The iPad as do-it-all musicking device?

Musicians, please check my logic here, and post comments either way.  I make no pretense at grand wisdom here, but rather am trying to learn.

Abstract

I've been putting a lot of mental energy into trying to re-approach what I want to do with "music gear", taking as holistic a view as possible and trying to find the best balance between capability, simplicity, and expense.  I have recently started using an iPad 2 as part of my "day job" work, and in looking at what is available for that device, my existing mental conversation about re-approaching gear has been rather turned on its ear.  After a few weeks of cogitation, I'm now at the point where I am trying to figure out why I wouldn't make the iPad the central figure in this quest.

So, I'm going to write it down here and ask people to help me shoot arrows at the idea.  If you find it interesting or know someone else who might, please, by all means point them here.

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.  :-)

Avishai Cohen, according to Pandora

Avishai Cohen's thoroughly enjoyable "Nu Nu" just came up on Pandora.  (Link here;  be advised that the sample is not really representative.)  Perhaps it was the snarkicist in me, but I just had to know why Pandora included the piece.  Here ya go:

Well, at least they included "odd meter" and "minor tonality" as quantifiable attributes, but even then, is "minor tonality" accurate when the primary scale employs a minor second and a major third?  And if "a twelve-eight time signature" is a viable attribute in another tune, how hard is it to add another one for, say, "seven-four"?  (Keeping "odd meter" is not bad, just add the specific tag too.)

The rest is kinda funny.  Apparently "acoustic piano accompaniment" was worth mentioning (and just a bit wrong;  the piano plays the main figures, while being decorated by the bass and whatever instrument prompted the "unique instrumentation" reference...I'd guess oud based on the sound, but could well be wrong), but not the instruments that give the piece its essential texture, mood and identity.  (The bass in this piece is simply magnificent, and the "oud" sound plays beautifully against it.  Their improvisations in and around the Hebrew scale just come alive.)

I've got no idea what "light drumming" is.  Do you?

"Based on what you've told us so far", there is absolutely no reason to recommend something to me based upon the presence of drums of any kind--or piano, for that matter.  My patterns (for this station, which I intend to be fairly narrow) for thumbs-upping and thumbs-downing tunes should easily reveal that the number of songs I've thumbed up that do have drums are countable on two hands (and almost all of those will be tabla pieces), and the number that I've thumbed down that have drums are well over 50% of the thumb-down total.  Same with piano.  (Think "jazz piano trios" and "blues and folk singers" here, which still seem to reliably follow anything by John Zorn/Avishai Cohen and Davy Graham, respectively.)

Incidentally, when one looks up the tags for "Nu Nu", one finds a 100% correspondence with the list presented above.  So:  it matches me with every attribute listed.  (Other tunes show a subset of the total for "based on what you've told us so far";  although these often seem to be more random than data-driven, it is not the case that all songs list all attributes.)

Look, Pandora:  I'd be happy--happy--to have a listing both of the things about the current song that do match things that I've thumbed-up reliably, and also a listing of the things in the song that are different from what I've thumbed-up.  That might be a good way to expand one's horizons.  But the system regularly suggests that I've established a pattern of wanting to hear protest folk, popular blues, piano, drums, and most astonishingly, vocals.  The degree of "fail" in that is impressive;  it suggests rather that you haven't been listening to "what I've told you" at all.

And yet, between these fits of inexplicable (and repeated) connecting of unrelated dots, I continue to get some really great music from the service--did I not find both Avishai Cohen and Davy Graham in the first place, from an origin point of Dan Crary?--so it's not like it's all wrong.

Please, try and improve the data-driven excludes.  My suggested start is to recognize that when someone reliably thwacks every single vocal tune that has ever come up in the station, he just might not want to listen to vocals.  (Hint:  it's not a "by artist" thing.  Some people play multiple kinds of music, singing on some and not singing on others.  If the attribute belongs to the song rather than the artist, you'll significantly reduce your false hits.)

The DADGAD revelation (really, the DGAD revelation)

Dude. It may well be that the rest of the world knows all about this already, but I think I just "got" the huge value of the DADGAD tuning (or at least the DGAD part).

For the investment of selectively ignoring a string and going to the next one, you can

1. think of fifths-based scales normally (!!!),
2. sound multiple open-string harmonics with the first string either representing the root ("GAD" as Dsus, "AD" as D or Dm), the fifth ("GxD" as G or Gm, or even "GAD" as Gsus2), or even the fourth ("AD" as Asus)...ideas can get crazier from there if you dip into the major-third harmonic too, and
3. you get some really nifty options for close chord voicings in the upper register, while maintaining a wider separation in the bass where it does the most good.

