The beautiful thing about this song is that it can be played just using the thumb and one other finger. Elizabeth Cotten arrrangements are some of the best introductions to fingerpicking there are.
Playing with less digits can be harder as they’re doing more work - one could argue its wise to economise and employ as many stubborn sausages as possible
Elizabeth Cotton plays the entire song using only two fingers. Being left handed, she flipped her guitar over and picked the bass strings with the pointer finger of her left hand while she picked all the treble stings with her thumb.
It’s called “cotton pickin’” style. (I dunno if they still call it that tho) John Moreland does it as well… I knew she played a right handed guitar left handed but not the rest. That makes her even cooler in my book.
Incorrect - on ONE occasion she demonstrated how it could be played with only thumb and finger, but that was a "one-off" as she had always played it using 3 fingers and thumb. Maybe she did it for those who played Merle Travis style which is ironic because his style was a very limited form of fingerpicking. Those who refer to "Travis-picking" and then play using the standard method using 3 fingers are misrepresenting fingerpicking, and giving Travis credit for something which pre-dated him, and moreover, something he couldn't do himself!
Elizabeth Cotton's "Freight Train" is considered by many of the greats - past and present - who play acoustic blues, country, and folk music to be an absolute "have to know" for learning essential fingerstyle acoustic guitar. After learning the basic melody and bass lines common to the song, there are about a bazillion variations that have been recorded. Personally I am grinding through the necessary effort to get my fingers to play the melody while my thumb learns that alternating bass. On the surface the tune may have a simple structure, but the up-to-speed tempo and syncopation is complex, and the ability to add some salt and pepper along the way is almost unlimited. Thank you Elizabeth for creating this extraordinary piece of music (at about age nine!), thank you Seeger family for "discovering" her, and thank you Adrian for including your interpretation of it in your TH-cam guitar lessons.
I’ve been on many sites in YT and I have chosen yours to REALLY LEARN the entire song. Thanks so much for this such important lesson on fingerpicking to get BOTH HANDS doing what they are told!! 👍
I need to tell you something really crazy. I was studying a super simple Tommy Emmanuel video (Tommy Emmanuel Thumbpicking Masterclass), and towards the end of the class he says that the first song we should play is Freight Train. I put the name of the song Freight Train on Google and ended up on your website page where you show versions of the song. Cool. It's great to have good people on the internet. I am also a guitar teacher and I love to learn from other teachers. Thank you very much.
That's funny, but appropriate...though few people realize that Elizabeth Cotton played guitar upside down (low E on the bottom), because she learned on her brother's guitar, and she and he had opposite dominant hands (left & right). She couldn't restring his guitar, so she invented her own unique, upside-down, method of picking & making chords, which became the origin of the term "Cotton Pickin' ". Guitar virtuosos who saw her play would be completely "gobsmacked" watching her play the melody with her thumb, while her other fingers played the bass line...the total opposite of "standard" fingerstyle or Travis picking, while also making the chords unpside-down. There are videos of her playing on TH-cam and, if you are a guitar player, her playing with blow you away!
Fantastic, Adrian ! When you consider that Elisabeth was only 11 when she wrote this - and she learned to play a 'normal' (right hand) instrument *upside-down* - with the strings as they are... ...it's a fantastic little tune. I love it.
You are the one of more detailed instruction for the unskilled student like myself ,thank you for your kindness of your heart. I am sure I can master this song now.
I love this tutorial, hey btw to anyone before learning this . I know it doesn’t have a lot of Travis picking , but getting the basics for Travis picking will help you a lot when it comes to these songs .
Thanks, Julian - you are very generous and teach well. I remember Nancy Whiskey and The Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group playing this around 1957. As young lads a few of us started up a skiffle group (tea chest, washboard etc) but we didn't persevere so I think I'll try to master this in their memory! :)
Thank you for this great video and tabs! I have been trying to learn this for awhile and never have been satisfied with other tabs when it comes to nearness to Cotten's original sound. Yours is excellent and can't wait to master it with the words, too.
