Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments

Subject: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: OldFolkie
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 08:03 AM

Having recently spent some time working hard at moving away from finger-picking the same pattern over and over again throughout a song, to learning to finger-pick notes of the melody of songs that I accompany myself singing, it has provoked some thoughts that I would appreciate views from you guitar-playing 'Catters.

1)        The melody of a folk song is made up of notes of various durations – half notes, dotted quarter notes, quarter notes, eighth notes etc etc. My fingers seem determined to play a note at every eighth (i.e. 2 strikes for every 'beat' or quarter note, irrespective of what the real duration of the relevant melody note is), so I end up with other 'fill-in' notes, that are not a true part of the melody. This is probably a habit from those early days when I learned the 'standard' fingerpicking patterns. Does that make sense – have I explained it sufficiently well or have I just confused you all?? The question is do others find that you discipline your fingers to play exactly the melody, or do you hit a note every eighth note, or something in-between??? If something in between, how do you go about deciding what duration of note to play when?

2)        If I want to play the same note (i.e. same string, same fret) for two successive eighth notes, it doesn't seem to sound particularly smooth – is this just something I have to get my fingers better trained at or is there a technique to get it better – e.g. is it workable to pick upwards for the first note then pick downwards on the same string for the second note?

3)         Most of the experienced players I listen to here in the uk folk clubs, when they accompany a song, don't seem to play the exact melody, but don't play the same old pattern endlessly throughout a song. Hence the guitar line sounds interesting without sounding boringly repetitive, but doesn't dominate over the vocals. Whilst I do use some chord substitutions, and use bass runs between chords, I would greatly value any pointers about how to chose what note to play when.

Hope that hasn't overloaded or bored you all!

Would greatly appreciate any help.

Rgds

OF

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 08:13 AM

try topunctuate the robotic rigid picking pattern
with silences, sustained notes, and bends for variety

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: breezy
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 08:34 AM

its only accompaniment after all when your singing, the voice is 'doing ' the melody'

It'll come with practice and experience,

years of

remember:

KISS

Keep It Simple S.....

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: Windsinger
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 09:29 AM

Heh. :)

Honestly, I agree with breezy. A lot of the picking patterns I use are just Merle Travis-style folk arpeggios. At least, according to my old guitar teacher.

There's an excellent book of strumming and picking patterns for various styles of guitar music, which I picked up years ago. Good enough that when I showed it to Teacher he flipped, and immediately ordered a shipment of them for the rest of his students.

(Title, etc., escapes me now but I'll post it when I get home if you like.)

Slán,

~Fionn

www.geocities.com/children_of_lir

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: breezy
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 09:57 AM

have you tried thumbing the melody first while arpeggioing?


years ! :-}

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 01:26 PM

My style is a combination of what I think of as two different approaches: "pattern focused" and "melody focused."

Pattern focused is where I am always playing a pattern (but not always the same one) and fitting the melody notes into it. Results are highly syncopated. Yes, there are "filler notes" but I use a pattern that makes then sound "right" and pleasing to my ears.

Melody focused is where I start by picking all or most of the melody notes with the "correct" durations. Then I try to figure out where I can sneak patterns in. Much less syncopated but still pleasing to my ears when I do it "right."

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: M.Ted
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 01:59 PM

As a guitar teacher, I can tell you, with good authority, that a good answer to your questions involves a couple years of music instruction. Not to say that it isn't relatively easy to give you an answer to your questions--it's just that it takes quite a bit of disciplined effort to move from concept to application--

Here are some answers:

Question #1--When you play a fingerpicking pattern, you are really playing a strict repeating rhythm pattern on the strings. If the melody's rhythm pattern is exactly the same, no problem, you just arrange your fingers so to get the notes in the right sequence. If they aren't the same, you've got a "pat-your-head-while-rubbing-your-belly" situation-two strong elements pulling at each other, with you trying to shoehorn them into each other--

Essentially, what you have to do is make one of the part subordinate to the other--either alter the melody, which you did by playing it as eight notes--or simplify the strum-

Travis picking(which, incidentally,many claim to do, but few actually do) is a mechanism that allows you to keep a strict tempo in the bass, while playing a syncopated version of the melody--essentially dropping it in between the beats--

To go the other way, you do what is essentially the "broken chord" lute technique--where you don't try to play a picking pattern at all, but instead play the melody and drop in bits of the chord when the fit--generally where there are half or whole notes in the melody, or at the end of a phrase.

