close chord voicings on guitar?
HotchkissTrio
within a whole or half step) which can be difficult to finger on the
guitar. Any recommendations on how to tackle this issue? For
example, voicing a C and D double stop on guitar?
Thanks,
Paul H.
Ralph Patt
Major Third Tuning makes close vocing relatively easy. See this web page.
Ralph
bob r
paulyho...@hotmail.com wrote on 1/29/04 4:01 AM:
Some things are just plain going to be hard to finger. I'd suggest remaining
alert for chances to incorporate open strings to get close intervals into
voicings. Also, it's not always necessary to put every possible chord tone
in a voicing; if you're willing to leave out a non-essential tone like a
fifth or a root, sometimes that can free things up a bit. When these things
are not practical, your playing position becomes even more important than
usual. Make sure that you're not doing things which limit your reach
(hooking the thumb over the neck, etc.).
No matter how you go about it, sometimes you just have to accept that you're
playing a guitar. If it's any consolation, I've had pianists tell me that
they envy guitarists because we can play spread voicings so easily. The
grass is always greener on the other side. :-)
--
Bob Russell
http://www.bobrussellguitar.com
CD, "Watch This!", available at:
http://www.cdbaby.com/bobrussell
Mark Guest
hand technique (thumb behind neck, etc.), and a good warm up before playing
the "stretchy" chords. I like to run hot water over my hands for a few
minutes before playing. Lots of voicings have a 5 fret stretch. I think Ted
Greene's book "Chord Chemistry" might be a good resource for you. Here's a
nice sounding voicing for a minor 6 9 that I like:
(Play it up high on the neck)
X11111
______
______
______
X03 000
______
4
The ring finger covers the 6th of the chord, the baby finger covers the
minor 3rd
(I'm not good w/ ASCI chord diagrams...hope it makes sense)
--
Mark Guest
Mark at MarkGuest.net
www.MarkGuest.net
"Ralph Patt" <ralp...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040129075925...@mb-m05.aol.com...
Joey Goldstein
voiced chord are spread out over more than 1 octave.
Some close voicings are playable on guitar especially on the inner 4
strings. Through trial and error and experimentation you will find some
of these.
Sometimes when an open string is also one of the notes needed in a
voicing it can be the ticket.
Here's a Cmaj7 chord with in in the lead in close voice.
X X 5 5 0 0
The same chord can be played using the inner 4 strings.
X 10 9 5 5 X
But up the octave this chord is pretty much impossible.
Lenny Breau was a master of taking a spread voicing and using an
artificial harmonic on one of the lower notes to bring it up an octave
thus creating a close voicing.
X X 10 12 12 12
If you take the low C of this chord up an octave by using an artificial
harmonic you get a close voicing.
C G B E
becomes
G B C E
This technique can not always be done on the fly though.
For the most part we just accept that we need to use spread voicings.
It is also possible to mit certain notes from a close voicing, often the
root or the 5th, to make it playable on guitar. Sometimes those notes
create the intervals that give the close voiced chord it's spice though.
Jurupari
>within a whole or half step) which can be difficult to finger on the
>guitar. Any recommendations on how to tackle this issue?
I get help from having a straight wrist and a small scale guitar- I do a lot of
reaches over a barre and make a lot of use of open strings and chords in higher
registers.
A couple of good sources for chords are Jack Zucker's website, and the old Ted
Greene Chord Chemistry book.
I also do hammerons with the right hand to add tones, and of course the Lenny
trick of raising a tone with an oh. For about the same expenditure of energy,
you can stop it with the right hand and fingerpick it with the remaining
fingers too, like hold it down with rh finger one and pick with T 234.
Another technique, which I don't do worth a damn for minor second intervals is
thumb over. Talk to the Wim Overgaauw folks, and they can help you out with
that.
Clif
Mr.Will
"bob r" <bl...@anomie.org> wrote in message
news:BC3E71DB.263F3%bl...@anomie.org...
Thats a very good reply, and I agree totally.
One thing that I always hear though is that we should be deciding for
ourselves how the chords should be embellished etc. Just because the music
says "6th flat 9 demolished 25th" doesnt mean thats the ONLY way it can be
played right?
