that suited me, - and THEN LEARN to use it.

Also I had to get 2 acrylic nails set on my picking fingers, - AND THEN LEARN to USE them.

I had to totally re-invent my gear-setup - make many recordings and decide on how to get the best sound. One thing for sure is that a Tele cannot entirely sound like his PRS guitar. The PRS guitar has a somewhat more midrange heavy output.

When I saw this video myself first time I instantly thought "That looks like it is very easy to play". But I am telling you - I may look relaxed - but in my head there's a buzzing of (what's left) brain cells trying to keep up with the song.

I felt I had to make a video-take more showing my picking hand as a picture-in-picture, to give you a chance to see what goes on under that hand.

I would like to thank Dave Shapiro who has made the tabs / transcription to "In Your Face". You can find other good tabs made by Dave on http://ohdave.com/guitar/

Also a big thanks to Kevin (Kevland1 here & Ormond on TDPRI) for being my Tele-mentor & Tele-shrink during these months. Whenever I felt like I hit the Hiland wall - he gave me a kick and made me go for it again.

Keep Picking and upload your stuff :-) / Cheers