I'm looking at some chickenscratch here for a basic tuning of C2-G2-D3-G3-A3-D4, and the head is spinning. Note that in that tuning you have ascending C-G-D-A strings to work with for melody;  you simply skip the third string to do it.  As an example:  if you're centric to D as a tonic, you can begin a scale run at the m7 on the open sixth string, run normally up through the fourth (D) string, skip the third string and pick up the upper tetrachord of the D scale on the 2nd (A) string, and complete the scale either stopped at the fifth fret of the second string, or open on the first. Major or minor, your choice.

Note, too, that in the DGAD sequence you have two pairs of separated fifths available: DxA, and GxD. Why lookee, that's V and I with a G tonic, and I and IV with a D. (Major or minor, again take your pick.)

For fingerstyle (which is really waking me up to some of these ideas), the concept is even more appealing, since notes on these non-adjacent strings can be easily sounded together.  And get this:  if I take that CGDGAD tuning and add a single Hipshot detuner to the third string, bringing it down to F, the open strings (and thus all those gorgeous open-string harmonics) become CGDFAD...and that gives me two three-string blocks with different Dm voicings (DFA and FAD, all in one octave!), not to mention "FA" as the relative major's root-and-third notes.  "FAD" is in fact the exact same intervallic relationship as the standard tuning's top strings, just a whole step lower.  As I've been discovering recently, that's a beautiful and useful voicing.

I've been trying to have it all, of course.  Melodically, because I first learned relationships in fifths (Guitar Craft's "new standard" tuning and then mandolin), I want to have that available for improvising, and four ascending fifths covers that just about as well as it can be covered. 

Next on the importance list is to have useful open-string harmonics for tapping and fingerstyle accents;  the standard tuning's "inverted fifth" that puts the root on top is hugely useful in this regard, and having either the m3 or the sus4 below that root, with supporting open strings below that, is great. 

Third, Michael Manring has really turned me on to the idea of detuning and retuning during a piece;  most people fixate on either the bass and/or treble string for that, but how about turning that idea upside down a bit and having the third string move...between a m3 and a sus4?  I think that just might work*. 

As yet another item in the mix (as if there weren't enough), I'm fascinated by the partial capo concept, which provides open strings for droning and accents but which does not disturb the string intervals for stopped notes.  (So, for example, if for my tuning of CGDGAD I did a partial capo of 220000, I get a true DADGAD on the "open strings", but if I want to improvise, I simply play the notes where they are in CGDGAD.  The only "affected" notes are below the capo.  That's intriguing, and if there does prove to be a drawback there, it would be that by capoing some strings you do change the available open-string harmonics.  Then again, that might prove to be an unexpected tool.) 

And finally, there's quite a bit of music for DADGAD out there;  just between Davy Graham (who seems to have pioneered it as a solution to playing non-Western music) and Michael Hedges (the Aerial Boundaries tuning is a simple but clever variation, C2-C3-D3-G3-A3-D4, almost a "double DGAD" since there are now three pairs of separated fifths, but at the expense of the CGDA sequence I want), I can certainly say that people I respect consider it a serious part of the vocabulary!

At any rate, I may have to string one of these git-tawr things up and give it a serious test.  The idea of a true "standard tuning" that permits logical thinking when improvising, while also permitting flexible changes to open strings and providing useful open-string harmonics, is really attractive, and this idea has more nice features than anything I've seen thus far.

Jeff Cooper had his Scout Rifle;  maybe his quest for the pinnacle of generalization just got under my skin beyond the realm of, er, "simple combustion engines".  I'd be real happy with that explanation.  (I'm not looking for "inventor" status--I'm quite sure that others have been here before--but rather, like Col. Cooper, I'm interested in arranging the best of what others have done, for my own purposes!)


_____________________
*For those who haven't looked into it:  there are considerations of available physical space for the Hipshot Xtender detuners, and it is impractical to simply use detuners on all the pegs of a conventional guitar headstock--they need too much room.  Here, I'm looking at leaving roots alone, and featuring two mid-scale notes instead...although I may also consider a 6th string Xtender, to allow the really nice convenience of pulling the C note up to D;  for scales that feature a m7, that could even be done during playing to go between the m7 and the root.  On a 3-and-3 headstock, one detuner per side should work fine.

Standard tuning observations

In trying to learn a little bit about fingerstyle playing, using the rough-but-functional classical guitar graciously disposed onto me from Steve B., a couple of observations seem worth noting.

This is my first real exploration of the standard guitar tuning (E2-A2-D3-G3-B3-E4), since I have cut my teeth and done all my real learning with the Guitar Craft standard tuning (C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4).  So, this is probably really old hat to most people, but I find it interesting enough to document.  (Please, then, excuse the pedantry.)

