Let's set that bar...up there.

Took my first look at two Antoine Dufour scores today, the driving "A Hiding Place for the Moon" and the nearly painfully lovely "You and I".  It's time to stir the repertoire pot again, and these two should prove very interesting.  It helps considerably, of course, that I absolutely love both pieces, and can hear almost all of them in my head before I even get started.

"A Hiding Place for the Moon" features a really nifty 5/4 figure that is going to teach me a great deal about hammer-ons, integrating bass and melody across both hands, and the use of the right-hand thumb right after the 1, instead of on it.  Mastery of this piece should help unlock a lot of that, and I'm tickled witless that I think my fingers started to "see" it tonight.

As well, the tuning is quite interesting:  D2-A2-C#3-G#3-A3-E4.  That's three pairs of fifths (6-5, 4-3, 2-1), offset by a major third from 5-4 and a minor second from 3-2.  Have I mentioned I love me some minor seconds?  Having looked at this core 5/4 figure now, I can understand why the tuning was chosen this way, and it will be interesting to hear what else comes out of it.

"You and I" is one of those tunes, for me, which is just startling to hear coming out of your own hands.  This one is going to teach me a lot--a whole lot--about precision and assignment of both hands, good left-hand thumb position (critical for some of the hammer-ons, for decent dynamics) and how to do flick-strums in fingerstyle.  It features a goosebumpy interlude that I just had to look at tonight (along with the opening figure), and I'm really glad I did.  Tuning on this piece is an interesting variation on standard:  sixth string up a whole step (F#ADGBE), but with a partial capo on the second fret of the top four strings.  So, when tuned up, open pitches are F#2-A2-E3-A3-C#4-F#4.  Again, after taking the look I did tonight, I can see why the tuning was done this way, and it's a good data point.

It's hard to explain how encouraging the sounds coming out of my hands were, on both of these pieces.  I suspect that I've learned quite a lot in the last year or so, and although I don't think I'll be ripping up any open mics in the next few weeks, it's nice to see some progress--and it's nice to see that at least some of this stuff really is accessible to us mere mortals.

Here's to learning new stuff.  Always!

An interesting take on MIDI guitar.

Hat tip to David Neale for showing me this:

I've got no idea if it makes any sense for what I'm trying to do, but I'm going to put it on the radar for a while and chew on the concept.

Diatonic scales with CGDEbGC

Another documentation post, really.  In working with this open minor-add-9 tuning (C-G-D-Eb-G-C) I've been exploring the top three strings somewhat methodically, which is a bit amusing since the intervals of Eb-G-C are the same as the standard tuning (G-B-E, two whole steps up), and I've never really studied the standard tuning yet.  Which has led to an observation I'll get to shortly.

First was triads on these strings, done within my usual "box" of three voicings per triad, advancing each string one chord tone to achieve it.  So, in this tuning, at the nut is C/E, C/G is at the fourth and fifth frets, and C in root inversion is at the seventh and ninth frets...et cetera.  Shortly I was running through a standard exercise that has me play, up and down, backward and forward, the C major scale in triad forms, from nut to octave.  So:  C/E, C/G, C, then Dm/F, Dm/A, Dm, then Em/G, Em/B, Em, and so on.  Along with each of the main forms I also tried to note where the sus4 would go, and I'm pretty comfortable that this will shortly become a standard part of the internalized chord library.

Then, I tried adding bass notes to these basic forms, to try and figure out where the fingerings should go.  This is an interesting exercise, since there is often a choice of where a bass note can or should be located, and I'm not by any means done with it yet.  Inadvertently, the little working I've done so far has suggested a specific approach to diatonic seventh forms, wherein the chord is constructed of an appropriate bass note and an appropriate top triad.  This brings back the "tertian arithmetic" idea in a very practical way, and I'm happy to think of a Cmaj7 as an Em triad over the C3 note on my fifth string, or the C2 open sixth...or maybe the Em triad in up-neck inversions over the C4 note on the fourth string.  And that's just with root inversions;  I think I'll dig into that a little more when the library of top-three-string triads becomes more purely autonomic.

It also suggests an interesting idea with respect to tunings:  if I really can master the basic triad and sus forms on the standard tuning's intervals in the top three strings, I might be able to shift the bottom three strings around more at-will, to make available a family of tunings with a common set of top intervals.  So...with a real mastery of "GBE" chord construction, I could take advantage of fifths in the bass with CGDEbGC or CGDGBE, fourths with EADGBE or DGCEbGC (or similar), or a combination like DADFAD.