2. You really need to work on technique to get your single notes to sound good. A lot of guitar players, especially acoustic guitar players, play single notes as an after thought to chords, and they fudge their way through and end up sounding muddy-- Here is a little effort that, though it may seem kind dumb, will really help you to improve the way your playing sounds--

Simply play "Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star" as a single note melody--pluck it with the index finger, start on the B string, first fret(key of C) and play it at about 100 beats per minute--Listen while you play, and repeat it till your fingering is smooth and effortless, the sound is sweet, and you can hear the instrument resonate with each note. Now do the same in A,D,E,G,F, and B--using open position scales--


3. This question gets to a very important, and often neglected point about guitar playing, and it is that the guitarist, at least in folk/pop/rock/jazz, also has to be an arranger. A lot of players deal with this artistic challenge by simply arranging everything they play exactly the same way. This actually works fairly well if you are in a group, and holds up pretty well if you are on your own, at least for about three songs.

Here is something handy that I learned from Don Sebesky's book on arranging(it is one of the classic texts)--simply make a list of all the different options that you have(on guitar, this would be all the different tricks--fingerpicking patterns, bass runs, arpeggios, pwer chords, repeating lead figure,chord melody, single note melody, variation on the melody, walking bass, melody in the bass, single note melody against a drone, and on and on) and then mix and match--

A typical pop song formula is Intro, Verse 1, Verse 2, Bridge, Instrumental Bridge, Verse 3, Extro--but you can experiment with that, too--

The most important part, the stuff that makes or breaks your arrangement is taste--unfortunately, no quick way to explain that--

All the best,

M.Ted

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: Amos
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 02:16 PM

I find M. Ted's analysis excellent.

My own experience like yours was grounded strongly in a rote cycle of bass and treble interlaced.

Finding the notes to a tune in segments of chords was one thing that made it possible to move away from that mechanism, and return to it and a different moment in a song. There a lot of two-fingered couplet scales that can be used to provide melody, and you naturally learn not to strike the discordant strings. For example, you can hit a pair as the first note of your finger picking cycle instead of just the bass single string note, and then leap back to a full "C" or "G" chord formation for the rest of that cycle.

As you experiment with adding runs of couplets in midstream you can break the habituation to droning.

Arbeggios and reverse arpeggios (high-to-low) can also be interhjected at various points. You keep that eighth note sense of rhythm, but you learn that there's no harm if some of those eight notes are eighth rests instead.

A

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: Patrick-Costello
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 10:11 PM

I think you and everybody else are making this more complicated than it really is.

The crux of your problem lies in how you started out your post:

"Having recently spent some time working hard at moving away from finger-picking the same pattern over and over again throughout a song"

Dude, repeating patterns are your friends.The idea that you're supposed to sing a song and consciously think about what notes to play is just stupid. Our brains don't work that well at multi-tasking.

What you want to do is get one repeating pattern so ingrained into your playing that it's part of who you are. Once that happens the in between stuff and interesting improvisational melody line stuff is drop-dead simple.

To understand how this works it might be easier to look at the problem from a different angle.

In frailing banjo (and this isn't too far off the path because American folk guitar developed out of early banjo styles) we work with a single basic picking pattern of a quarter note and two eighth notes.


D --0--0-----
B -----0-----
G -----0-----
D -----0-----
G -------0---


It's played in an all down-picking motion, and it gives us a basic rhythm of 1 2 & or "bump dit-ty".

The wild thing about frailing banjo is that this simplistic pattern is amazingly adaptable.

Just playing a hammer-on:

      h
D --0^2--2-----
B -------0-----
G -------0-----
D -------0-----
G ---------0---

changes the count to 1 & 2 &.

