hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 08:43 AM

'practice, practice, practice'

Some people can't believe that with the guitar, I have made a commitment to mediocrity. I am willing to be a good sport once in a while and keep the congregation together, but I'm not going to really work on the guitar.

If I'm going to practice, practice, practice, it will be on something I actually enjoy.
===========
Commander, yes Ash Grove and Llyn Onn are the same tune. I have a friend who travels to Welsh Heritage Week and has a Welsh triple harp. Through her, my group of friends has developed an interest in Welsh music.

Of course, this tune is so famous that one doesn't have to be Welsh to know it.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 01:50 PM

I would like to know a little about tension in strings. I suppose a high-tension string is more taut than a low tension, is that correct?

I assume it exerts more pull on the guitar body, correct?

To get a high-tension string, would I start with a thicker one, so it has to be pulled more to be in tune?

Why would I want one kind rather than another?

Thanks

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 02:26 PM

Hi Leeneia,

No offence, but I think a "commitment of medicrity" on the guitar, as an instrument that is not your primary one, would make the use of a capo all the more attractive and practical. You not only eliminate the need to learn more than a small handful of chords, you make every chord a little easier to play when you capo-up a couple of frets; your action is a little lower, and the frets are a little closer together.

I think I understand your problem , but I believe that it's something you can overcome, more of a mental than a physical issue. Just my opinion, of course.

And I do undertand the "commitment to mediocrity" comment, and I intend no sarcasm in quoting it back at you. It's not your primary instrument and you have other demands on your time ~ I get it. But I do believe that a brief commitment of familiarizing yourself with the crutch, er, I mean, capo, will pay off in your gaining a great deal of additional flexibility without much effort at all, and without having to learn any new chords or fingerings beyond whatever you currently know.

If I may thread-drift a bit:

About that "long A" chord (002225):

"Easier" than 002220 ~ I don't think so! Not for everybody, that's for sure. Using the left pinky AT ALL is difficult for some of us ~ not only beginner-types, but also some of us older folks who used to be able to do it but are now hurting with arthirtis.

"Fuller sound" ~ matter of opinion; some might discern a fuller sound from a chord which allows more open strings to resonate (like the humble 002220).

"..doesn't really lend itself to the more "earthy" styles of folk guitar imo..." ~ I would observe that the chord in question is quite commonly used in various blues styles, including Piedmont and Delta, especially in the keys of A and E.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Melissa
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 02:50 PM

If I hurt my finger and needed to write, I would definitely try holding the pencil between different fingers. It would work if I was determined to make it work.

You asked for advice.
A capo was a good, sensible answer. If you don't want to use a capo, wouldn't it be easier to just SAY that? I personally do not want to use a capo..so I've learned enough chords to be able to play in whatever keys I might need.
I was determined and I make it work.
If a time comes when you're determined to play in different keys, you'll be able to find a way to do it.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Songbob
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 04:05 PM

Did my post get et?

I wrote in answer about string gauges in classical (hard vs. soft tension) and steel strings (varying gauges in 1/1000-inch increments, pick-and-choose till you find what you like), but somehow it hasn't appeared.

C'est la vie (or, as the French say, "That's life.")

Bob

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 04:27 PM

Have you read "I'm OK, You're OK"?

There is a game going on here that such books call "Yes but".

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 09:34 AM

Thanks, poppa gator. I might give a capo another try.

You are certainly right about the uselessness of the little finger. My little fingers are only 2.5 inches long and very weak. All they are good for is decorating a tea cup. In order to play songs in C on Sunday, I worked out an F chord of my own that doesn't use the little finger.

Like CLW, I would like to learn more about string tension.

Richard Bridge: did you read my post about what actually happened on Sunday? I doubt it. Why don't you find out what happens in the real world before appointing yourself amateur shrink?

Though perhaps instead of shrink I should speak your dialect and say 'trick cyclist.'

