The Piemont blues' (also known as Piedmont fingerstyle or East Coast' blues) is a type of blues music characterized by a unique fingerpicking method on the guitar in which a regular, alternating-thumb bass pattern supports a melody using treble strings. The result is comparable in sound to a ragtime piano. The Piedmont style is differentiated from other styles (particularly the Mississippi Delta style) by its older, ragtime rhythms, which lessened it's impact on later electric band blues or rock 'n' roll, but it was directly influential on rockabilly, and the folk music scene. It was an extremely popular form of Black dance music for many decades in the last century.