Its either major or minor or dom7 or diminihsed or 7b5 etc. How we extend
and add to it is up to us right? So if you using piano voicings, they are
making use of what a piano can do, why not make use of what the guitar can
do.
I think I know what I mean.
Mr.Will
Jurupari
>you're
>> playing a guitar.
Ha - you probably know the quote where Van Eps' wife looks over at him in one
of his more frustrating moments and says, Look, George, they've already
invented the piano.
I wanted to add one other thought on close voicings. For minors or sevenths,
there are going to be harmonic and melodic minor scales that contain useful
tensions, and they are both rich in half step intervals. If you think in terms
of clusters from tonesets which are the same notes of the scale, you can come
up with a variety of unusual second intervals in chords.
Actually, you can do the same for majors with the same scales too - it just
makes a song a little more exotic sounding.
Clif
bob r
mr....@ntlworld.com wrote on 1/29/04 10:43 AM:
> Thats a very good reply, and I agree totally.
> One thing that I always hear though is that we should be deciding for
> ourselves how the chords should be embellished etc. Just because the music
> says "6th flat 9 demolished 25th" doesnt mean thats the ONLY way it can be
> played right?
> Its either major or minor or dom7 or diminihsed or 7b5 etc. How we extend
> and add to it is up to us right? So if you using piano voicings, they are
> making use of what a piano can do, why not make use of what the guitar can
> do.
>
> I think I know what I mean.
>
> Mr.Will
I think I know what you mean too, Will. :-) And you're right, too. We get to
embellish things as we see fit. The Real Book might say "Cm7", but that
shouldn't mean much.
The sound of close voicings is interesting; I like to use that sound at
times to break up the monotony of "guitar voicings". As others have
mentioned, there are various ways to get that sound besides stretch
fingerings. Harmonics, open strings, retuning - all these things have uses.
I've seen that "thumb-over" technique used, although I don't use it myself.
Some of these things (especially using a new tuning) require planning ahead,
though, and for playing jazz, I don't like to rely too much on things which
need to be planned. (Ralph's tuning is very cool for close harmony, though;
if I didn't have 38 years in standard tuning, I'd likely investigate it more
than I already have. I kept a guitar in his tuning for some time...) For me,
selectiveness in voicing coupled with being ready to stretch once in awhile
seems to work best. That way, I can get the cluster effects and still have
access to the garden-variety stuff.
Still, it's a freakin' guitar, with its own idiosyncrasies. We can play
voicings that would have a piano player ripping the webs between his
fingers! So I like to make use of that, too - take some of what's cool about
the guitar and throw in a dash of stuff that's not 'natural' on guitar. As
Mondoslug so aptly puts it, yee-freakin' ha!
Kevin Van Sant
wrote in message <fU9Sb.417$UB6...@newsfep3-gui.server.ntli.net> :
>One thing that I always hear though is that we should be deciding for
>ourselves how the chords should be embellished etc. Just because the music
>says "6th flat 9 demolished 25th" doesnt mean thats the ONLY way it can be
>played right?
>Its either major or minor or dom7 or diminihsed or 7b5 etc. How we extend
>and add to it is up to us right?
That's certainly on of my bedrock philosophies.
> So if you using piano voicings, they are
>making use of what a piano can do, why not make use of what the guitar can
>do.
So true. There may be some common ground, but there are also
inherent strengths and weakness to each instrument. Use them wisely
to make the best music.
_________________________________________
Kevin Van Sant
jazz guitar
http://www.kevinvansant.com
to buy my CDs, listen to sound clips, and get more info.
Alternate site for recent soundclips
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/kevinvansant_music.htm
Max Leggett
>One thing that I always hear though is that we should be deciding for
>ourselves how the chords should be embellished etc. Just because the music
>says "6th flat 9 demolished 25th" doesnt mean thats the ONLY way it can be
>played right?
>Its either major or minor or dom7 or diminihsed or 7b5 etc. How we extend
>and add to it is up to us right? So if you using piano voicings, they are
>making use of what a piano can do, why not make use of what the guitar can
>do.
>
>I think I know what I mean.
And I agree. I worked through a book of piano voicings recently
[recommended by someone on this NG] and while it was worthwhile, all
the voicings were quartal, which made them really easy grabs on the
piano. Everything seemed to be a 6/9 chord, which is great, but those
voicings were presented to a large extent because they were easy grabs
for pianists. Which means I'm free to use voings which are easy grabs
for me.