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 10:05 AM

Imagination again. I read the whole thread.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Grab
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 11:28 AM

A thought about arm position, Leeneia. You say that you're unconsciously moving your hand to a particular point in space, not to a particular fret - the fret just happens to be at that point. OK then. As the joke goes about how many men it takes to fix a lightbulb, we can hold the lightbulb in place and let the world revolve around us. ;)

If you're currently playing with the waist of the guitar sat on your right leg, like most folk players, try switching to classical position with your left foot raised on a footstool or cushion (or just braced against your right ankle) and the waist of the guitar on your left leg instead. This puts the headstock further away from your body, which means the location that you say your body has learnt will be further down the neck, probably around the fourth fret or so. So your hands are likely to naturally fall into a higher fret position. Slap a capo on there, and see how it goes.

Of course, if you're already using classical position then this won't work. But if you're not, then it might be worth giving it a try and seeing how you get on. Another way of making your body get used to your hands being in a slightly different position would be to play standing up with a strap on the guitar, if you usually play sitting down. Or vice versa if you usually play standing up.

Or it might be that the capo doesn't "feel" like the top of the guitar, because you can see accessible fretboard above it. In that case, maybe tape a stick to the capo so your hand can't easily go past it and you've got something definite to aim for. Or wrap a towel round the neck of the guitar at that point, or have a friend put their hands round the neck at that point, or something like that. If your mind sees it can't get your hand there, and that this position is very definitely the end of the guitar, it might adapt.

I suspect once you've broken that initial block, you'll be OK - it's just how to get past it without stressing yourself out over it. Advice of "practise, practise, practise" is true enough, but practising doing the wrong thing is only going to reinforce the problem. If you can throw your brain a curve which stops it following the same rut, then you've got a better chance of sorting it.

Graham.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 01:34 PM

Leeneia, it sounds to me that, from the difficulties you seem to having with the left hand, part of the problem may be hand position.

This is highly controversial among many folk guitarists. Many folk guitarists hold the palm of the left hand right up tight against the back of the guitar's neck, with the thumb wrapped around to the bass side, often with the idea of fretting notes on the sixth string with the thumb. I have argued this since Sunday breakfast with a number of folk guitarists (many here on Mudcat), but this can be counter-productive. It inhibits what the left hand can do and restricts the action of the fingers.

True, there are really good guitarists who play this way. But they are good despite this, not because of it.

Okay, that said, please bear with me for a bit.

I would like to be able to give you a brief lesson in hand positions, which I believe would go a long way toward clearing up your left hand problems easily, and making chord fingerings a whole lot easier—but I'm here and you're there.

So, as an alternative, let me introduce you to one of the finest guitarists in the world today. This is Sharon Isbin, giving about a ten minute interview, in which, about three minutes in, she demonstrates efficient hand positions, both left and right, for classic guitar specifically, but for just about any style of playing. Just like correct piano hand positions are also efficient for any kind of music you want to play on the piano. Her control of the tone of the guitar through the use of her right hand is also quite revealing.

Sharon Isbin.

(I understand that she and Joan Baez are good friends, by the way.)

Now—when someone tells me that their left hand is too small to play a wide-necked classic-type guitar, I show them THIS.

I hope this helps. Good pickin'!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 06:55 PM

There are advantages and disadvantages to both hand positions. Sometimes it's best to use one, sometimes the other. It is quite possible to make use of both, and pool the advantages.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 07:27 PM

True indeed, and I've been known to do that when the situation calls for it. But I use the classic left hand position as my "default." I find that it keeps my fingers a lot freer.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: SharonA
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 08:32 PM

"If I'm going to practice, practice, practice, it will be on something I actually enjoy."

...and yet it sounds as though you enjoyed performing a tune you'd never seen before (Prospect from Southern Harmony), and you enjoyed the praise you received afterward. My humble opinion is that if you grit your teeth and devote the time to improving your skills on the guitar and discovering what the instrument has to offer you, you WILL have more enjoyment with it in the long run. Put in the time; it will be worth it.

But for short-term results that are required for an upcoming service within the week, I suggest a compromise with your choir: tune your guitar up a HALF-step and have the choir sing a half-step lower.

More thoughts:

Why not accompany the choir using an instrument that you enjoy?

Why not recruit other musicians in the congregation to help you out? (If you are playing flute, let's say, and someone else is playing clarinet and a third is picking out single notes on a piano, you have a three-tone accompaniment.) Jeez, are there no families in your congregation who have kids who play in the school band?