Which brings me to today.  I was able to work out the seven modes of the major scale on the top three strings, which of course is a great exercise to start to help you to "see" all the notes of the key everywhere on the neck.  I've still got a few fingering decisions to work out, or perhaps to learn them all so that they'll all be available depending on what else I'm doing at the time.  More work on up and down, backward and forward:  my fingers should tell me what is going to be most efficient.  What was encouraging was that I also started to see how I could connect a "lower octave" scale from the bottom three strings, to the "upper octave" scale on the top three strings.  The basic concept here might do well with that "family of tunings with differing bass strings" idea.

More on that as soon as I can.  With the ability to play all the triads and sevenths of a key, and the ability to play all seven modes of the scale, we're really getting somewhere important.  With that in hand, plus the ability to take advantage of the harmonic mayhem of a minor-second interval between fourth and third strings, I should become pretty dangerous in this wacky experiment.  :-)

Working with CGDEbGC

A bit of a documentation post here.  After some nice experiments with the DADFAD tuning over the summer, I somehow ran across the idea of CGDEbGC, and have been quite enjoying it.  This tuning has some interesting features:

• Top three strings are standard tuning intervals.
• Bottom three strings are the fifth intervals I know from Guitar Craft.
• The two three-string groups are offset by a minor second (D-Eb).
• Sixth and first strings are two octaves apart.
• Fifth and second strings are one octave apart.
• Open, the tuning is a Cm add9, which is nice.
• There is an entire G harmonic minor scale in harmonics available on the fifth, fourth, third and first strings;  if you omit the subdominant note (the first harmonic on the first string) this is extremely convenient to the fingers.

Obviously there are going to be some interesting options in chord construction, but I'm not fully there yet.  I think I might get around to it, though--some of the sounds are just gorgeous.  This last week I've turned my attention to the triads on the top three strings (remember, I'm actually new to standard tuning), and thought about how to incorporate a bass note intelligently.  In that regard, having the fourth string offset a whole tone above the first string (D to C), instead of below (as with D to E), it seems more comfortable to finger the three-string triad with middle, ring and pinky fingers and leave the index finger to find the bass note, rather than relegating that role to the pinky.

Melodically, I'm finding that I'm gravitating toward the "ignore the third string" philosophy, and thinking of the basic minor scale in terms of fifths intervals for the first octave and fourths intervals for the second.

The next step with chords, once I've really got the triads down, is to tackle sevenths.  I suspect that is where I'll find out whether this can be a general purpose tuning, or should be relegated to tunes specifically composed to take advantage of it.  Depending on how the fingerings work with that fourth string, I may look at solving the problem with a polychord approach, and I admit that forcing myself to use that concept as a core portion of my playing might not be a bad thing at all.

In addition to the ongoing tuning thoughts, I've been working a little bit more deliberately on a controlled three-string burst with the right hand, ascending (i-m-a).  For whatever reason, my fingers have always seemed to be pretty comfortable with such a cascade descending (a-m-i), but I've been impatient with the reverse and haven't given it the attention it deserves.  In trying to incorporate it into my triad work on the top three strings, my ear has something much more specific to focus on and it's suddenly started to improve. 

Yay!

Still here...

...and for the first time in a long while I got some good time--that is, time enough actually to start listening--in with an instrument.  In this case it was the SoloEtte, still tuned in DADFAD, through the iPhone and the Line 6 MobileIn interface.  (The open minor seems to suit me pretty well.)

Very percussive feeling today--most likely some frustration working itself out.  A few discoveries about the tuning's geometries, which hopefully I'll be able to follow up on soon.  Also some hand mechanics fell a little more into place;  based upon John Danley's Satori being stuck in my head, I learned a couple of things about the Preston Reed-style "over the fingerboard" left hand which are intriguing.  (I may have to study Tractor Pull a little more.  :-)

Episodes like this seem to serve two purposes.  First, they frustrate me greatly as I am reminded that the state of being "all ideas, no discipline" is severely limiting.  Gah! 

On the other hand, they also can fuel me so that I can survive these agonizingly long periods between sessions.

Phil Keaggy - County Down

For anyone who, for whatever reason, might stumble across this post:  I would humbly implore you to improve your life just a little bit by stopping what you're doing and watching this performance.  Get up close, play it through the best audio system you have available, and let yourself get into it--you won't be disappointed.