Adrian, thanks for this. There's many different ways to play this and plenty of lessons on TH-cam but I decided on your arrangement and lesson because of the clear direction. After almost 3 weeks of practice, I've almost got it down--had to refer to the tab for the second go around as it gets a bit more complex. Also started trying with a thumb pick and it's much harder to get the hang of. Thanks again. Oh, and lovely M20 btw, I just recently purchased a Martin 00-15m (which I think you have as well) and was deciding between that and the Guild.
Hey Adrian, She did a beautiful job with this, didn't she? So do you. Thanks very much for taking the time to tab this out for us. For me it definitely is a big help as far as what note goes on what beat etc especially for this style. Much appreciated! This one is definitely going to be a workout, but that's a good thing, wake up the little grey cells for sure. Peace from your ol' pal, Dave in the Adirondacks
GORGEOUS SOUND. I learned that from HER! At various folk festivals. People used to claim they “Cotton-picked”. I used to laugh, then hand them my guitar and say, “Play it left handed.” You do, do a more faithful version than any other YT videos I’ve seen. There are people who are academician-players. I love listening to them because it brings back the events of my youth when I met all the black players shortly before they died and I got to know some and I feel so enriched by those experiences because I grew up in white money suburbs. Just by chance I met in our high school a misfit that wore every day a blue work shirt, khaki pants, red socks, scuffed moccasin loafers. He looked funny. No one knew his name. Two weeks before in a gym class basketball game I had just knocked him over driving to the basket. He was clumsy. He went flying. The teacher called no foul. Afterward I was ashamed but I shared no classes with him and after the gym class he just disappeared and then two weeks later I’m walking past this class and I hear an acoustic guitar playing Freight Train and I had never heard an acoustic guitar sound like that in my life. I didn’t know about fingers style picking. I didn’t know who Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt and Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Johnson and those days Dave Van Ronk. I knew about Pete Seeger, but only in the way that I also knew about Adley Stevenson! So I went into this classroom and I introduced myself and I said to him what is your name and he told me and I said I want to be your friend and I want you to teach me how to do that. And we became friends and we used to take the train into Philadelphia and go to coffee houses before we had drivers licenses and introduced me to all these people, and then 10 years later, I had a girlfriend who was a professional musician and her and her family. I met many musicians. But this song was the start of it. I cannot begin to tell you what I owe this song. And how well you play it. And how it transports me, Tommy Emmanuel plays all the time and it doesn’t transport me at all because he just uses it even when he thinks he’s not using it. Played the song. Thank you.
You'll get there, but it'll take months or years :) Same for me, just got everything down of basic version, now gotta add the variations, took me months haha
I played it this morning with pinky/ring finger tremolo the whole way, base part with thumb and rhythm with my index and middle. It was not as easy as it sounds.
Thanks, great lesson as always. I love playing this. I'm having to play it capo first fret because I couldn't get my thumb down on the F otherwise. I'm getting some lighter gauge strings, so that might change things, but I kind of like it like this anyway. UPDATE: Ended up with almost the same strings, but the low E just a tiny bit lighter and that solved it. Not sure what the original was, but the one that works is 54w.
I find this a tricky piece for some reason.I have no problem with Never Going Back Again or Romeo and Juliet...but this im not getting as readily as i thought i would...good lesson!
hey i love your lessons..I really enjoyed christmas time is here.....if you ever had the chance id love to see whisky in jar in this style . similar to the Jerry Garcia David Grissom version. No ones done that yet...cheers from the U.S. !
The thumbpick! You embraced it in the end. As it happens, the last video I watched of yours was the Mystery Train tutorial where you opted not to use one. Did it take? I know quite decent guitarists who won't go there, but as far as I can tell it's just another go-slow and build muscle memory thing, weird at first, but gets easier.
I started to learn this two days ago and it’s bloody hard to coordinate the melody and beat. I’ve been playing for years and can play alternate base at intermediate level (I think) but to play a melody with it completely makes me want to smash my guitar and never play again. Old habits I guess🤷♂️ Great lesson and I’m looking forward to something that resembles a great tune that I’ll enjoy playing
the difference is Ms Cotton was left handed and didn't restring accordingly... she played upside down with her index finger doing the bass notes.... she only used the index finger and thumb... still got a lot of music out of her efforts... I would have loved to play music with her... bet she had a few stories to tell
It's harder to play in the original style with a standard pick (in my opinion), but you can do it if you use your third or fourth finger to pick the melody with your pick doing the alternating bass. I like this way because it really sets your bass apart from the melody. Only problem is that the pick amplifies the bass and it may drown out the melody.