That's cool, but it gets really interesting when you start mixing in rests.

If we play the initial quarter note as a rest but play the hammer-on anyway:

      h
D --x^2--2-----
B -------0-----
G -------0-----
D -------0-----
G ---------0---

we still wind up with a count of 1 & 2 & but it feels different.

We haven't really changed anything. The picking pattern is still the same and the hammer-on is still dropping in at the same point, but because we played one part of the pattern as a rest the phrasing of the pattern changed.

For a really basic, bozo-banjo, example of this in action listen to the Minglewood Blues workshop here: http://howandtao.com/?p=87 I start out the workshop playing the basic "bump dit-ty" and over the space of the workshop mix in some rests to put things into more of a blues framework.

Moving back to the guitar that idea of taking a simple pattern and using a mix of simple techniques to alter the phrasing works even better.

If you take something like a thumb-brush pattern:


E -----0-0---
B -----0-----
G -----1-----
D -----2-----
A -----2-----
E --0--------


there are almost endless combinations of rests, hammer-on's and "stuff" that can be tossed into the mix without breaking out of the basic repeating pattern.

If you start looking at how scales & chords are interrelated on the fretboard you'll start discovering at any melody note can be picked up by moving a finger here or there in a chord form.

Try strumming this pattern:

   
3-3-2-0-1-0    3-3-2-0-3-0    3-3-2-0-1-0   3-3-2-0-1-1

3-3-2-0-1-3    3-3-2-0-1-1    3-3-2-0-1-0   3-3-2-0-3-0



Then put it into a roll of some sort - and then see if you can find the melody to Freight Train.

Fore more information on this, check out the guitar stuff at: http://howandtao.com/?page_id=20

Don't overcomplicate the guitar. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

-Patrick

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: OldFolkie
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 08:09 AM

Folks, as always, you 'Catters have come up with great, and varied ideas to get me to 'think outside of the box', as well as highlighting that what I percieve as problems may just need looking at from a different angle.

As always, there are many ways to play a guitar, and they're all right - just depends on the person and the situation and sound that person wants, so I've got plenty of different ideas to work with now.

My thanks to you all. I'll be taking everyone's ideas and trying them out on way or another over the coming weeks.

Windsinger, I'd definitley be interested in that book you mentioned.

M Ted, you are right, I have prpbably arranged my repertoire of probably 50 or so songs around a maximum half a dozen or so styles / basic picking patterns, which is what prompted my quest - too much 'every song sounding the same'. I'll have to search for the Don Sebesky book you mentioned - haven't come across it yet in my travels around uk music shops, but I'm gonna be looking on the net pronto like!

Patrick, I agree wholheartedly - my brain struggles with multi-tasking if I try to get too clever and pick out the melody whilst remebering all the verses of the song. I guess what I'm looking for is the half-way-house between everything sounding the same, and the too-clever-fingers-flying-everywhere look, so that each song sounds individual, and interesting, without over-taxing my ageing brain to the point where it can't remeber the words of the song!

Once again. my thanks to you all.

Rgds

Old Folkie

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: Grab
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 08:39 AM

Playing the same melody as you're singing, at the same time as you're singing, is an interesting effect and works well for blues. It's more normal to only be playing single notes to do that, to give it that very sparse feel.

If your fingerpicking pattern is too complex, not only is it going to distract you by forcing you to multitask (per Patrick's comment), but it doesn't help the song either. The audience then also have to multitask in listening to a complex lyric and melody and a complex picking pattern. During singing, your guitar should be background filler.

For question 2, it certainly *is* possible to pick in the opposite direction. It doesn't feel natural to start with, but if you practise strumming whilst keeping your hand and wrist still and just moving your fingers in and out to strum, that'll get you started. When you're used to your fingers moving this way, single notes become easier. This also leads to the rasguedos (sp?) technique which is basically a triple strum of all three fingers slightly separated to get a "badabam" kind of effect, kind of like a strumming version of drumming your fingers.