Well...actually, you may be disappointed...by the way the video ends.  (I, for one, really would have wanted to see how he ends the piece.)

I find it difficult to overstate the sheer musicality of Phil Keaggy's acoustic instrumental music, and this is not a genre that is exactly bereft of massive talent.  Here, you can see a pretty full range of his gifts:  aside from some of the obvious technical facility and "unusual" (for anyone outside the genre) techniques, I am most struck by his command of dynamics and the exquisitely beautiful arrangement.  Simply fantastic.

There are uncountable great musicians, and then there are some who, it seems clear, are on a temporary loan program from something bigger than us.  Although I came to Keaggy late and still need to explore more of his work, it sure seems like he may have a place in that latter group.

Chalk one up in the "needed to hear that today" category.

Wankery with BbFCGDG

Spent a little time with Bb1-F2-C3-G3-D4-G4 again today, both open and with partial capos (003333, 033333, 001111, and 444400.  I think I'm going to like this tuning.

Started working with Scott Tennant's Pumping Nylon, and I think that book is going to be a big eye-opener for some right hand techniques.  My fingers are starting to find some comfort in scale runs, but studying Tennant's work may be a quicker path there.  Very well, exercises then.  Not a bad thing.  :-)

Tried to pick up the G-major Bach Cello Prelude again and some of it fell quite naturally into the fingerstyle idiom.  I think it may be good for me to get a couple of old tunes back into the fingers with this new style, in addition to the structured exercises and some good old fashioned wankery.  At some point (soon, I hope) I'll start to put some recording mojo into place.  (The upstairs office is only a session or two away from this possibility, and I'm starting to taste it.)

Anyway, to document.  Tonight I spent most of my time in minor mode, trying to feel fingers, rhythm, transitions, and movement between techniques (slap harmonics, straight notes, popped harmonics, rasgueados, etc.);  there's a lot just in there that I'll have to pay attention to.  But it's coming.

Thoughts: 

• Keep the classical in standard tuning, at least through working with Tennant's book.  
• Until reconfiguring as a 5-string, string the Guitalong in 6 nylons, D3-D2-A2-E3-B3-E4, standard string set with "4th string" on 6,  "6th string" on 5, and "5th string" on 4.  Give that a shot.
• I'm liking the idea of working up the SoloEtte as "do-all" instrument, with GraphTech Ghost system and one or two mag pickups for ebow.  That could be a nice arrangement.

Now:  sleep.

Still here.

Lots of ideas right now, but little discipline.  That should change fairly quickly, as I was reminded that there is an ongoing open mic at Alice's recently, and it would be wise of me to make sure that the girls, at least, start to see more of Dad up on stage.  That may be an adequate rallying cry to get things moving;  whatever it is, I'm game. 

Recently got hold of a Planet Waves "Trio" partial capo, which is good for either four or five outer strings:

Based on the limited look I've given it so far, this may become a real workhorse.  Capoed 001111 in the C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-B3 tuning I've had the Ovation in lately, that makes a really nice open Cm11 with roots on sixth and first strings, with some lovely minor intervals for the offset harmonic nodes.  Then, today, testing out a new tuning Bb1-F2-C3-G3-D4-G4 capoed 003333 on the SoloEtte (for a Bbsus across open strings and more open intervals across the offset harmonic nodes), I was struck again at how nice it is to have predictable notes above the capo.  Going back to the Ovation, I turned things around and capoed 444400 (which would be what, E6/9 I think?  It's late) and quickly found some really nice major mode territory to play with.  Yeah, I think I'll like this 4-stringer.

Need to order the 1- and 2-string "G-Bands" for capoing one and two outer strings, and get the Shubb "Esus" partial capo for stopping three adjacent inner strings.  With those four capos in the arsenal, along with the Third Hand, one should be able to do everything that you can do with a partial capo, and I'm looking forward to trying them all out.  It's a nifty idea!

