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. 

Django and Stephane.

Say what you want about YouTube--it's probably true.  But this--this--has to go way, way up in the plus column:



Just magnificent.

And because I'm just so fond of the tune, here's audio of Minor Swing:



What a treasure.  Two of the most important musical influences of the twentieth century, and you can immediately see and hear why.

Rest in peace, fellas.  We miss you.

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.

Take Five: the reunion

I am really happy to be working with a mandolin student (I'll call him G.) again.  Not only does it give me a way to help with all the noise in my head, but it gives me an excuse to start looking for repertoire that will be useful in multiple contexts:  performing, technique, theory, and improvisation.

This is where Dave Brubeck's (actually Paul Desmond's) "Take Five" is an absolute masterpiece.  For starters, it's already a masterpiece;  probably the catchiest tune counted in five that most people will ever hear, it's a beautiful vamp with a brilliant chorus, and capped off by an astonishingly beautiful and compact alto sax solo.  But it's also a total treasure trove of examples and illustrations;  if you need to explain a concept in basic music theory,  this tune may well have it. 

Like many string players, I prefer it transposed up a half-step (to Em) for convenience, but a great way to test yourself once you're comfortable with the piece, is to go try it in the original E-flat minor (which is what's convenient for the alto sax).  Most of us find that using all closed shapes takes a real conscious effort, and it's worth testing yourself on.  (I'll consider it G.'s 'final exam' for the piece.  Poor guy.  :-)

So tonight, after a long time away from Take Five (which I first approached with Guitar Craft Standard Tuning guitar, CGDAEG), I sat down with the mandolin and hashed a bunch of things out.  First and foremost:  man, what a fantastic piece of music that is.  Improvising on it is simply intoxicating. 

I worked through the melody in the first two available octaves, and will eventually work into the third.  Here, I let the horn phrasing determine the right fingerings, which can be a little more convenient on the smaller instrument, and it will be good to be able to show G. an example of how you get to choose which fingerings you want to use.

G. is currently working through diatonic triads, and I will probably just use the "trust me" logic in trying to go through the vamp chords (Em and Bm7);  I can't decide whether it would be better to explain the Bm7 itself, or just tell him to play a D chord instead.  (The root-in-bass voicing of the Bm7 is easy;  it's the other inversions that may get confusing at speed.)  At any rate, there are plenty of Em and Bm7 chords available on the neck.

I'll have G. improvise over this simple two-chord vamp;  that alone could take a goodly amount of time and lots of questions.  Not only does he have to figure out where his Em notes are, but he can't fall back on a four-count as a crutch!  (On the other hand, if he can hold in 4, I just might jump in with a 5 and we'll get us a polyrhythm going.  :-)

The chorus, of course, will take a little time;  first we'll work the chords:

Triads first:
C - Am/C - Bm - Em/B - Am - D/A - G - G
C - Am/C - Bm - Em/B - Am - D/A - F#m - B

Then, the chords as written:
Cmaj7 - Am6 - Bm7 - Em7 - Am7 - D7 - Gmaj7 - Gmaj7
Cmaj7 - Am6 - Bm7 - Em7 - Am7 - D7 - F#m7 - B7
(on the mandolin, we do tweak voicings a bit to deal with "only" four strings)

and once he's got that, we can go over exactly what that beautiful descending movement of chords is actually doing.  On the melody side, there's a chromatic example in every measure which is great for listening, and again we'll try it in at least two octaves, ideally with different fingerings.

At some point we'll deconstruct the solo too, especially Desmond's delicious phrasing, and the various techniques that one can use to play that on the mandolin (yes, vibrato is possible on the little beastie, and worth it!). 

It will be interesting to see how he handles it--and I have to remember, myself, not to try and do too much too fast.  First, a score he can read and chords he can see.  Then, setting the vamp.  Then the melody.  Then improv.  Then the chorus, either melody or chords first (don't know which yet) and finally the solo and improv over the chorus.

All followed by E-flat minor, which all but removes his open strings as options.  (I'm a stinker, that way.)

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.  :-)