What I've noticed is that no one plays this song the same ,I guess everyone has their own finger picking styles which gives everyone version a unique touch of their own
HELLO, BTW, ELIZABETH COTTON and her performances are shown on TH-cam by permission only as shown by the generosity of Pete. Seeger and his TV show RAINBOW QUEST during the 1960's. ELIZABETH COTTON created FREIGHT TRAIN and developed a widely used style of finger picking sometimes called ROLLING PICK STYLE(R)TM which ELISHABETH demonstrates on PETE SEEGER's RAINBOW QUEST(R)TM TV Show. Produced with help from NYC and Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Alliance and AFM 802 and 1000. Sincerely, Dr. and Prof. ELYAS FRAENKEL ISAACS; ASCAP, BMI, AFM
The beautiful thing about this song is that it can be played just using the thumb and one other finger. Elizabeth Cotten arrrangements are some of the best introductions to fingerpicking there are.
Playing with less digits can be harder as they’re doing more work - one could argue its wise to economise and employ as many stubborn sausages as possible
Missed out a note bend but spot on otherwise.
Never heard someone using 3 fingers that has as good a rhythm and attention to detail on the notes as the great 2 fingered pickers.
Except in clasaical guitar which uses a different picking style anyway
Elizabeth Cotton plays the entire song using only two fingers. Being left handed, she flipped her guitar over and picked the bass strings with the pointer finger of her left hand while she picked all the treble stings with her thumb.
It’s called “cotton pickin’” style. (I dunno if they still call it that tho) John Moreland does it as well… I knew she played a right handed guitar left handed but not the rest. That makes her even cooler in my book.
I play like Eizabeth but I flipped the guitar and I pick the bass strings with my thumb. Crazy.
Incorrect - on ONE occasion she demonstrated how it could be played with only thumb and finger, but that was a "one-off" as she had always played it using 3 fingers and thumb. Maybe she did it for those who played Merle Travis style which is ironic because his style was a very limited form of fingerpicking. Those who refer to "Travis-picking" and then play using the standard method using 3 fingers are misrepresenting fingerpicking, and giving Travis credit for something which pre-dated him, and moreover, something he couldn't do himself!
Cotten.
Elizabeth Cotton's "Freight Train" is considered by many of the greats - past and present - who play acoustic blues, country, and folk music to be an absolute "have to know" for learning essential fingerstyle acoustic guitar. After learning the basic melody and bass lines common to the song, there are about a bazillion variations that have been recorded. Personally I am grinding through the necessary effort to get my fingers to play the melody while my thumb learns that alternating bass. On the surface the tune may have a simple structure, but the up-to-speed tempo and syncopation is complex, and the ability to add some salt and pepper along the way is almost unlimited. Thank you Elizabeth for creating this extraordinary piece of music (at about age nine!), thank you Seeger family for "discovering" her, and thank you Adrian for including your interpretation of it in your TH-cam guitar lessons.
Cotten.
I’ve been on many sites in YT and I have chosen yours to REALLY LEARN the entire song. Thanks so much for this such important lesson on fingerpicking to get BOTH HANDS doing what they are told!! 👍
I need to tell you something really crazy. I was studying a super simple Tommy Emmanuel video (Tommy Emmanuel Thumbpicking Masterclass), and towards the end of the class he says that the first song we should play is Freight Train. I put the name of the song Freight Train on Google and ended up on your website page where you show versions of the song. Cool. It's great to have good people on the internet.
I am also a guitar teacher and I love to learn from other teachers. Thank you very much.
Same here bud.
You're playing it upsidedown
😂😂😂😂
lol
That's funny, but appropriate...though few people realize that Elizabeth Cotton played guitar upside down (low E on the bottom), because she learned on her brother's guitar, and she and he had opposite dominant hands (left & right). She couldn't restring his guitar, so she invented her own unique, upside-down, method of picking & making chords, which became the origin of the term "Cotton Pickin' ". Guitar virtuosos who saw her play would be completely "gobsmacked" watching her play the melody with her thumb, while her other fingers played the bass line...the total opposite of "standard" fingerstyle or Travis picking, while also making the chords unpside-down. There are videos of her playing on TH-cam and, if you are a guitar player, her playing with blow you away!