Wanted to document the tunings I'm currently working with, so I don't forget:

• C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-B3.  All fifths, but with the wrinkle of the first string being lower than the second.  Jury's still out on this one in the melodic sense, but harmonically it is really nice having three four-string groups all in fifths, and the top four strings now put the third degree on top in the most convenient "root inversion" shape.  And that 001111 partial capo is intoxicating.
• Bb1-F2-C3-G3-D4-G4.  Huge range, but starting to get funky with string gauges.  Even with a 59 on the sixth string, that's a bit floppy, and on the other hand that high G (the same G that the Guitar Craft uses for the first string and twelve-stringers use for the third-string octave) is either too tight for good slap harmonics, or might start to lose real volume with a suitably tiny string gauge.  (The second-octave and major-third harmonics on the G string, capoed up to Bb, are some high notes.  :-)   Jury's out on this one too, but I'll play with it some more.  Melodically I do like that fourth "on top", because if your root note is the open first string, the second string is the fifth degree, down.  That's got some conveniences.
• D3-D2-A2-E3-B3-E4.  This one occurred to me today, for nylon-string instruments, whose string-gauge requirements are much more of a challenge than steel-string ones.  The idea is to have a core four-string group, all fifths, in the middle, for melodic work and basic chord construction, letting the sixth and first strings perform outlier tasks.  The first string is a fourth up from the second, giving that V-I option that is such a strength of standard tuning, and also enabling both convenient power chords as a 3-string barre over 1-2-3 and also convenient octaves on 1 and 3 (that latter sounds nice).  The sixth string, on a nylon, is just not going to go down to G1 (nor is the first string going to go much above E4), so why not make that an octave too, a la the "Aerial Boundaries" tuning but in reverse?  I'll string up the beater classical with that arrangement and see how it goes.

Okay, time for sleep.  Got some ideas for re-purposing the instruments into different roles, and it seems that the next instrument that I will need will be a twelve-string--based on a little poking I did while on a recent trip Outside.  Again, many ideas, little time, and less discipline.

Time to change that.  Some of these ideas are worth pursuing.  :-)

Antoine Dufour - Cold Day

I just flat needed to hear something spectacular tonight.

Delivered.

The great Partial Capo Experiment begins.

And so a very good man, Steve Cornish, did sell me a Third Hand capo this evening,

and verily I did place it upon my Ovation (strung to C2G2D3A3E4B3) in the initial position 220000, and began to play.

Oh dawggy, this is going to be an interesting ride.

I'm exhausted now--was tired when I started this, but like hell I was going to go to sleep without at least trying it out--but nonetheless tonight I tried 220000, 220002, and 001111.  With the 220002 configuration I also brought the first string up a half-step so that the open pitches were DADAED, which was interesting to say the least.

Very eye-opening session.  Harvey Reid is the primary advocate of the partial capo, and he seems to have a lot of ideas about how to use it.  Most interesting for me is the concept that open pitches can be altered while notes up the neck remain the same, and you know what, that shit works!  It opens up all kinds of open position fingerings you never thought of, while retaining the ability to play all the closed positions that you already know, up the neck.  I was kind of expecting some cool factor on open string drones and bass notes, but I had not expected the impact it would have on melodic phrasing, especially in that "C-minor" centric arrangement of 001111.  On the guitar (as opposed to the mandolin) the stretch to hit the m3 interval from a root note on the 5th fret of the next lower string is, indeed, a stretch, but with with a 001111 partial capo, you've got very comfortable access to that m3 and m7 and it's niice.  Sure, technically you "lose" the major second, or rather you must now play it stopped on the root string, but this is a surprisingly easy tradeoff.  My fingers just figured it out spontaneously, and then started playing things they don't normally gravitate toward.  And then to go up the board you just...go up the board, find your root note, and play like you normally would.  (Well...like someone who likes to tune the guitar in fifths would.  :-)

Harmonics are going to be absolutely wild with this, and I suspect I'm going to have to just treat them separately for each possible configuration.  Having an arrangement where the nodes offset each other from string to string is probably going to spawn some interesting stuff, and I look forward to it.

More to come.  Just offhand I'm interested in checking out partial capoing over the third, fourth and fifth frets as well, and should start to experiment with some altered inner strings.  Who the heck knows where it might lead?

Monster in the making.  (Or, at least, inveterate geek.)

Trick question.

Question:  What's the most amazing thing about this new vid from Antoine Dufour?

Pause, for a moment, to pick your jaw up off the floor.  (It always takes me a minute.  :-)

Answer:  it fades out.  To me, that can only mean one thing:  he wasn't satisfied with how he concluded the piece.

Somehow, that just strikes me as riotously funny.

