Erik Mongrain, "Raindigger"

Spent a little time this evening working on the score for Erik Mongrain's "Raindigger", which is a thoroughly inspiring piece of mood-work. (Enough so for me to purchase a score, certainly.) Keep in mind that one of the reasons I decided to acquire a few new scores (currently from Mongrain, Antoine Dufour, Davy Graham and Michael Hedges) is so I can study them a bit to see how these folks play fingerstyle and maybe learn something myself. I'm hoping that by broadening my look a bit I can both deduce the common elements and also maybe see who has what signature style bits.

Here's where Erik Mongrain is really interesting.

A little while back I sat down with the piece for the first time, with a dreadnought strung up with the appropriate tuning (a beautiful Bm add9 voicing, B1-F#2-D3-F#3-C#4-C#4) and figured out his "Note 1", which covers the running rhythm figure for the piece. Once you "get it", it's actually much easier to play than to describe, and I was happy to get the basic gist and see what to work on. Tonight, I reacquainted with the basic rhythm and wanted to add at least a couple of items from the gorgeous main theme.

Wow, what a magnificent bastard Mongrain is.

If you watch the YouTube video of Erik playing the piece, you note that his left hand stays hovered right over the octave for a lot of the piece, which makes sense since that running rhythm is all over the first-harmonic notes at the octave. What is so ridiculously brilliant is all the incredibly subtle, nuanced things he does with his hands there. In addition to the "barre the octave with the ring finger, then deaden the fourth string with your index finger on the downstroke and then use it to pull off the harmonic afterward" subtlety of the running rhythm, here he has you play the melody note strongly (with a right-hand finger instead of the thumb, which is occupied with the rhythm) and then it pulls off the third string harmonic underneath. You've got to have some pretty fantastic control of your fingers to do this, but when you "get it" you hear it right away, and it's amazing.

And this is just the beginning of the subtleties, I think. I am not yet sure if the score is 100% consistent, as it does not always jibe with my ears, but one of the things he might be doing is--get this--doing this "pull off the harmonic with an 'extra' finger while the ring finger maintains the barre at the octave" technique as a double-stop, with one finger pulling off above the octave and one below it, on adjacent strings. HFS. I know what the basic sound should be (it's very strong) but I'm not convinced I've got it yet, so will reserve judgment until I get some more time and a little study of the video.



Exciting stuff--it's a beautiful piece in an unusual tuning, with Mongrain's style all over it. Worth studying, and I look forward to "getting it" enough that I can perform it.