accordian/guitar question

Subject: accordian/guitar question
From: Bert
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:59 PM

Why is it that it's OK for an accordian to have buttons that have linkages to play chords, but a similar device created for a guitar is greatly frowned upon.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:22 PM

It takes a lot more force to hold a string down than open a valve. A mechanical guitar-Stradella system could mean that one finger was trying to depress six or even twelve strings at once. Making it both reliable and light enough not to induce instant osteoarthritis of the finger joints might be tricky.

An electromechanical system might work but would be heavy. Probably best adapted to a pedal steel.

The other issue is complex chords. Guitarists (well, jazz guitarists anyway) are used to playing chords with up to six pitch classes present. On an accordion you can get that by combining buttons. A guitar mechanism would need separate buttons for each chord type, and by the time you get up to all the variants of 13th chords and the like, that's a lot of buttons.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:35 PM

"An electromechanical system might work but would be heavy. Probably best adapted to a pedal steel."

Did see something like that years ago.

There are weird instruments around that do similar things - hurdy gurdys, nickelharpas...

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:36 PM

Bert the closet thing to that is an auto-harp.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Bert
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:14 PM

You're right there Jack, but the question remains. Why is it OK to have chord bars on a zither making it into an autoharp, but a similar device for a guitar is met with disapproval.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 08:51 PM

Partly because any such devices so far have been relatively clumsy and inefficient, and very limiting in ways that an autoharp chprd bars are not. (You can still play an autoharp like a zither, but I can't imagine an "autoguitar" you could still play like a gutar.)

But also because people tend to sneer at anything that might seem to make life simpler, such as capos on guitars - including autoharps and trumpet valves in their day. If someone were able to come up with a viable push button guitar which overcome those problems, it'd get sneered at. Until some virtuoso turned up who blew the sneerers away.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Mooh
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 09:35 PM

There already is a device to make chording easy on guitar, it's called a hand, and it does a better and easier job than the alternatives.

For such a device to work, it would require as many buttons (or whatever) as there are fret and string combinations, so why put a mechanical device between the fingers and the strings? As it is, the player still has the nuances of fingers on strings, vibrato, bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc. With a mechanical device between fingers and strings all that would be lost, wouldn't it? I suspect that is why it is scoffed at.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Escapee
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 10:33 PM

Wasn't there a ukelele gizmo like this? It was a box that fit over the neck of an Arthur Godfrey plastic toy uke in the mid 50s. Maybe.
SKP

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 02:08 AM

This might be the gizmo Escapee is thinking about:

Isn`t it ugly?

And then the device described by Mooh is bio-degradable.

Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Grab
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:16 AM

IIRC, accordians have chords on one hand and single notes on the other, right? So playing chords doesn't prevent you also playing a tune or doing anything else more interesting (eg. moving bassline) with single notes. And with an autoharp, you've got a few dozen strings, so it's perfectly possible (if you're good) to play chords and melody together.

A guitar only has six strings though, and if you want to play a chord then by the definition of what a chord is, that removes at least three strings from play melody-wise. If you want a 7th chord, that's at least four strings out. So anything which tried to play chords for you will effectively prevent you doing anything else with the guitar. No moving basslines, no melody, no harmony, just a monotonous "chung chung chung chung".

Also, autoharps and accordians have one fixed note per string or per reed (or two if your squeezebox plays different notes in and out - either way, it's fixed). On a guitar though, each string lets you play up to two octaves of notes, with the only limit being what you can hit simultaneously with your hand position (and even then, two-hand tapping gives you further options). The ability to play chords in different places gives different "flavours" of chord by virtue of the chord inversion, pitch and string choice (the same note on different strings sounds different). Even with standard tuning, there are literally dozens of ways of playing a G chord, for example, all of which sound different. There's no way on earth that a mechanical gadget can do this.

And we haven't even touched on the possibility of altered tunings, at which point any fixed chording system is totally knackered...

Sure, beginners are often only capable of "chung chung chung chung", but that's just a transitional stage on the way to better playing. Having some gadget forming the chords for you will prevent you *ever* getting past that beginner stage. In other words, McGrath's fabled virtuoso simply won't appear, because virtuosity is by definition excluded from such a system.

Of course, you could have a system of 24 buttons per string which would selectively fret individual notes on each string. But then you might as well press the strings down yourself, right?

I don't think this falls into the same category as capos. The only people who sneer at capos are some classical players, and that mainly for reasons of tone. Everyone else (including flamenco players) sees them as the necessary tool that they are.

Graham.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:44 AM

The only people who sneer at capos are some classical players Some - but perhaps not the best. Segovia used a capo when he felt like doing so. The same goes for Julian Bream.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Escapee
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 09:23 AM

Ernest, that looks like the same concept at work. Yes, it certainly is ugly. I wonder what the Germans were saying about it? Probably "Isn't this ugly?"
SKP

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Bert
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 10:25 AM

For such a device to work, it would require as many buttons (or whatever) as there are fret and string combinations...

That's nonsense. It would require as many buttons as the number of chords you wish to implement (three maybe - GRIN). Same as an autoharp.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 10:32 AM

I think a part of the soul of the instrument, in the guitar, is the sound that you can get with the fingers depressing the string. You can make a vibrato with your fingers, for instance. You can't do that mechanically. If you had a mechanical system for depressing strings, you would get a mechanical sound as a result.

In an accordion, the soul of the instrument is in the bellows. You can have a mechanical means of making the chord and not get a mechanical sound because the bellows is the part that is used to get the variations in sound that make it sound not mechanical.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 10:35 AM

Actually, and pardon me for not thinking of this sooner, but there is such a gismo for guitar. It is called a slide

chords on a dobro.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Grab
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 10:53 AM

Some - but perhaps not the best.

