Playing the guitar

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 19 Sep 18 - 04:15 AM

Talking of Celtic tunes, I was really impressed with Davy Graham's approach to playing - particularly Irish tunes - in the early day of Kicking Mules records. Davy would play the melody - with decorations and variations - over a simple monotone bass.
His approach was quite different to fellow Kicking Mule guitarist Duck Baker who favoured busier bass lines.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Sep 18 - 04:23 AM

Davy's classic version of "She Moved Thro' The Fair", using DADGAD tuning, is superb.

At the risk of going on and on, I enclose a link to my (free) book on fingerpicking the guitar, which starts off with basics:

Fingerpicking the Guitar: A basic guide

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Sep 18 - 05:08 AM

Tony McManus Celtic Fingerstyle Guitar (two volumes with cd/DVD) is good but not easy or for beginners.

Now here's a suggestion if you are a brave soul. You could post an example of your playing. Not so that people can rip it to bits but so that advice given is more geared to you. You might be hyper critical of your own playing and only hear the mistakes or barriers and others might be more objective. It's not a dare or wind up.

Somewhere on Muscat there is a thread about vocal range and to aid practical discussion I put a little mp3 of me singing from the bottom to top of my voice and back. The responses were much more relevant than a more theoretical general discussion as it was based on what I could actually do

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Nick
Date: 19 Sep 18 - 05:09 AM

Whoops wasnt signed in

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 19 Sep 18 - 07:12 AM

Sandman and Will are correct in deducing that I pick the melody with my thumb and use my index and second to either provide a march or 3/4rythm. I rarely use pattern as I always thought it was mainly for accompaniment of voice. I just use the C chords and add and subtract fingers when needs must.
So I'm not even a proper fingerpicker.
As I said earlier the nearest I can find to what I sound like is Maybelle Carter on a very bad day.
I'm always hearing new tunes from the pipe bands, "Sandy's new Chanter" and "Doocot Park"(Dovecote) are my latest challenges.
But I can do "Farewell to the Creeks", Old Rustic Bridge and quite a few more.... Nae bother :0)
I'm amazed that you have all been so kind and taken the time to help.
Mudcat members have just jumped a hundred places in my esteem. Ake

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 09:20 AM

I’ve been playing since I was 14. I learned musical theory through playing violin up to grade 8 and was in the county youth orchestra etc but with guitar, I soon realised it was the perfect instrument to get a few basics and from then on, develop your own style, don’t worry about others, only refer to tabs or score when you can’t work it out by faffing around on the settee.

Standard tuning for a versatile chromatic instrument that can flow between chords for accompanying vocals and open tunings or modal ones such as DADGAD to pick out melody lines or give a drone quality that goes well with jigs, reels etc.

In all, a guitar is a very diverse instrument that is not rigid in its outlook, it suits all and no matter what floats your boat, it can fit in. If only some people were as tolerant of different styles as the guitar is....

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Stanron
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 10:18 AM

A note on practice which may be helpful. A common practice problem can come from not concentrating on 'tricky bits'.

A 'tricky bit' can be just one or two notes in a bar which require finger movements which are unfamiliar. You have to figure out what the problem actually is, and work out a solution for that problem. You then practice just this bit until you can do it.

If a section registers as tricky, this implies that the rest of the piece is doable. Therefor the main concentration of practice on that piece should be on that tricky bit until it is no longer tricky. This might sound obvious but if I had a student who got stuck I would look for something like this and I would look at how the student approached it.

It's not just getting the tricky bit learned. You then have to practice the resolved tricky bit with the preceding bar or two or four. When you can do this consistently you have to practice this group of bars within the section. When playing the whole piece you have to be able to flag up the approaching ex tricky bit in order to be ready for it or it will still fail.

Identify and solve the problem, learn the solution and then integrate it into the whole piece.