Gerry
HotchkissTrio <paulyho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
There are myriad threads in the past on this topic. I've blown myself
out a number of times in my "solutions". Here's the various school's
of thought:
Making liberal use of open strings
Using less voices (easier to make tight voicings of 3 notes than 4)
Tuning in thirds
Use "high-tuned" guitars (bottom three strings are tuned up an octave).
Use a guitar synth to emulate the last two.
I now use the last listed after trying all of them. Playing tuned in
thirds made my brain go cross-eyed, but if that's the fulcrum of your
needs on guitar it's the one I'd recommend. High-tuned is nice but
becomes limiting when you do single line stuff and only have a 3-string
guitar to work logically on (either set). And/or it demands you always
have a second guitar for such things. It's a pain.
Playing tight 3-note voicings and making liberal use of open strings
are skills it takes a lifetime to absorb (not a bad thing), and even so
are simply not always available; so it becomes more an arranged thing
than an "improv" thing.
--
First they gerrymander us into one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only
care about the swing districts. Then they complain about voter apathy.
-- Gail Collins
sheets
I've got a bunch of closed voicings on my website:
paul
(HotchkissTrio) wrote:
>guitar. Any recommendations on how to tackle this issue? For
>example, voicing a C and D double stop on guitar?
>
?? the voicing 3 7 1 5 always contains a half step, and it's very
standard for guitar. for cmaj7, it's just E B C G. dm7 is F C D A.
seems to me like you need at least one of these things happening to
get a close voice on the guitar. obviously these are not hard and fast
rules, just commonalities that seem to occure in most close voicings
the voicing must contain the close interval (half step or whole step)
on the G and B strings. (not always true, but the stretch is a lot
less).
or the voicing contains a 1st finger barre somewhere.
or the voicing needs to utilize the pinky and the 1st finger
a lot of close voicings sound great and are really easy, like the ones
joey mentioned and the ones on jack zucker's site. some of my personal
favorites are
Am7: B C D A
Cmaj7: B C D A (same voicing)
Fmaj7: B C D A (wow, look at that ;) )
Ab7alt: B C D A (this is getting weird)
F7: B C D A (I'm stretching this, aren't I?)
Cm6: B C D A
you get the idea :).
--paul
HotchkissTrio
quote is totally appropriate.
> Ha - you probably know the quote where Van Eps' wife looks over at him in
one
> of his more frustrating moments and says, Look, George, they've already
> invented the piano.
Thanks for the input guys.
james seaberry
I also find it easier to reach stretch voicings with the neck
very upright, as in a classical position. It relaxes the wrist. I also
try to remind myself that all notes do not have to ring out
simultaneously to be remembered by the listener; grab a chord
fragment, then slide to the voices you could not reach and it can
still have the effect of multiple, close voices.
Chess Player
"Mark Guest" <ja...@REMOVETHISMarkGuest.net> wrote in message
news:2K7Sb.49838$U%5.264885@attbi_s03...
> Ralph has a revolutionary approach, but another option is to use good left
> hand technique (thumb behind neck, etc.), and a good warm up before
playing
> the "stretchy" chords. I like to run hot water over my hands for a few
> minutes before playing. Lots of voicings have a 5 fret stretch. I think
Ted
> Greene's book "Chord Chemistry" might be a good resource for you. Here's a
> nice sounding voicing for a minor 6 9 that I like:
I'm going through the "Chord Chemistry" book right now and I highly
reccomend it. Not that I'm some authority or anything <G> but it's a great
book.
Brian
Ugly
"And I agree. I worked through a book of piano voicings recently
[recommended by someone on this NG] and while it was worthwhile, all
the voicings were quartal, which made them really easy grabs on the
piano. Everything seemed to be a 6/9 chord, which is great, but those
voicings were presented to a large extent because they were easy grabs
for pianists.
......
.......
thornton
smooth transitions (pick/fingers to tapping and back) difficult. Thornton
bob r
etl...@rcn.com wrote on 1/30/04 12:28 PM:
> Two hand tapping makes it easy, but it takes practice and makes tonally
> smooth transitions (pick/fingers to tapping and back) difficult. Thornton
True. That's one of the reasons I've been working on ditching the pick: when
I'm not holding the pick, stuff like that is instantly at my disposal.