Too right. The best tend to use the tools required to get the music they want to create. If that means using a capo or changing your tuning, so be it.

But then the classical world is fairly hidebound. Lurking on the MMIF where instrument builders go to chat, a few of the pro luthiers there have had classical guitarists find that their "unconventional" instrument designs sound better than the "regular" ones, but they still need a "regular" one for taking grades because they feel the examiner would mark them down otherwise. Bit of a sad state of affairs really.

Capo-wise, I do look down a bit on the partial capo, because I can't personally see an application for it. In particular, the claim that it lets you play DADGAD or other altered tunings without retuning or learning new fingerings is provably false. But other people here have found uses for it in providing drone strings specific to a tune/song, so if it fills a need then fine.

Some folks can be a bit toy-happy though. I once saw a guy called Amrit Sond and was very unimpressed - his entire set only consisted of demonstrations of "hey, if I use this gadget or this technique, it does this". There's a big difference between using a gadget or technique and actually making music with it.

I admit to being a total gear-freak myself. :-) I love my digital FX pedal, because it lets me dial in exactly the amp tone and FX I need for a song. Similarly, my newly-acquired Variax lets me pick just the right guitar sound for a song. But even though I theoretically could use, say, a banjo through fuzz distortion with auto-wah and ping-pong echo, I wouldn't because it wouldn't fit any song I could think of. And it's worth noting that the electric guitar fraternity rather look down on both of these as not being "proper" tools for the job. (No-one said that the classical crowd had a monopoly on hideboundness...)

I guess this means that for each gadget, you'd need to look at it to see whether there's any possible niche it could fill. Capos, there's a clear need for them. Partial capos, maybe a small niche, but it exists. But Bert's hypothetical auto-guitar, I can't actually see any way it could contribute to guitar-playing. Maybe someone else can suggest some way it could be useful, but I suspect it falls into the same category as the famed "Bumper-dumper" - a technically-possible curiosity, but not something that anyone would ever need.

Graham.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 03:38 PM

I can conceive of an instrument looking like a guitar but with a set of chord buttons, and some device so that the appropriate strings would be fretted when you touched one - but you'd have the option of fretting strings as well, as well as selecting which strings to play or not.

I wouldn't want to play one, mind you. In fact I think it'd be a real bugger to play, rather than simplifying things. But who knows what the future will bring.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:15 PM

Isn't it jazz guitarists who get sniffy about capos? They tend to pride themselves on being able to hit a Bm13aug5/Db with fingers alone.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:15 PM

The use of a capo by a classic guitarist isn't frowned upon if it's done by a competent guitarist in an effort to achieve a particular effect. Flamenco guitarists use a capo (çejilla) all the time.

I have seen a plastic gizmo that can be clamped to the neck of a guitar. It looks like a box and covers the first four frets. There's a wheel or dial on the side. You turn the dial to the chord you want, then strum, turn the dial, strum, and so on. Instant Segovia? Whaddayouthink!??

Mrs. Dora Broberg, a little old lady who ran the Broberg House of Music in Seattle many years ago had been a guitarist of some skill when she was younger. The store kept at least one of each model Martin guitar in stock at all times. She advocated learning some classic guitar technique no matter what kind of music you wanted to play. She sometimes asked a potential customer, "Do you want to play a guitar? Or do you want to play a drum?" Her feeling was that just playing chords on a guitar was only one step above banging a drum.

Why can't you rig up a device to put on a concert grand piano that will allow you to play Chopin at the touch of a button? Well, there is such. It's called a piano roll. But why bother with a piano? Just put a CD on your player.

But then . . . Here ya go.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:30 PM

The other day I saw a youtube.com video John Lennon in an interview. He was asked if he was a good guitarist.

He said three interesting things. That George was the guitarist you noticed, meaning apparently that he, John, was the one that you didn't notice. He then clarified by saying that George was the singer you didn't notice.

He said that Eric Clapton said that he could play, "so I must be OK."

The most interesting thing that he said was that "I am a musical, give me anything, Even a tuba, I'll make music come out of it.

I think John Lennon answered Bert's question perfectly. A musician makes music. It doesn't matter who frowns.

As the husband of an accordionist, I can tell you a lot of people have frowned, many make jokes, but almost all are later impressed and surprised by the music they hear from that instrument.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:31 PM

Oops!

The most interesting thing that he said was that "I am a musician, give me anything, Even a tuba, I'll make music come out of it.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 12:51 AM

"In an accordion, the soul of the instrument is in the bellows. You can have a mechanical means of making the chord and not get a mechanical sound because the bellows is the part that is used to get the variations in sound that make it sound not mechanical."

When I find them, I love to collect those keybpards which use accordion reeds and have Stradella Bass buttons. They have an electric blower, so you can't get anythting but a constant drone, but they ARE fun, and purely mechanical.

Subject: RE: accordian/guitar question
From: GUEST,Darowyn
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 08:15 AM

A pedal steel is a mixture of a Harp and the auto guitar as far as playing technique is concerned. You can play different chords in the same bar position by selecting three strings from the possible ten,(or twelve or fourteen) so this is similar to harp technique- but you can also play an entire scale in one bar position by using pedals and knee levers, and move from one chord to another in the same way.
So with up to fourteen strings (not necessarily in pitch order) four pedals and six knee levers (left, right and up, on each knee) and a volume pedal, they are clearly much easier to play than playing a six string with the fingers of the left hand.
In your dreams!
Cheers
Dave
(non-pedal steel player)