I hope this helps.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 10:34 AM

It's very important to really analyse both hands when faced with something you can't get right.
I remember saying that to a pupil who was having a problem and he replied, "but it's my left hand which is the problem".
It wasn't!

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 10:45 AM

Both my hands are the problem, palms like shovels,
and fingers like short thick [.... fill in apropriate short thick things...]

More cut out for wearing boxing gloves, than any fancy guitar pickin' n fingerin'...

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 11:34 AM

And, of course, you must put the time in, or "woodshed" as the jazz masters call it.
I would say that in the early days of learning the guitar a minimum of 30 mins a day is required.
It's important to keep improving to keep the motivation going.
Recording yourself playing is a good way to notice improvements because day-to-day improvements are hard to see but looking back at recorded efforts over a longer time span gives players at better idea of how much progress they are making.
Folk clubs should be good place to get hands on advice. I've always welcomed questions from guitarists who need a bit of help with their playing.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 12:11 PM

Tunesmith - it should be all about being positive and patient,
helping other guitar players to enjoy learning and improving...

Sadly too many see guitar mastery as an egotistical competitive sport,
with extra points scored for being hostile and standoffish to learners...

..or downright spitefully undermining their confidence...

One of life's mysteries..
why do so many of these arseholes seem to work as sales assistants in big city guitar shops...???

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 04:06 AM

One thing puzzles me, and this will seem stupid to most of you people who are so obviously knowledgeable, but after tuning the guitar to DADGAD do you still use the same chord shapes? C G7 F Am.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 04:22 AM

In any new tuning.. some familiar shapes work in places up and down the neck,
some don't...

The fun of trial and error.. and discovery.. your ears decide...

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 05:01 AM

The chord shapes have to change because the notes have changed, but some only change slightly. Using standard tuning chord shapes can produce some interesting chordal sounds a d textures, but also some unwanted dissonance, but it’s a very lazy approach, and once the novelty wears off rather tedious for your audience.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: gillymor
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 05:49 AM

Guest at 4:06 A.M., John Sherman's site has a DADGAD tutorial and a chart of the basic chords near the bottom of the page-

Click here

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Nick
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 07:20 AM

I'm not sure which of the following GUEST meant

1 Why having changed the tuning to DADGAD form 'standard' chords. That is, why look for the same chords with different fingerings to make them sound the similar to chords in 'standard' tuning eg C chord (x32032) Am (x02232) F (303203) G (550450)? What would be the point making it sound the same as what you can do at least as easily in 'standard' tuning?

2 Why do a lot of similar chord shapes work? DADGAD is not really that different to standard tuning. You are dropping the top and bottom and fifth string notes by a tone. So - especially if you don't play every string in every chord (and I know people who do) - so some of your standard chord shapes become familiar sound - eg a C shape (x3201x) turns the chord into C7; an A chord turns into an A with a second which is a nice sound (x0222x - or with a second and fourth on top if you play it x02220 which is not discordant); a D chord (000232) turns into a rather nice sounding chord (played with the addition of one note it becomes a rather nice Dm9sus - 003232). But they don't have horrible discord in them so they work. A G chord is a little stranger as it has a 7th in the root position but becomes a G7 add2 and without the root note sounds less strange.
Now if you picked a tuning like EADGBD# a lot of things don't work! And it is an occasionally used tuning and does have a sense to it before anyone says 'but noone would tune to that'... Most different tunings make playing easier, not harder, and offer different opportunities and sound different.
If something is difficult to play (I have small hands) you can retune a string. I play in EADGCE when I play a Case of You because it works. I play a tune in CGDGAD because I wrote it like that and it doesn't work/I can't play it otherwise. And I sometimes play with a partial capo to give things I can't otherwise reach (eg capo at 2nd fret covering strings 1-5 gives a drop D. With 6th string tuned down to D and 5th tuned to G it gives the option of the fourth as a bass note on the 6th string). They are just solutions to problems sometimes rather than 'tunings'! With me it sometimes goes "I need x note on a string" and it isn't an option at the moment; if I detune or tune up that string can I play the rest of the song/tune? If yes then retune it.