I'm trying to learn a right-hand discipline that I do not yet understand, having trained myself to use a flat pick in mostly single-note mode.  Consequently, I've been thinking primarily melodically--or at least, monophonically, about how the string intervals should work.  It's really helped to have the regular intervals (ascending fifths, in my case), acting as an anchor point to develop and refine my sense of where those notes are, and in this effort it's quite nice if you have regular intervals you can count on.

But lo and behold, in looking more at some of even the simplest exercises of, say, "plucking chords" with thumb and three fingers, alternative ways of looking at this just kinda jump right out.  Multiple ways.  Polyphonic ways.  And so I never really noticed a couple of things about the mojo of the standard tuning, at least from a fingerstylist's point of view:

• The top three strings are an Em triad, with the m3 in the bass and the root on top.  Wholly aside from having a convenient barred minor triad available, for someone who is very interested in open-string harmonics, here's a convenient way to play three strings at once and get a minor chord in harmonics, in a dramatic voicing, and the technique can quickly become automatic.  (A little improvising here made it immediately obvious how much has been done using exactly that little tidbit.  Again:  duh.)
• Strings 4, 3, and 2 comprise a G major triad, with fifth in bass and third on top.  Further, that chord happens to be the relative major of the above Em of 3, 2, and 1.  Now that is handy, again especially when you may want to ring out the open strings or open-string harmonics.  And again, it falls right under the "home position" of the i-m-a fingers.
• Breaking things down further into two-string pairs (as I did a chord-plucking exercise which featured "blocking" two fingers against the thumb, instead of three) yielded another way of looking at this.  Strings 2-1 are either an ascending fourth from I to IV, or an ascending fourth from V to I.  I'd never thought of looking at it that latter way, even though I've known for a long time that a fourth is an inverted fifth.  The voicing of V-I is a powerful voicing, especially on rising harmonics.  Double duh.  And then, suddenly, I could see how it is that the major interval in the otherwise-all-fourths tuning, actually produces a very useful minor chord once you exchange roots.

So, suddenly, I see a lot more logic in the "DGBE" intervals, and will be happy to work with them a little more.   It didn't take long to figure out that by using pairs of strings, I could create an effective polyphonic chord sequence out of harmonics:  12th fret harmonic for strings 2-1 (B-E), 7th for 3-2 (D-F#), 5th for 4-3 (D-G), produces a very useful VI-VII-I sequence--it certainly takes longer to write than do, and it's just right under the fingers.

So I'll be mulling on this one for a while, and hopefully trying a lot out.  I do need to find out the essential logic of how fingerstylists play fast melodic lines; if that can be integrated with the very simple things I'm seeing here, then this should be a pretty wild ride.

On a different note, I do notice that I am having a hard time applying these initial fingerstyle exercises to the acoustic fretless, and it seems to be primarily a function of string spacing.  I'm starting to get the logic, too, of the classical instrument's string spread at the bridge;  the fretless' spread is scant even by electric guitar standards.  Maybe that axe will wind up a five-string after all!

Okay, that got documented and my embarrassing secret is out--I may have missed all this before, but I'll start from where I am and go with it now.  :-)

Another inexplicable Pandora moment

Apologies, just felt the need to bitch for a moment.  This happened three times yesterday, and again this morning.  Now I've got nothing personal against one Duncan Browne, but check out why he was just selected for my playlist:



As I've said before, this is after a number of months of 100% whac-a-mole on anything with "a vocal-centric aesthetic".  It's hard to get more "fail" than that.  As well, Pandora's "folk" tag seems to be one of several "I don't know what to do with this piece, so I'll stick it in this bucket" classifications, almost as annoying as "world music", whatever in the holy living hell that means.  (I dig all kinds of music from all over the world, and you know what?  It's all different enough to have separate freakin' names!  And seriously, what counts as "world music" in, say, Armenia?)

Bela Bartok wrote "folk" music, but that doesn't mean that a Bartok fan wants to hear Peter, Paul and Mary knockoffs all day.  Likewise, someone looking for Joan Baez might get a little freaked out at a microtonal maqam, especially one with adjacent large and small intervals.

And so, despite really enjoying the things that Davy Graham did with his instrumental music, I really truly am not interested in having something like "Anji", "Buhaina Chant", or "Mustapha" followed by a Dylan-knockoff protest singer.  I'm really not, and it would be awful nice for Pandora to stop doing that so reliably.

Okay, vent's done now.  I'll try to work more on Aerial Boundaries today at lunch, to make up for it.  :-)