Here ya go! Pig out! Go mad!   Clicky

After reading through this thread, I thought I'd see if there was anything on YouTube, and lo! and furthermore, behold! So I sat here for a long time and just listened and watched. Ye gods, that lady can sing. And play!

Just listening to her and watching the way she plays, I have a few observations:   I think that when she learns a song, she works out a way of accompanying it—an approach, a "style," so to speak. Carter family "scratch," some kind of arpeggio pattern, works out a few bass runs or variations on a chord, etc., maybe even mixes styles a bit, always with "how well does it fit the song?" in mind. But I don't think she does note-by-note arrangements. I think she improvises quite a bit.

This is not to say that she improvises like a jazz musician. It's that she has the strums, arpeggio patterns, runs, and variations down so pat that she doesn't have to work out an accompaniment note by note.

I think it would be a mistake to study her accompaniments note-by-note and try to copy what she does. If you want to copy anything, copy her approach to accompaniment. And this will take some time. She's what, 65 years old? And she's been singing and playing the guitar since she was in high school. Probably about fifty years. No wonder she can play really nice accompaniments with only about 15% of her concentration on her hands, able to devote the other 85% to putting the song across.

But early on, I don't think she worked out note-by-note accompaniments either. The approach? She would learn a strum or a pattern or some other lick on the guitar and (hear comes that dreaded word!) practiced it until she got it down solid and didn't have to think much about it anymore. Then she had a whole bagful of techniques that she could call on when she learned a song and could mix and match.

That's the way to do it.

Don Firth