3 There is another possibility. You might be Joni Mitchell. There are various explanations as to why she had so many different tunings. One very plausible one is that her childhood polio left her with a reduced ability to form chord shapes so, being a creative person, she found a different solution. ie She tuned the guitar around the chord shapes she could play. Brilliant! I hope that is a true story as I have read it in more than one source (eg Joni open tunings)

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 07:32 AM

"but it’s a very lazy approach, and once the novelty wears off rather tedious for your audience."

GUEST,Jerry - why would any guitarist with any sense or pride
be stupid enough to have fun experimenting with new unknown tunings in front of an audience...???

..unless that's the kind of people folk clubs attract...?????


btw - Your tone of haughty disdain comes so close after my previous post Date: 20 Sep 18 - 12:11 PM...

gotta laugh...

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 08:19 AM

I guess I need to rephrase my posts, because clearly I’m sending out the wrong messages. Do try alternative tunings, because they open up all sorts of interesting sounds and textures, but be sparing with the experimental sounds when performing because it can be turn off for your audience. Does anyone else know what I mean?

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 08:25 AM

haughty disdain! - i love that, must write a song sometime with that phrase

I'm full of haughty disdain
Because in the main
You're all complete arseholes!
Its just me, what's sane!

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 08:43 AM

Big Al - I like fusty old fashioned Trad words - I'll have none of that modern popular Contemporary word rubbish...

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 10:24 AM

Well, old time US banjo players use a multitude of different tunings and nobody ever accuses them of being lazy.
AND, Pierre Bensusan uses DADGAD as his standard tuning and a lot of the time you would never guess that he wasn't in regular tuning.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 10:29 AM

They wouldn't dare call a hillbilly anything...

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 11:51 AM

Sorry folks, the guest who asked the question about tuning and chord shapes was me....The chord shapes are the basis of my particular picking style, so that is why I asked. Haven't had time to re-tune yet so I will experiment, but it sounds really difficult. :0(

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 12:18 PM

Just to be clear, I didn’t mean using alternative tunings is a lazy approach, but rather sticking to the same chord shapes just because they are familiar to you is lazy, especially when the altered chord shapes in most cases are actually much simpler anyway. What is simpler than fingering 000200 in DADGAD tuning? I know: 000000 in open G tuning.

And just for the record I use a lot of alternative tunings myself, open G and open D for bottleneck pieces, and Gm and Dm occasionally, together with open G, open D, Gm and G modal (gDGCD) on five string banjo, and occasionally AEAE on the fiddle and ADAE on the mandolin and tenor banjo. In each case it’s sounds best, IMHO, to adjust your fingering and chord shapes to fit the altered tuning, sometimes only one finger difference. Sorry if anyone finds this haughtily disdainful, rather than helpful advice to either take or discard as you see fit.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 12:35 PM

Jerry - oh yes, that's better...

see the difference a proper explanation, instead of a hasty written unclear post, makes...

cheers...

Now.. I & others can see you as more of a positive kindred spirit,
than one of the usual negative mudcat moaning miseries...

I used to spend a lot of time putting guitars in new tunings,
and setting the intonation to keep them permanently in those I liked.

Then discovering / working out and writing down chord shapes that sounded good and useful...
Cheap 2nd hand ebay guitars were very handy for that purpose...

Thats, my approach - self taught since I first picked up an instrument in my early teens..

never had a formal lesson in my life...

That's neither a boast nor a plea for help...

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 02:01 PM

Thank you for the blessing. I’ve never had a lesson either, but probably should have done. There were no Internet lessons, YouTube demonstrations or even chord songbooks, and very few tuition books with tablature when I started out. However, the exploration and experimentation was all part of the fun, but as you say, best not done in public.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Nick
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 02:25 PM

Ake - it was probably me making something over-complex by explaining it badly!