It’s supposed to be like that, Elizabeth Cotten was left handed and played it upside down
@@olensoifer9901 yes that is the joke
You are one of the best teachers on TH-cam. Thank you so much. Beautiful song--beautiful lesson.
You've got such a pleasant presence. Also really beautiful rendition of the piece. Thanks a lot!
Your playing is so precise and melodious and love the lesson.
As well you made me think “if John Denver had a British son” …. 🤠
Fantastic, Adrian !
When you consider that Elisabeth was only 11 when she wrote this - and she learned to play a 'normal' (right hand) instrument *upside-down* - with the strings as they are...
...it's a fantastic little tune.
I love it.
I've been trying to figure this song out for ages. This is amazing. Thank you.
Awesome tutorial! I looked at a few and this is my favorite one. Keep up the great work and thank you!
Great lesson adrian! Taking me a while. But your lesson is spot on! Thanks man!
incredibly underrated guitar! the sound is pure and deep ... I love mine
Is it an M120?
Bravo Maestro ottima lezione e splendido folk song.Grazie.!
Domenico, from Milan -Italy-
You are the one of more detailed instruction for the unskilled student like myself ,thank you for your kindness of your heart. I am sure I can master this song now.
Thank you for doing this. I'm not a guitar player but you made this doable. I've had a lot of fun trying to play it.
Great lesson 👍 much appreciated... I Also like the shy smile you have on face while playing..... which you always have during your videos
I love this tutorial, hey btw to anyone before learning this . I know it doesn’t have a lot of Travis picking , but getting the basics for Travis picking will help you a lot when it comes to these songs .
thanks this got me back into the guitar. my family is getting sick of the first 8 measures or so :P
Haha me too
Thanks Adrian, great tutorial superb teaching.
Great vid first actual full song I’ve learned thank you !
Great lesson, nicely done
Thank you for posting this.
Thanks, Julian - you are very generous and teach well. I remember Nancy Whiskey and The Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group playing this around 1957. As young lads a few of us started up a skiffle group (tea chest, washboard etc) but we didn't persevere so I think I'll try to master this in their memory! :)
Ur a very talented young man , great lesson & thank u for the tabs.
Thank u
Excellent lesson! Thanks so much.
Thank you for the lesson, I really enjoyed it. I am just learning this style and you are right it is tricky
Thanks a lot i'm from México and my english is poor but you explain in way that i can understand that's a beautifull song
Sorry 4 mistakes
2 many mistakes fuck u
randolp i can understand you dont worry about the mistakes. You'll improve my g
Randolp Karter your English is great my friend
lo entiendo completamente
your english is perfect
I understood! Good job and great taste in music.
You are fantastic. Thank you for a really nice and informative lesson.
Thanks, very helpful. Only picked guitar 4-5 months ago and I can now get through this in the basic form. Good stuff.
Thanks for sharing this classic, and the tab. 🎶🎶🎶
Hi Adrian. Very nicely done. Both playing and teaching!
In love with that guitar.
Thank you for this great video and tabs! I have been trying to learn this for awhile and never have been satisfied with other tabs when it comes to nearness to Cotten's original sound. Yours is excellent and can't wait to master it with the words, too.
Adrian, thanks for this. There's many different ways to play this and plenty of lessons on TH-cam but I decided on your arrangement and lesson because of the clear direction. After almost 3 weeks of practice, I've almost got it down--had to refer to the tab for the second go around as it gets a bit more complex. Also started trying with a thumb pick and it's much harder to get the hang of. Thanks again. Oh, and lovely M20 btw, I just recently purchased a Martin 00-15m (which I think you have as well) and was deciding between that and the Guild.
Hey Adrian,
She did a beautiful job with this, didn't she? So do you.
Thanks very much for taking the time to tab this out for us. For me it definitely is a big help as far as what note goes on what beat etc especially for this style. Much appreciated!