Others here have entreated you to quit your bellyaching and open your mind, but you seem unwilling to budge. Here's a URL of an article on what the Bible has to say about stubbornness: http://www.ehow.com/about_4587766_what-does-bible-say-stubbornness.html

:-)

Sharon

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 11:05 PM

"My humble opinion is that if you grit your teeth and devote the time to improving your skills on the guitar and discovering what the instrument has to offer you, you WILL have more enjoyment with it in the long run. Put in the time; it will be worth it."

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Sharon. I use the guitar primarily to accompany songs, but I have also studied classical guitar and have a small but very satisfying repertoire of classic pieces. And it can be most gratifying to stick a classic piece into a program of songs, and then hear people mutter, "Ye gods! He can actually play that thing!!"

I found that learning some classic guitar was a smooth, easy, and quick way to learn new chords, chord fingerings, and chord variations, that I could then put to use accompanying songs.

No less a person that Beethoven referred to the guitar as "an orchestra in miniature." Franz Schubert was perpetually broke, and lots of times he didn't have access to a piano, so he did a lot of his composing (including some of his songs) on the guitar that he carried around with him. The guitar is a complete musical instrument, with a huge repertoire of its own, plus it can play most lute music directly, and transcriptions from both piano and harpsichord (I have a friend who is transcribing some Chopin pieces to the guitar—Chopin sounds great on a nylon-string guitar!), along with such things as Bach cello suites.

But you don't have to aspire to such lofty heights. Fernando Sor wrote about 120 graded studies for the guitar, from dead simple to extremely difficult. Even the simplest of these studies sounds good and all of them are real music, in the sense of "etudes," not just exercises.

Practicing and learning some of this music is highly satisfying in itself, and it will aid immensely in learning new chords and chord variations (inversions, added notes, etc.), bass runs, little bits of melody or counterpoint to song melodies, and in working out song accompaniments in general.

A little concentrated practice on the guitar can yield a great deal of satisfaction for its own sake, and aid you immensely in making your song accompaniments easy and tasteful. More than just simple rhythms and block chords.

Get something like "Solo Guitar Playing, Vol. I" by Frederick Noad or "Classic Guitar Technique, Vol. I" by Aaron Schearer and give it a shot.

Don Firth

P. S. A piano is a great instrument, but a guitar is easier to carry around.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 24 Jun 09 - 10:31 AM

You're right, Don. When I got my first guitar, I also bought a book on playing folk guitar. I just couldn't seem to get all those fingers down at once. So I bought a book of classical guitar, learned the scales, and accompanied songs by putting each finger where it had to go and picking a pattern. After a while, I could play the chords in one go.

(Did you notice me saying up above that I developed a new F chord so I could drop 'Beautiful Savior' from D to C? That was my classical method at work. )

But no matter how many other people are okay with a capo, I find it uncomfortable and unnatural. Some people can't whistle, some can't type, and some can't play with a capo. I had a choir director once who couldn't trill an R. Accept it that different people are different.

Also, I just don't need another complication on Sunday morning.

Some time ago, Bernard said to use heavier tension and tune down. Since then, Crazy Little Woman has asked for more info about tension. I'd like to hear more about that, too.

If I could tune down the little guitar a half step, then drop songs a step, the final product would be down 1.5 steps, which would be just about right. (The little guitar is only 21.5 inches from nut to bridge.) It's easier to haul up the staircase, and if a hobo steals it, it didn't cost much.

(Bee-dubla, I know you said such guitar should be tuned high. Sorry about that.)

As for some suggestions offered by others, as Joe Offer says, "Do not respond to trolls."

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jun 09 - 11:37 AM

To tune down, you want long-scale or heavy strings. Or both.

Apart from some very expensive classical guitars, steel string ones are louder. This will help to get your pastor or whatever you call him in time and in tune, and likewise the choir.

Custom strings for steel guitars can be obtained more easily than for classical.

BUT the lower you tune a guitar, relatively speaking the quieter it seems (a function of the ear's sensitivity curve).

The best answer is a steel strung guitar, a capo, and some practice.

When I was in the school choir (and unable to get out of it) not only was there choir practice for a whole evening a week, but also there was "congregational practice" in which the whole school was taught how to sing new hymns.

There is no miracle cure. The capo is the nearest. It doesn't take much figuring out where to position it since you know there are twelve semitones in an octave.