If you are wanting to transfer 'known' things then open tunings might not be the thing. (But on most of them an E or A minor shape usually works! Check Joni Mitchell who plays full barre chords a lot and Am7 shapes a lot and the tunings take over. If you look at about 65 seconds in to this video you'll get an example of other slightly non standard things she does!)

I reckon that DADGAD would suit Scottish tunes with the thumb picking out the tune and using the top strings as you described. It would work well. The sound would fit some tunes well.

I go through phases of using different tunings. Sometimes if I get stuck in a rut I experiment. A friend played Guinevere by Crosby Stills and Nash a while back and once I came across the tuning EBDGAD it just works. And it's then quite fun to experiment from there.

Here's a little quick video that i just did on my camera of a tune that starts in C and ends in D but I have never worked out what the chords etc actually are it is just what it is. As it is in an odd tuning pretty much none of the chord shapes that I play did I know before I started noodling so it is all just experiment and what sounded okish to my ears - and I don't recognise the chord shapes as any that I use in pretty much anything else. I haven't played it for years so excuse the mistakes. In fact I was chatting to my son about it the other day and said that I could not consciously remember it at all apart from what the tuning was. But I knew if I could find a part of it that I remembered the rest would come back as I played it. And it did - but it has sat in my head/fingers without being played for quite a few years.

It links in with your original post as to whether NOT doing things makes them better. I think on balance not as it is not very practised or accomplished because of lack of practice or familiarity. But it does demonstrate how amazing brains and muscle memory are and what they store and can recreate. I genuinely could only remember the first four notes and a rough idea of where the bridge/chorus bit was on the guitar before I started letting my fingers and brain find it without my involvement! I believe that when Glenn Campbell was fairly late on in his dementia path he could still remember his music and songs. Weird things brains.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 03:57 PM

Oh! that was absolutely lovely Nick, beautifully played, but far above my level I'm afraid....you make it look so easy, as if you are just fooling about, what about all the tension the stress, the mistakes.....or is it just me.....thank you very much.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 04:25 AM

well whats wrong with a lazy approach.

if you minimise the technical difficulties - you can get on with the important things - namely your individual input - it could be an extra twiddly bit - it could be learning the words and giving them expression - finding a quirky but fun rhythm - balancing an egg on your nose (or any other part of your anatomy).

with DADGAD, you can do the three chord trick, with just one finger of the fretting hand.

with a capo - you can do the three chord trick in any key, pretty much.

i think we attach too much value to the value of hard work. it doesn't always produce a profit - in fact for most people, hard work is just an unpleasant fact of life.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 06:27 AM

I think it's what drives you, Al. I'm a fairly lazy old sod, but some things drive me on - one of which is playing the guitar. I can spend a day playing a new piece over and over again jut to "get" it. And I love working on an arrangement for, say, tenor guitar & guitar from sheet music, or from my head.

My instructional videos - the ones with moving chord diagrams in particular - can take hours or even days to produce, but I love doing 'em so much that it's not actually hard work.

But never ask me to clean the car, mow the lawn or paint a room. I don't - but I know men that do! :-)

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 23 Sep 18 - 03:38 AM

Hey Karen....Surprise surprise, I've just found amongst my dusty old LPs, the book you mention by Stephan Grossman. It was inside the sleeve of the Duck Baker LP that I wrote about earlier.
I also found that the LP had been signed for me by "Duck"...Happy memories....Ake

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Sep 18 - 03:16 PM

OK now I get the whole GAGDAD thing. The right hand is still resistant to rapid fire picking techniques. I guess there are no short cuts to the 10,000 hours of practice rule.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Sep 18 - 03:42 PM

Hello Don, nice to see you on the thread, didn't know you were a guitar man.

Subject: RE: Playing the guitar
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 23 Sep 18 - 03:43 PM

Sorry that was me.