Ovation's now in CGDAEB

That is, C2 G2 D3 A3 E4 B3.  In playing a bit with it tonight (brain dead) I found myself making more use of the B3 than the C4, outside of harmonics in Am (and those do sound lovely).  I've tasked Steve Cornish with acquiring a couple of partial capos, including the single- and double-outside string models and the Third Hand, so the Great Partial Capo Experiment can get underway.  A lot of possibles there, including a D-centric capo on 2 2 0 0 0 0 (or, for an open Dm7, 2 2 0 0 1 1).  Interestingly, I found that barring the F and C notes on the first and second strings and then slapping the harmonics gave me a lot of what I was looking for in the first place, although there are definite timbre differences between slapped and popped harmonics and I'd probably want to have access to them both.

I've got a funny feeling about this tuning, with partial capos.  It will be this that I use to go through Scott Tennant's book Pumping Nylon, to build up a little competence with fingerstyle playing, and it will be interesting to see how things develop.  I do know where those notes are in fifths, and having that first string lower than the second is interesting in the "upper" voicings.

Strings are phosphor bronze, 59w - 46w - 30w - 22w - 12p - 16p.  I'm once again tempted to try electric flatwounds and see how they play as well.  If I'm adopting a lighter style and amplifying it, this may be of minor concern.

Onward.  Let's see what happens!

Another tuning thought: what about CGDAEC?

A quick post to document a thought that hit me last night.

What about C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-C4?

Disadvantages:

• First string is lower in pitch than the second;  which could theoretically get confusing.
• Without a fourth interval between the second and first strings, you do lose that beautiful ascending V-I option (especially with harmonics).
• Low C may be optimistic with nylon strings (but is fine for steel).

 Advantages:

• All the fifths relationships of the Guitar Craft tuning (C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4).  Two complete four-string groups in fifths, allowing lots of fifths-based scale thinking and chord construction with no need to "skip strings".
• For fingerstyle, a minor triad on the top three strings.  With this voicing, at least some common alterations may present very convenient left-hand fingerings.
• First and sixth strings are two octaves apart.  Lots of people playing standard tuning and DADGAD take advantage of this.
• The first string becomes a simple pivot between CGDAEC (root position Am triad on top 3 strings) and CGDAEB (GAD intervals on top 3 strings).  Or, for that matter, CGDAEC# (A major triad) or even CGDAED (which is theoretically another GAD variation).  Total retuning movement for the first string here is a minor third--very do-able--and well within the range of appropriately-gauged strings.  And, the GAD variations re-capture the ascending V-I arrangement.
• The possibles of using these intervals with partial capoing seem immense, almost intimidating--and yet above whatever capo(s) are placed, I've still and always got five strings in fifths to work with.

Hm.  Velly intellesting.

I will have to try this out.  Since I don't have years of fingerstyle under my belt yet, it may be that I can adapt to this easily enough to take advantage of the benefits.  The more I think about it, the more interesting it seems:  the first string is the only thing that ever "moves", and yet it seems like there are four very individual tunings there. 

Kaki King, stylist.

There is a reason this woman is such an important stylist.  More than anyone else in the "percussive acoustic" genre that I've heard thus far, she throws in unexpected little phrases that are unsettlingly "not right", and yet they are perfect.  If you only heard it once, it would be tempting to call it an elegantly-handled mistake (via Tom Redmond:  "If you play a wrong note, play it again"), but no, this happens too often to be unintentional.

The following contains a couple examples of this, and is otherwise just a beautiful piece, excellently played.  She lulls you in, and then hits your ears with a "wait, what was that?" and then is back.  It's a nice touch here, too, on a reasonably conventional fingerstyle composition. 



The more I hear from King, the more that I hear this as what makes her unique among her peers.  You get the same sort of thing in her flashier, percussive work, or in her brooding improvs--all of it.  I think at some level I just like her particular choice of dissonances (and love the fact that she seems to improvise them), but still:  when the "wait, what was that?" question arrives from the ears to the brain, it's reliably King who is playing.

Flat picker Dan Crary has long impressed me with his stylistic signature of inverting the third in a common tune, after the melody has been firmly established:  suddenly, he's playing the same piece in parallel minor, which is a really nice aesthetic touch in bluegrass, and he'll usually return to the original arrangement to close out.  It's a simple device, really, but Crary has made it a recognizable style point, and it's almost always effective without being ham-fisted or even "leaving the genre".  What King does strikes me as very similar, but she'll charge right out into chromatic territory without warning (rather than employ airbrakes with more "tonal approaches" like parallel substitutions and quick modulations), and, well, your ears just need to keep up.  That can very, very easily fall flat on its face, or quickly get cliched and predictable (e.g., if the chromatic phrase always leaned on the flat-five), but somehow King avoids it, and it usually works.

