Victory Rag - Tim Sparks

Here Tim is demonstrating then opening to the Victory Rag, made famous by Mother Maybelle Carter. This video instruction is from Tim's ROOTS RAGS & BLUES CDROM video instruction package that releases March 2007.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Fingerstyle
• Acoustic
• Fingerpicking
• Guitar
• lessons

[SharnyBear]

yeh ..where has 'Last Train' gone ??????? post it again PLEASE Tim

[pickinstone]

is this the same Tim Sparks of "Last Train " and such? what happened to the hair? Anyway, very amazing player!

[bachelorsavenue]

I really like the way you play this song. It would be nice if you could post another video of victory rag with of the complete song. You did a very nice job with this song!! 5**** 's! ... and thanks for the lesson too.

[Leutchik]

Doc Watson plays this tune as "Victrola Rag".

Ahhhh...no. Just kidding. "Victory Rag".

[AlexeyMedvedev]

Oh shame! I wrote F# half-diminished but it's F# DIMINISHED, my mistake!

[AlexeyMedvedev]

We may also harmonize the #IV degree (in our case the note F#) by any chord that has this note in its content, like D(7), F#m7(-5) (which is so called "half-diminished") and some others that may not suit the blues.

And finally, we may harmonize the last V degree by the main chord (in our case - C) or by the minor dominant Gm7 that goes to C7 and then later resolves into F.

[AlexeyMedvedev]

This chord is a typical intermediate chord in blues progressions when we play bass lines over the degrees:

I - III -IV - #IV - V

Depending on the context you may harmonize the III degree by any chord that has it in itself, like C, C7, Em(7), E(7);

[AlexeyMedvedev]

Well, First of all it's F# half-diminished with the first note D being #9 or just think about it as a non chordal note.

Secondly, he doesn't fret the A string at all. If you look at the upper video his thumb goes from the top string (Low E) to the D string.

Third it's easy to fret this chord in that manner: 2x134x where the 1st finger is barring four bottom strings.

[Leutchik]

With the E7#9/F# at 00:40, I realized he's playing 22123x. The trick here is that on the B string, you have to hammer off to C. So, to have that C sitting there to hammer off to, you need that partial bar at the 1st fret. The E and A strings need to both be fretted at 2 with the middle finger.

The cheater way to fudge this would be to just use the D7 of 2x023x, with the hammer off going to 2x021x. Works, sorta, but doesn't sound as good.

[ddanze]

WAAAAY COOL, MAN!