For reference, I am asking specifically about this recording:
I can't get this tune out of my head. I started working on it two days ago in Double C, and pretty much have the pattern down. I can play it almost up to the speed of the recording, and it has a really nice old timey groove. Getting the feel of the crookedness of the tune was the hardest part. Aside from that, it's really just a lot of pull-offs and hammer-ons followed by brush strokes.
But specifically, I'm wondering about the technique he uses in the chime-sounding part of the tune (maybe this is the "ding" in Hollyding?). He's tuned somewhere just north of C#, but assuming it were in C, it's the part where he bounces back and forth between the high G and E notes. When I first started playing this, I was doing a standard frailing downstroke at the 5th fret of the 1st (D) string, alternating with the 4th fret of the 2nd (C) string. But it sounded a little bare-bones to me. After further listening to the recording, I realized that he is sounding the 4th string (the low open C note) at the same time as the high G. It took a few iterations for it to really sink in. I also noticed that the high G note seems to be coming from his 5th string (on a downbeat!), since it's just a smidge out of tune and noticeable enough to be identified distinctly from the 5th fret of the 1st string. And last but not least, he's doing pull-offs from the E note to D, so I think that the E note is played on the 1st string, 2nd fret.
I looked around for tab to this tune, to see if someone had already figured out the technique for doing this. But from what I've seen, existing tabs by others have shown just a plain open 5th string alternating with the 1st string 2nd fret, with no low C drone note. But I need that low C drone; the tune sounds naked in that part without it.
So does anyone know what technique he used in this part? Did he break away from the typical frailing pattern and use a two-finger pinch on the open 4th and 5th strings (high G and low C), followed by a frailing downstroke on the 1st string 2nd fret (high E)? Or something else?