Tonefiend Forum

This is a collection of thoughts I wrote, all centered around the idea of breaking out of the guitarist's comfort zone. Hopefully someone gets something out of it.

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Right about the time we get past barre chords and pentatonic licks, most guitarists begin to figure to get an inkling that this is actually a really difficult instrument to play. This is especially evident in jazz. In a jazz ensemble, the guitarist is the jack of all trades, master of none. Piano players are much more harmonically complex, but can't use vibrato, glissandi, or any other devices to make themselves sound more voice-like. Horn players, on the other hand, have access to a range of expressive devices and can play lines that leave most guitarists in the dust. But horns can't play chords very easily, at least not without resorting to complicated combinations of overtones and overblowing. Guitarists are stuck in the middle.

We might never entirely be able to do what those other instruments can do, but we can try to close the gap as best we can. At the very least, we'll be exploring ideas that are unconventional on guitar and break out of some of our habits.

This is where method books written for other instruments can be very useful. Every instrument has its own idiosyncrasies; what's easy for a pianist may be very difficult for a violinist. By exploring a wide variety of method books, you accomplish two things:

- You get exposed to a variety of ideas and figures that you may not have been exposed to otherwise

- You get to see what's expected of other instrumentalists, which can in turn change your expectations for yourself.

Lets take the classic Hanon exercises for piano. The first few Hanon exercises are as simple as it gets for pianists... even people who have only been playing piano for a short time can often play them. On guitar, however, they're moderately difficult scale exercise with leaps that we might not be all that comfortable with at faster tempos.

Here are a list of method books that may be worth exploring:

Hanon and Czerny exercises for piano
Joe Viola Technique for the Saxophone Player
Sigurd Rascher's 158 Exercises for the Sax Player
Kreutzer Etudes for Violin
Bach Inventions (one line at a time)
Arban Trumpet Method

Some of these method require different approaches to become challenging. For example, the Rascher book features a lot of diminished and augmented arpeggios moving up and down chromatically. A guitarist could easily play these by simply moving arpeggio shapes up and down the neck. The real challenge would be to play the examples while staying in one position (I think the 8th position works well for most of the examples).

In fact, fighting the ease of chromatic transposition (moving shapes up and down the neck) is a real challenge for guitar players. If you've ever had any keyboard training, you know that they often practice scales and chords chromatically up and down. This is somewhat challenging for a pianist, but easy for a guitar player: all we usually have to do is play the same scale shape and move it up one fret.

While this makes things easier, we don't want it to become a crutch. The usual prescription for this is to practice playing different scales in one position, for example going through all 12 major scales through the circle of 5ths in the 8th position. This is a great exercise, but there's another way to attack this: one string playing.

Playing scales and arpeggios on one string with real fluency is a challenge. Try this: play a C major scale up and down your high E string. Switch to the B string, then G, etc. Then play an F major scale the same way, going down through the Circle of Fifths.

You can do the same thing chromatically: play a C major scale, then a C# major scale, then D, etc. Much more challenging than it normally would be.

Now for the widowmaker: play a C major scale up the high E string, stopping around the 12th or 13th fret. Then play a C# major scale down the B string, starting around the 12th or 13th fret. This combination of chromaticism and string criss-crossing can really be brutal. There are no real patterns or shortcuts that can help you through it. The only way to become fluent at it is master the material.

One last thought:

Legendary player and teacher Lennie Tristano had his students learn a great deal of solos by master jazz artists. The players he typically selected were:

Lester Young, Charlie Christian, Roy Eldridge, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Billie Holiday, Fats Navarro.

In that group, we have a tenor, an alto, three trumpet players, a pianist, and a singer. I have no idea if Tristano intended it or if he just selected artists on the merits of their playing, but having a variety of instruments introduced his students to a range of ideas and ensured that they wouldn't be just learning "sax-friendly" licks. It's something to consider when we're transcribing our own favorite solos.

In my experience, a certain challenge is faced when moving tunes from the mandolin to the guitar. A lot of what I play on the mandolin is considered "fiddle tunes" and the patterns are optimized for that tuning. Some of them go easily to the guitar and some of them (mostly when a lick that covered two strings on the mandolin now cover three on the guitar) are tough. When I first got my ukulele, given its scale length similarity to the mandolin, I started trying to play mandolin scales on it. But now I've been playing uke for awhile and not touching the mandolin, I'm probably going to be a mess when I pick up the mandolin again.

And I'm not sure if it's just because I'm "chicken" or what, but even though I have learned a few jazz tunes I do not feel that jazz is necessarily the ultimate destination for all musicians. I just want to make some eardrums bleed y'know? heheh

That said I would groove on an accompaniment method for DADGAD. Anyone know of one?