D'Addario offer some good charts for string tension, but they are for steel strings. There are also java applets that you can download.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Jun 09 - 12:50 PM

Leeneia, I would think that a small guitar with a 21.5" string length, unless it is very lightly constructed, would have no problem with a standard set of nylon strings tuned a full step above concert pitch.

I would never try it with the usual 25.5" string length, but since your smaller guitar sounds pretty close to the dimensions of the "terz" guitar (normally tuned a minor third above concert pitch), it sounds to me as if should work fine with no danger to the guitar.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Jun 09 - 06:24 PM

...The little guitar is only 21.5 inches from nut to bridge...)

As I said up the thread, my midget guitar is that size, and sounds a lot better tuned a full tone higher than concert pitch. (Sounds and feels not dissimilar to a standard sized guitar with a capo on the second fret...)

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Jun 09 - 04:24 PM

Well, well. I'd never heard of a terz guitar, but my "half-size classical" could be one.

Here's what I found out: "The Terz guitar is tuned a minor third higher than a regular guitar, the same tuning as if you put a capo at the third fret of a normal guitar (e.g. open strings are G-C-F-A#-D-G). It has a much shorter scale length, typically 530-560mm, compared to the Torres 650mm scale, or even the period 625-635 scale."

My half-size classical is only 545 mm long from bridge to nut.

Right now I am busy sewing a glamorous blouse to wear to the opera this weekend. After that, I'll take the guitar back to the place where I got it and ask for more info about it.

Meanwhile, I have been having fun listening to Swiss folk music while I sew. So far I have heard the sounds of blues, boogie, rock & roll, gypsy, and (of course) pure polkas, all performed on alpeninstrumenten.

Others I enjoyed might be called 'Homage to Flight of the Bumblebee' and 'Homage to the Minute Waltz.' And finally, there the piece you would hear if J.S. Bach had written a clarinet polka. I stopped the sewing machine to listen to that one.

And now for a trial fitting...

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Jun 09 - 04:50 PM

Keep us posted, leeneia. I'm curious to know what you have also.

I know there is a company in Rumania (I think) that makes a couple of small-size classic guitars for children. Real classics, just smaller.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 10:27 AM

I'll be back. My small guitar is an Austin, made in China.

Now I'm off to Des Moines to visit friends and go to the opera. (They know I won't go if an opera has rapes, abuse or stranglings, and they accept my bizarre ways.)

As for the pastor who starts at the wrong time, I realize that I need to explain to him that I do a little preliminary strumming in order to figure out the first note of the song. (He is used to doing services with organists who have had years of training and are very precise in everything they do.)

But no matter what happens, people tell me that the singing is better with some kind of accompaniment. It gives the group a referent and keeps them in tune.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 02:23 PM

"...people tell me that the singing is better with some kind of accompaniment. It gives the group a referent and keeps them in tune."

Amen to that. I would add that, without instrumental accompaniment, group singing tends to be out of TIME even more noticeably and seriously than to be out of TUNE. People can't wait quite long enough between verses unless some instrument, any instrument, fills in the beats between verses.

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 03:58 PM

545 mm - that's about 21 2/2 inches.

"Amen to that. I would add that, without instrumental accompaniment, group singing tends to be out of TIME even more noticeably and seriously than to be out of TUNE. People can't wait quite long enough between verses unless some instrument, any instrument, fills in the beats between verses."

I can think of any number of folk venues where that just isn't true, and where the singing is all; the better for having no instruments. And I've even known church congregatins who have learnt how to sing without instruments.

"Tends" is a dodgy word - it can mean anything from "almost invariably" down to "quite often".

Subject: RE: hurt my guitar to tune it a step high?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 10:22 PM

1. Use a capo.

2. Make sure, however, that it is the right kind of capo for YOUR specific guitar(s), because capos are not all the same, just as guitars are not all the same. Some capos will be fairly useless on your guitar. Others will fit it like a dream.

3. You must position the capo correctly for a good result. If you do, the guitar will sound just as good as it does with open strings.

4. Get a well qualified guitar player at a good music store to demonstrate all of the above to you and show you exactly how to do it and why it's done that way.

(and I am just repeating what many others have said earlier in this thread)