This one is definitely going to be a workout, but that's a good thing, wake up the little grey cells for sure.
Peace from your ol' pal,
Dave in the Adirondacks
Wow … perfectly played !
Great lesson, I learned plenty from this video, many thanks.
That might be the best sounding acoustic guitar I have ever heard. It's full bodied but balanced.
GORGEOUS SOUND. I learned that from HER! At various folk festivals. People used to claim they “Cotton-picked”. I used to laugh, then hand them my guitar and say, “Play it left handed.” You do, do a more faithful version than any other YT videos I’ve seen. There are people who are academician-players. I love listening to them because it brings back the events of my youth when I met all the black players shortly before they died and I got to know some and I feel so enriched by those experiences because I grew up in white money suburbs. Just by chance I met in our high school a misfit that wore every day a blue work shirt, khaki pants, red socks, scuffed moccasin loafers. He looked funny. No one knew his name. Two weeks before in a gym class basketball game I had just knocked him over driving to the basket. He was clumsy. He went flying. The teacher called no foul. Afterward I was ashamed but I shared no classes with him and after the gym class he just disappeared and then two weeks later I’m walking past this class and I hear an acoustic guitar playing Freight Train and I had never heard an acoustic guitar sound like that in my life. I didn’t know about fingers style picking. I didn’t know who Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt and Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Johnson and those days Dave Van Ronk. I knew about Pete Seeger, but only in the way that I also knew about Adley Stevenson! So I went into this classroom and I introduced myself and I said to him what is your name and he told me and I said I want to be your friend and I want you to teach me how to do that. And we became friends and we used to take the train into Philadelphia and go to coffee houses before we had drivers licenses and introduced me to all these people, and then 10 years later, I had a girlfriend who was a professional musician and her and her family. I met many musicians. But this song was the start of it. I cannot begin to tell you what I owe this song. And how well you play it. And how it transports me, Tommy Emmanuel plays all the time and it doesn’t transport me at all because he just uses it even when he thinks he’s not using it. Played the song. Thank you.
Hi Adrian, you make it look so easy, ime finding it extremely hard. Been trying for two days now just to get the first two bars off.
You'll get there, but it'll take months or years :) Same for me, just got everything down of basic version, now gotta add the variations, took me months haha
merci pour ta démo et la tablature. c'est toujours un plaisir de t'écouter jouer
Beautiful...I play a version of this that starts traditional then goes on to my own interpretation....Love your style!
Thank-you. Yes, it's one of those songs that, once you know it, can be played around with and interpreted in lots of different ways.
Fantastic, love your lessons.
Thanks Stéphane.
Great lesson! I feel good with playing this song. Thank you!
I just started guitar and my dad plays this song, it’s an amazing song and it’s fun to play 🤩
I played it this morning with pinky/ring finger tremolo the whole way, base part with thumb and rhythm with my index and middle. It was not as easy as it sounds.
Fortunately the PDF's were still available but the videos error out,even yours on the site! Thank you for the easy to follow lesson it's great!
Love your content!
This is amazing man. I love you’re way of making tabs.... you make it super easy to understand
Subbed! such a good teacher!
If that's a Guild M-120e, I have the exact same guitar. Great axe.
I have the old vintage original Guild M20 1962. They are just the best fingerpicking guitars.
Very nicely played Adrian .
The lesson is great! Very helpful for a beginner. Thank you very much! And it was very nice of you to include a free tab. Thanks a lot!
Nice. Very good lesson thanks
thank you for the tutorial. this is fun
Thanks, great lesson as always. I love playing this.
I'm having to play it capo first fret because I couldn't get my thumb down on the F otherwise. I'm getting some lighter gauge strings, so that might change things, but I kind of like it like this anyway. UPDATE: Ended up with almost the same strings, but the low E just a tiny bit lighter and that solved it. Not sure what the original was, but the one that works is 54w.
Very clear tutorial. Thank you!
Thank you for this good tutorial.. well explained ......this helps
Just wondering why you don't mention the bend when she goes to the E7. This is one really nice embellishment I think makes the whole song
You even look and speak a bit like her!
Incredible.
Thank you very much very generous of you!
Thank you, Beautiful
Nice tutorial.
