Freight Train
Acoustic Guitar - Digital Sheet Music

Solo Guitar - Level 3 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1043533

Composed by Elizabeth Cotten. Arranged by Richard Hirsch. Country,Folk,Instructional,Standards,Traditional. Individual part. 10 pages. Richard Hirsch #648222. Published by Richard Hirsch (A0.1043533).

As a boy growing up in El Paso Texas I remember the thrill of sitting in the car waiting at a railroad crossing for the spectacle of a passing freight train. The roaring rumble and the raw power of the train as it rolled slowly by with a steady click, clack, clickity-clack, click-clack, clickity-clack… and the ding-ding, ding-ding…warning signals at the crossing. I have tried to capture this experience in my arrangement of Elisabeth Cotten’s classic Freight Train. The arrangement is built on a base of folk-fingerpicking with the melody floating over and woven into the steady dum-ditty, dum-ditty of the thumb and fingers. The piece gets off to a slow start with a Doppler effect of the train horn and moves steadily increasing in speed all the way through to the finish with an echo of the horn at the very end. When performing the piece live, I sometimes weave in a few bars of Railroad Bill in an attempt to recreate another feature of American freight trains, namely that they can be miles long. I give tablature and fingerings for both hands as the piece is an excellent introduction to folk-fingerpicking guitar. The piece is appropriate for intermediate to advance beginners and can be played on both nylon and steel string acoustic guitars. Although I believe the sound effects mentioned earlier come out slightly better on a steel string guitar. The piece is a joy to play and listen to and has always been a Big Hit with audiences!