I'm impressed, and aspire.

Another DGAD revelation - harmonics

Amazing, what sits right in front of your face until you just notice it.

This morning, out of the blue, it occurred to me to actually take a structured look at the second, third and fourth natural harmonics (that is, harmonics on frets 7, 5, and 4) on the GAD strings and see what, if anything, it told me.  (I've been improvising by ear for a little while now, but hadn't really analyzed the "just what notes are available?" question.)  So I wrote it out.

Uh. 

How about that complete D scale?  (And by extension, notes in the mixolydian mode of A, lydian mode of G and aeolian mode of B.)  And if the tuning is actually DGAD, that D scale can be sounded entirely in the same octave, with the major third (F#, in this case) available on the fourth string as well as on the first.

Brain spinny.  Cogitation and experimenting to follow.

Hm.  Now I'm wondering about the use of two Xtenders, one on the fourth string and one on the third.  A basic tuning of Bb1-F2-D3-G3-A3-D4, with the fourth string dropping to C3 and the third dropping to F3, would seem to give lots of options:

• BbFDGAD.  With partial capo 110000, it's D/B with some cool options for Bm.  With partial capo 220000, it's CGDGAD.  With partial capo 440000, it's DADGAD.  The tradeoff would seem to be dealing with the major sixth interval between fifth and fourth strings up the neck, which would be disruptive to scale runs.  That is:  this tuning would probably dedicate the two bass strings to a bass function, and focus on both harmonic and melodic figures out of the DGAD strings.
• BbFCGAD.  This is simply CGDABE a whole step down, by which I am still very intrigued.  A full set of four strings in fifths allows fifths-thinking for melody (including the separated fifth on strings 3 and 1), expansive chords in the bass and GAD chords on top.  The only things this would seem to give up are the conveniences of that "D-scale-in-harmonics" and the comfortable root-on-top seventh shape that DGAD provides.
• BbFCFAD.  CFAD is standard-tuning intervals a whole step down, and brings the conveniences of a Dm triad on the top three strings and the relative major (F) triad on 4-3-2.
• BbFDFAD.  This may make a great Dm tuning, with multiple inversions of Dm available on open strings.  

I just need to get my hands on a couple of Xtenders and nut and saddle blanks from GraphTech (for best lubricity on the detunable strings), and try this stuff out.  :-)

Exercises and improvising

Have taken some precious guitar time in the last few days, split between diagnostic exercises and improvising.  Tunings have been CCDGAD ("Aerial Boundaries"), BF#DF#C#C# ("Raindigger") and CGDABE. 

The exercises have mostly been centered around 1) the two-finger approach to fingerstyle scale playing, and 2) more work with GAD triads.  Man, do I have a lot of work to do with all this, but I grow more convinced that it's something I want to add to the repertoire and perhaps even specialize in.  There is a real "rightness" and pure visceral pleasure to playing this way, and the options for development seem limitless.

The improvising has been fantastic, if brief.  I would never have guessed how quickly I'd take to improvising in multiple different tunings, but some really cool things have even been coming out of the "Raindigger" guitar.  (Cool to me, of course.  It's absolutely in the "wankery" category and just as well that I develop it much more before subjecting others...)  I'm taking time to see how I can get second, third and fourth harmonics to play off stopped and open notes, and with that tuning in particular, dramatic inserts are almost always available to an open finger.  With the harmonics in particular, it's amazing how many different timbres you can get from "the same note" by using 1) fingernail only upstroke 2) fingernail/fingertip upstroke 3) fingertip upstroke 4) fingernail flick downstroke 5) thumbnail 6) thumbnail/thumb tip 7) thumb tip or 8) finger tap--and any of those can be at various angles.  Fingerstyle gives a lot of options for dynamics as well, that I hadn't anticipated.  Pretty cool!

On the "GAD" tunings, I'm starting to reach a basic comfort with the triads and am starting to diagram the most convenient diatonic sevenths.  I'm still not totally sold on whether it would be best to go with "DGAD" or "CGAD" on those intervals, and it may hinge on whether or not the seventh forms on the GAD strings are usable in themselves, or whether I really need a fourth string.  (e.g., a m7b5 form arguably needs all four tones to distinguish itself;  are there enough such needs that it would outweigh the utility of a four-string group all in 5ths for melody work and for mandolin-like chords?)  What is becoming apparent is that I like some of the features GAD gives me, for improvising.  I find myself making use of that flat-five pivot on the second string, and being able to sound a whole-tone interval in harmonics is really nice in some contexts.