Hi.... You are. Great guitar player... Thanks for the tab... Is the tab the same as how you have played in the beginning of the video
Congratulations!! sound exactly like the original !! Very hard to get, congratulations !!
very helpful for beginners like me ... thanks for the guitar lessons ... greetings ... -epo mahfudz-
Thank you
I find this a tricky piece for some reason.I have no problem with Never Going Back Again or Romeo and Juliet...but this im not getting as readily as i thought i would...good lesson!
I was wondering how you mic'd or recorded the guitar? Sounds great!
Awesome tutorial, thank you dude. What guitar is that btw??
hey i love your lessons..I really enjoyed christmas time is here.....if you ever had the chance id love to see whisky in jar in this style . similar to the Jerry Garcia David Grissom version. No ones done that yet...cheers from the U.S. !
Thanks so much for publishing the sheet music as well - I really appreciate it and it makes much finer reading than tab!
That Guild has a beautiful sound
Great version. Better than others . Just like Elizabeth s
Bro thank you so much for providing the sheet music!
frank cernelc keep up the good work you are top man
good picking , thanks for posting
Great tutorial! One of my favorites and I'm getting it (slowly): )
Great lesson. Cheers. Keep them pinkies burning!
6:40
9:36
11:22
Nice tutorial! Thanks
Also note to mention, Elizabeth plays it with two fingers thumb and index great job thx
Thank you. I’m learning the basic arrangement now and I am getting there 😊
I wish someone would do a tutorial on playing this in open D. I'm a slide guy and I prefer to stay in open D but I'm terrible at transcription
Thank you a lot!
Awesome lesson like usual. Thank a lot from Spain :-)
Thanks - glad you liked it.
The thumbpick! You embraced it in the end. As it happens, the last video I watched of yours was the Mystery Train tutorial where you opted not to use one. Did it take? I know quite decent guitarists who won't go there, but as far as I can tell it's just another go-slow and build muscle memory thing, weird at first, but gets easier.
Sounds great on the Guild M-20
Thankyou very much for the tut and the tab..
Awesome -- Thanks!
Great tutorial thank you and for the tabs too!
I started to learn this two days ago and it’s bloody hard to coordinate the melody and beat. I’ve been playing for years and can play alternate base at intermediate level (I think) but to play a melody with it completely makes me want to smash my guitar and never play again. Old habits I guess🤷♂️
Great lesson and I’m looking forward to something that resembles a great tune that I’ll enjoy playing
Is there any reason why you couldn't play the base line with thumb and first finger (classical style) rather than the thumb only??
Love freight train learned from my dad who played like Chet....
outstanding guitar brother and pretty good picking too... Ms Cotton is smiling somewhere over the rainbow 🌈
the difference is Ms Cotton was left handed and didn't restring accordingly... she played upside down with her index finger doing the bass notes.... she only used the index finger and thumb... still got a lot of music out of her efforts... I would have loved to play music with her... bet she had a few stories to tell
Hi Adrian. Do you have to use a thumb pick with freight train or is it possible to play with a standard pick
It's harder to play in the original style with a standard pick (in my opinion), but you can do it if you use your third or fourth finger to pick the melody with your pick doing the alternating bass. I like this way because it really sets your bass apart from the melody. Only problem is that the pick amplifies the bass and it may drown out the melody.
What I've noticed is that no one plays this song the same ,I guess everyone has their own finger picking styles which gives everyone version a unique touch of their own
It's only because no one can do it the way Ms. Cotten did!
Thanks! Well done
great lesson. thanks
HELLO,
BTW, ELIZABETH COTTON and her performances are shown on TH-cam by permission only as shown by the generosity of Pete. Seeger and his TV show RAINBOW QUEST during the 1960's.
ELIZABETH COTTON created FREIGHT TRAIN and developed a widely used style of finger picking sometimes called ROLLING PICK STYLE(R)TM which ELISHABETH demonstrates on PETE SEEGER's RAINBOW QUEST(R)TM TV Show.
Produced with help from NYC and Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Alliance and AFM 802 and 1000.
Sincerely,
Dr. and Prof. ELYAS FRAENKEL ISAACS; ASCAP, BMI, AFM