I had not watched Justin’s video about it. I have now, though. I watched a few others on youtube and none of them went beyond old faithful. That was fine to start with, but I could absolutely hear more going on even to begin with. I guess you could say that what I’m working with right now is something like what Justin describes as the picked fingerstyle. I don’t recall watching his video on that technique, but it’s something I’ve been exploring on my own in other songs when I’ve played them on electric (mostly because doing full strums on electric can be an intense blanket of sound and that’s not the vibe of so many songs).
First thing I did was add a hard palm mute on the G in the spots where Justin just let it ring. I like it better when I do a single strum followed by a bit more of a percussive slap. None of the vids I watched showed anything interesting in there…they all just kept going with strumming straight through. What I’ve been doing is maybe a little more like what Eddie does in that duet performance above, but I haven’t tried the muted strums in there. That’s a nice way to substitute for the drum fill that Pearl Jam does.
But yeah, most recently I’ve been adding some of that picked fingerstyle stuff in there.