We'll see what comes next.  Right now I'm pretty limited in what I know about the tuning, and yet some really nice stuff manages to sneak out, easily.  As I get the top strings sorted out, I'm looking forward to seeing how to add some independent bass lines, and then also to see how melodic things work when I transfer back and forth between the regular-interval strings and these top ones.

Should be fun!

A moment.

Took a little time at lunch today to try approaching fingerstyle scales using the "two-finger" method I've read about.  In a nutshell, the logic seems to be "devote two fingers to the scale run on any given string", starting with i-m, but could also be m-i, i-a, a-i, m-a, or a-m.  There's actually a lot more variation in that than might be immediately obvious, and one can get a little intimidated by the "what to use when?" question.  I suspect the logic here is that when playing a run your goal is to reduce the possibles (also at that point it becomes like the up- and downstrokes of plectrum playing);  what I'm less sure about is when and if three fingers becomes a preferred option--is this at all tied in somehow to the idea that most string intervals are a fourth or less, and therefore you'd never need more than three notes per string?

I will definitely need some more work with the "descending" patterns of the RH fingers (so:  the a-m, the a-i, and the m-i), but I can see where they might come in handy.

After focusing on this for a few minutes, I let it vary a little bit, and started improvising on the CCDGAD guitar I happened to pick up.  Not five minutes into this, a moment happened.

I was playing mostly out of a G natural minor scale over the third and first strings, and observing my right hand, I started to see the third finger enter the mix, naturally and spontaneously.  That is, sometimes I'd be using two fingers, quite naturally over the two separated strings, and other times that third finger would just show up when it was needed, and not necessarily just for rhythmic changes.  It would then drop out for a bit and then re-engage as "necessary".

! ! !

I can't speak for anyone else, but moments like that can pump me for weeks or more.

Playing devil's advocate, I shifted gears a bit, and started to try moving back-and-forth between playing "out of the chord" with three fingers, and playing these scale runs with two (all while keeping my idle thumb as relaxed as possible).  Okay, I don't have a lot of history or facility with this yet, but it sure felt logical.

And the same thing happened.

This is fascinating.  It reminded me of something Tony Geballe once told me, when we were discussing playing without looking at your hands.  "You know where you want your hands to go, so just put them there."  Maybe that's what's happening here.  I do know what I want to hear, and where the notes are, so maybe at some level I'm just enlisting the attention of my fingers subconsciously.  That would make me very, very happy.

The irony is that this will probably impel me to do more drills, not less.  I'm not one of those who thinks that technique will somehow limit the creative impulse;  rather, the more I can learn the more I can get my conscious brain out of the way, so that I can play what the muse wants without having to think about it.  It frees me up to listen.  :-)

What about CGDABE?

After playing with the DGAD concept for a bit now, the thought suddenly occurred to me:  why not CGDABE for a tuning?  Some interesting attributes, compared with the CGDGAD option I've been considering as a general-purpose tuning:

• Six individual tones, as opposed to four.
• A true four-string group (6543) in all fifths.
• Fifths-based scales available on five strings, simply skipping the second string to do it.

It retains all the advantages of the DGAD relationship that matter to me, and the partial-capo options would seem to offer a great deal of flexibility with these tones, while retaining the ability to play up-the-neck with consistent available intervals.

Interesting thought.  I may string up the SoloEtte that way, and see what happens.

Erik Mongrain, "Raindigger"

Spent a little time this evening working on the score for Erik Mongrain's "Raindigger", which is a thoroughly inspiring piece of mood-work. (Enough so for me to purchase a score, certainly.) Keep in mind that one of the reasons I decided to acquire a few new scores (currently from Mongrain, Antoine Dufour, Davy Graham and Michael Hedges) is so I can study them a bit to see how these folks play fingerstyle and maybe learn something myself. I'm hoping that by broadening my look a bit I can both deduce the common elements and also maybe see who has what signature style bits.

Here's where Erik Mongrain is really interesting.

A little while back I sat down with the piece for the first time, with a dreadnought strung up with the appropriate tuning (a beautiful Bm add9 voicing, B1-F#2-D3-F#3-C#4-C#4) and figured out his "Note 1", which covers the running rhythm figure for the piece. Once you "get it", it's actually much easier to play than to describe, and I was happy to get the basic gist and see what to work on. Tonight, I reacquainted with the basic rhythm and wanted to add at least a couple of items from the gorgeous main theme.