Or of course, the other alternative to playing the same note twice is to use another finger. This is also definitely worth practising. Folk guitar tends to keep your fingers stationary on the top 3 strings, but classical guitar uses them on any string as needed. A bit of work on classical guitar pieces will help you there. (And yes, you can still do classical stuff on a steel-string. ;-)

Graham.

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: M.Ted
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 12:39 PM

About thirty five years ago, when I was slightly younger, and annoyingly sure that my brand of folk/blues/folkrock was the answer to all the problems of the world-I was invited to play some with a group of what I felt were more "conventional" musicians.

I opened their eyes up with some blues, then showed off few of the songs I'd written--then they hauled out their musty old music folders and I condescended to apply my special gift to their decidedly old fashioned repertoire--

I made it through a few of their ragtime numbers pretty well--and I thought was hanging in there on the swing numbers, but then the steel guitar asked me to if I could play barre chords, and I was a bit put off("On an acoustic guitar? I have principles!)--

Then they pulled out "Stardust", and I died a long, slow, death. The chunka-chunk patterns that worked so well on Dylan and Mississippi John Hurt, on Jug Band tunes, and on all the stuff from the Beatles and the Byrds left me no room at all to fit in all those chords--and it sounded really wrong when I left some of them out--

On what, on later reflection, I determined must have been a purely malicious impulse, the keyboardist nodded for me to take a solo--a you can guess what happened. It wasn't pretty--

When you play out of Rhythm/picking patterns and chord positions, there's a lot you can do, but ultimately, it locks you into a box. If you want to progress, you've got to think outside the box.



I

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: Windsinger
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 02:13 PM

Windsinger, I'd definitley be interested in that book you mentioned.

O.F., sorry I failed to post it; crashed early last night. (Well, maybe the two martinis helped...it was a rough workday.)

Will dig that up and post the title tonight. It was DEFINITELY a user-friendly book, with some great suggestions for patterns!

Slán,

~Fionn

www.geocities.com/children_of_lir

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: M.Ted
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 05:00 PM

Oh, and Patrick Costello, if you don't think about the notes you are playing, how do you know whether you played them or not?

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: Windsinger
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 08:35 PM

OK. Got it:

"The Dictionary of Strumming & Picking Patterns"

--by Fred Sokolow


Boogie, Latin Rock, Funk, Soul, Scratch, Shuffles, Punk strums, Country strums, Rock Ballads, Metal, Bluegrass ...

... and, yes, banjo rolls, folk. Travis arpeggios, etc.

Hav fun, friend.

Slán,

~Fionn

www.geocities.com/children_of_lir

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: GUEST,Eric Bram
Date: 24 Feb 06 - 05:05 AM

I'd recommend the finger-picking books (with CDs) by Mark Hansen, my former teacher.

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: M.Ted
Date: 24 Feb 06 - 11:18 AM

It's "The Dictionary of Strum & Picking Patterns"--

Incidentally, the Don Sebesky book is oriented toward writing pop music arrangements--you can apply the ideas to any kind of music(which I do) but the orientation is toward writing arrangements for, say, Henry Mancini recordings--

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: GUEST,Val
Date: 24 Feb 06 - 02:12 PM

Don't know if this is a helpful perspective or not, but I worked into melody picking by emphasizing the melody note during an arpeggio (plucking it a bit harder). Then maybe giving a little extra space "behind" a sustained melody note rather than continuing with the entire arpeggio pattern. Next step was to throw in the occasional "running" note that's in the melody between the chords (don't have to hit every one of these as long as voice or another instrument is carrying the melody). Then I started ornamenting with hammer-ons & pull-offs. Naturally these extra notes require some time & hand movement, so notes from the arpeggio get dropped out. But I still keep the chord & arpeggio pattern going in my mind & let it come out to "fill in the corners" around the melody as needed.

Have fun finding your own style!

Subject: RE: Help with Fingerpicking Accompaniments
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Feb 06 - 03:04 PM

I find thqt if you use three fingers (with the thumb) rather than two for the picking it loosens up things and gets away from the mechanical effect you can get with just the two.