Fritz Lowrey
interpreted as a major 6 9 (Ab6/9 in this case). One of the things
that I gathered from Ted Greene's books is an affection for bar/block
chord reinterpretation. My hands don't stretch quickly so I try to
think of voicings that are harmonically correct without making me work
too hard, the downside to this (that even TG notes) is that some of
these voicings sound pretty odd when played out of context and/or
without accompaniment.
FL
"Mark Guest" <ja...@REMOVETHISMarkGuest.net> wrote in message news:<2K7Sb.49838$U%5.264885@attbi_s03>...
Old Radios
> voicings were presented to a large extent because they were easy grabs
> for pianists.
This is somewhat OT, but I keep telling my young students there are no
great mysteries as to why a guitarist chose to play the notes they
played on a recording. I mainly teach kids who like to learn rock 'n
roll, and when they try to pick through some famous guitarits' solo with
tab., it looks like a vast mysterious trail of artfully selected notes.
"gee...how did they DO that?" But when we brake it down, in most
cases the "famous guitarist" was just using things that were "easy to
grab" on guitar. Scales, chord shapes, etc. Stuff they noddled around
with in thier livingroom and thought "...ooo that sounds nice".
So... I like your comment!
Mark.
--
Mark Malin - Software Engineer
email: mark(dot)malin(at)thermo(dot)com
website: personalpages.tds.net/~jonarthr
"...there are Flying V's and then there are the ones shaped like peanuts..."
- my son commenting on guitars in general.
jrw
> I'm going through the "Chord Chemistry" book right now and I highly
> reccomend it. Not that I'm some authority or anything <G> but it's a great
> book.
> Brian
>
>
Keith Freeman
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
Please don't post HTML in this newsgroup!
-Keith
Music samples, tips, Portable Changes at
http://home.wanadoo.nl/keith.freeman/
E-mail: keith DOT freeman AT wanadoo DOT nl
Stan Gosnell
news:Xns9480D35A8...@194.134.2.2:
>> ------=_NextPart_000_0034_01C3E722.99F01BE0
>> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
>
> Please don't post HTML in this newsgroup!
Some readers do it automatically (Lookout especially) and some posters
don't know how to turn it off. and it looks SO KEWL!!!!!!
When I see HTML I just skip to the next post, and don't even bother to try
to read it.
--
Regards,
Stan
jrw
"Keith Freeman" <dont.use.t...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9480D35A8...@194.134.2.2...
this is bad? Thanks
Jim
bob r
mjm...@NOSPAMwisc.edu wrote on 1/30/04 11:45 AM:
> This is somewhat OT, but I keep telling my young students there are no
> great mysteries as to why a guitarist chose to play the notes they
> played on a recording. I mainly teach kids who like to learn rock 'n
> roll, and when they try to pick through some famous guitarits' solo with
> tab., it looks like a vast mysterious trail of artfully selected notes.
> "gee...how did they DO that?" But when we brake it down, in most
> cases the "famous guitarist" was just using things that were "easy to
> grab" on guitar. Scales, chord shapes, etc. Stuff they noddled around
> with in thier livingroom and thought "...ooo that sounds nice".
Joe Pass always used to say that he didn't use anything that wasn't easy to
grab...
Jurupari
>I'm not holding the pick, stuff like that is instantly at my disposal.
Same with a nailless right hand. I have so much to work on that I'm not
getting to the tapping as much as I'd like but I still do it. Any tips or
amazing secrets from you guys? I already spilled my guts - er, gut - I don't
have a lot goin on yet.
Clif
Marc Sabatella
why
> this is bad? Thanks
Because some (hard to say whether many or most) people read newsgroups
on software that does not interpret HTML, so any embedded HTML in the
message just gets in the way of reading the actual content of the
message.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
The Outside Shore
Music, art, & educational materials:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
Bob Agnew
"HotchkissTrio" <paulyho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:be1c2bf6.04012...@posting.google.com...
> Lots of piano arrangements used close voiced chords (chord tones
> within a whole or half step) which can be difficult to finger on the
> guitar. Any recommendations on how to tackle this issue? For
> example, voicing a C and D double stop on guitar?
>
> Thanks,
> Paul H.