Wow, what a magnificent bastard Mongrain is.

If you watch the YouTube video of Erik playing the piece, you note that his left hand stays hovered right over the octave for a lot of the piece, which makes sense since that running rhythm is all over the first-harmonic notes at the octave. What is so ridiculously brilliant is all the incredibly subtle, nuanced things he does with his hands there. In addition to the "barre the octave with the ring finger, then deaden the fourth string with your index finger on the downstroke and then use it to pull off the harmonic afterward" subtlety of the running rhythm, here he has you play the melody note strongly (with a right-hand finger instead of the thumb, which is occupied with the rhythm) and then it pulls off the third string harmonic underneath. You've got to have some pretty fantastic control of your fingers to do this, but when you "get it" you hear it right away, and it's amazing.

And this is just the beginning of the subtleties, I think. I am not yet sure if the score is 100% consistent, as it does not always jibe with my ears, but one of the things he might be doing is--get this--doing this "pull off the harmonic with an 'extra' finger while the ring finger maintains the barre at the octave" technique as a double-stop, with one finger pulling off above the octave and one below it, on adjacent strings. HFS. I know what the basic sound should be (it's very strong) but I'm not convinced I've got it yet, so will reserve judgment until I get some more time and a little study of the video.



Exciting stuff--it's a beautiful piece in an unusual tuning, with Mongrain's style all over it. Worth studying, and I look forward to "getting it" enough that I can perform it.

Discovered DGAD triads.

So after all the initial thinking about the DGAD concept, I finally got the chance to sit down and find some triads with my fingers, in real time.

On first impression at least:  me likey.

It's pretty logical.  I started with the top three strings (so, GAD) and my primary "learning box":  closed position, advance the chord tone on each string for each inversion.  In only a couple of places did it seem like finger gymnastics started to come into play;  in that regard these triads are conspicuously easier than the Guitar Craft tuning's intervals (a P5 and m3, as opposed to a M2 and a P4 here, on those top three strings).  In the GC tuning, on the top three strings it's actually much easier to produce sevenths than triads.  The availability of a quick "tonally useful" barre on all three strings was also pretty common, and I suspect I'd use that in improvising.

It was also quick.  I've certainly developed a bit of practice at this "discovering triads" thing, but it seemed quick to permute the shapes to cover major, minor and diminished (and even a really convenient V7 right under the root triad with root on top) in all the inversions.  As is my usual wont, I started practicing them "through the scale" in all of the ways I do that:  in C, I would first 1) play ascending C, C/E, C/G, then Dm, Dm/F, Dm/A, then Em, Em/G, Em/B, etc., returning to the nut rather than going above the octave;  then 2) play all the root inversions (C, Dm, Em, etc.) then all the third inversions (C/E, Dm/F, Em/G, etc.) and all the fifth inversions (C/G, Dm/A, Em/B, etc.);  and finally 3) play the ascending scale with the "next available" chord--in C, that is C/G at the nut, then Dm/A (2fr), then Em/G (nut), F/A (2fr), G (nut), Am (2fr), Bdim (3fr), and then the next C in root inversion at the fifth fret...followed by Dm (7fr), Em/B (4fr), F/C (5fr), G/B (4fr), Am/C (5fr), Bdim/D (7fr), leading into C/E (9fr), Dm/F (10fr), Em (9fr), F (10fr), G/D (7fr), Am/E (9fr), Bdim/F (10fr), and concluding with the C/G at the octave.  It flows really nicely.

A little practice with these.  Next, I'll see how things differ when using the DGA strings, rather than the GAD ones.  Different voicings in the same "fret positions"; it will just be the fingerings which may change.

Then, diatonic sevenths, both across three strings and four.  I've already practiced a little bit with permuting the triads directly, as that is often exactly the musical effect I want, but this will deserve more study.

Regarding the CGDGAD tuning which my interest in this topic is built around (see here), it looks like I may want to start thinking more generally in terms of three-adjacent-string chords;  with that tuning I've got four different groups of 'em, and only one with the same string interval throughout.  A lot of possibility but also a lot of stuff to internalize.  The three-string-chord concept will also apply much more directly to the fretless, and there's more possibility of having another left-hand finger available that way.  And as Jethro Burns first taught me, three-string chords are easier to alter on the fly.

More as it comes, but for now I admit: triads make me happy.  :-)